by E. F. Benson
So the momentous decision had been made and two strenuous years had followed, during which time Mr. Osborne had settled to adopt (as became a man of property in these Socialistic days) the Conservative cause in politics, and after one defeat to get himself returned for one of the divisions of Surrey. During that time, too, No. 92 Park Lane had been pulled down and by amalgamation with No. 93, been built up again in a style that enabled Mrs. O. to have her friends to dine, with a bit of a dance afterward or Caruso to sing, without it being necessary for late comers to huddle together on the stairs where they could not hear a note, or stand in the doorway of the ball room without being able to get in, or to dance if they did. And though, as has been stated, the years had been strenuous and the struggle continuous, neither Mrs. Osborne nor her husband ever felt that it was a losing game that they were playing. Apart from this one defeat in the Conservative interest, and one dismal attempt at a dance in the house that they had taken before No. 92 was ready, to which eight men came (all told and counting Percy) they had swiftly and steadily mounted. For true to the principles on which her husband had amassed so large a fortune, all that Mrs. Osborne offered was of the very best, or at any rate of the sort which momentarily most attracted. The singer who was most in vogue sang at her concerts, or the heels that were most admired danced there, and beyond doubt the extreme pleasure that the excellent woman took in her own hospitality contributed largely to its success. She was no careworn anxious-eyed hostess, but bubbled with good-humour, was genuinely glad to see the world fill her rooms, and always welcomed the suggestion that any guest should bring a friend, whose name was instantly entered by her admirable secretary on her visiting list.
And thus she rose and prospered, till on the date at which this story opens, she had crowned the work of her season by giving this immense fancy-dress ball, which, to give it its due, had whipped up again to full activity the rather moribund energies of the season. Somehow the idea had taken on at once; there had been no fancy-dress function of any importance that season, and by one of those whims that govern the flow and ebb of the social world, London had thrown itself with avidity into the notion. It was soon clear that everyone would be there, and everyone was, and at last in her own house Mrs. Osborne heard the strains of the National Anthem.
It had been of no particular period; the point was not to have a strict and classical function but any amount of jewels and fine dresses, and Queens of Sheba, Cleopatras and Marie Antoinettes joined hands in the quadrille with Napoleon, Piers Gaveston and Henry VIII. She herself had been an admirable Mistress Page, her husband a veritable merry knight. But of all the brilliant figures in that motley crowd there was none perhaps more admired than the slim dark Piers Gaveston. And that was Claude.
CHAPTER II.
DORA WEST was trimming her hat. It was a straw hat that had cost a shilling or two when it came into her deft hands, and the trimming would only prove to have cost a shilling or two when it became attached to the hat, and leaving the deft hands was put onto her extremely pretty head. But by that time the hat would certainly have become a very pretty hat. This she was explaining with great volubility to her friend.
“You are rich, darling May,” she said, “and in consequence your attitude toward hats is a little opulent and vulgar. I can put the feathers and the flags and the birds’ eggs in exactly the same place as Biondinetti, or whoever it is who sells you hats.”
“No, not exactly,” said Mary, with the quietness that real conviction brings. She was quite certain about that point, and so did not care to shout over it. It is only when people are not certain about what they say, that they drown their want of conviction in arguments. Conviction always swims.
Dora had several pins in her mouth, and so did not reply at once. In itself the pin-reason was excellent, and more excellent was the fact that she did not wish to reply, knowing the quiet truth of Mary’s conviction, especially since she could not settle the exact angle at which a very large white feather should be put. It pierced the hat, once inward once outward, that was Biondinetti all over, but where in heaven’s name ought it to start from? So she only made a little impatient noise with her lips, and even that was difficult, since there was a danger of causing a pin to be sucked into her mouth. But she made it successfully. She poised the feather a moment, focussing its appearance against the hat. The effect produced by the impatient noise was sufficient to ensure her against any immediate reply. Then suddenly the inspiration came, and with a pair of tiny scissors she cut a strand or two in the straw and stuck the quill feather through the holes.
“There,” she said, “and you pay Biondinetti two guineas for doing that. I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. Austell wrote to me last week and said the swans were moulting, and I telegraphed — that cost sixpence and a little thought, instead of two guineas — to tell him to send me big wing feathers. He’s a dreadful ass; we all know that, but he had the sense to see I wanted feathers, and to catch a swan and pluck—”
“What a disgusting butcher,” said May. “I don’t mean butcher, I mean vivisectionist.”
“And how do you think you get your feathers, darling?” asked Dora.
“I don’t know; I never ask. The hat comes from the shop.”
“Then don’t ask now, because I will tell you. Your horrid shop has birds killed, and then plucks them. It does; you can’t deny it. Whereas with me the swan was just moulting, and Austell assisted Nature, which we all do. He caught its head in a landing-net and it tried to peck, he says—”
Dora West stopped suddenly in the middle of these surprising remarks, and held out the hat at arm’s length in order to observe the effect of the feather. She had one of those enchanting faces that are overwhelmingly pretty for no particular reason. You could, if you chose, argue her prettiness away, by maintaining with justification that no single feature on it had warrantable claims. They were all passable, it is true, but it was not clear how it came about that the sum of them was so delicious. Her eyes were gray, and had nothing striking to recommend them, her nose turned up at the tip far too markedly to be able to claim beauty, and the mouth was quite certainly too large. Yet even allowing for the charm of her extreme youth and the vigour and vividness of her vitality, there was no accounting for the supreme prettiness that was there. So the sensible thing was to stop arguing and look at it again, and more sensible yet, to say something that should make her laugh. For her laugh was the most enchanting thing of all; then every feature laughed, there was no telling where it began or where it ended. May before now had declared that from quite a distance off, when Dora’s back was turned, she had in a ballroom seen she was amused because the back of her neck and her shoulders were laughing so much. “Oh, Nature wants a lot of assistance,” she went on. “She is perfectly hopeless if you leave her to herself. Look at the flowers even, which are quite the nicest thing she does. Roses, for instance; all she could think of in the way of roses was the ordinary wild dog rose. I don’t say it is bad, but how paltry, if you have had simply millions of years to invent roses in. Then man comes along, who is the only really unnatural being, and in quite a few years invents all the heavenly roses which we see now. Of course Nature did it, in a sense, but she did it with his assistance.”
“But why do you call man unnatural?” asked May. “Why? Because he saw at once how stupid Nature was, and had to invent all the things that make life tolerable. He lit fires, and built houses, and made laws, and motor-cars, and shops, and — and boats and buttonhooks. Motor-cars, too; all that Nature could think of in the way of locomotion was horses.”
The feathers were inserted in absolutely the right place, and Dora breathed a heavy sigh of satisfaction, laid the hat down on the end of the sofa, hovered over the tea table for a moment, and selected an enormous bun.
“And Nature gives us brains,” she continued, with her mouth full, “and the moment we begin to use them, as I have been doing over that hat, which is Biondinetti, she decrees that we shall be so hungry that we have to
stop and eat instead. The same with talking: she gives us a tongue to talk with and after quite a few minutes, talking makes us hungry too, and we have to use our tongue to help us to swallow. Did you know you swallowed with your tongue, darling? I never did till yesterday. I thought I swallowed with my throat, but apparently the tongue helps. That’s why we can’t talk with our mouths full as I am doing.”
May Thurston looked at the hat on the end of the sofa for a while, and then transferred her gaze to her friend.
“I don’t think I agree with you,” she said. “At least I allow that many people don’t know what being natural means, but I think all the nicest people are natural. You, for instance, and me and Mrs. Osborne last night at her dance. Never before have I seen a hostess really enjoying herself at her own ball. She stood at the top of the stairs and beamed, she danced and beamed—”
“And never before have you seen a person like Mrs. Osborne dance,” remarked Dora.
“Well, not often; Anyhow, she enjoyed herself tremendously and was perfectly natural.”
Dora shook her head.
“It won’t do, darling,” she said. “I allow that Mrs. Osborne beamed all the time and enjoyed herself enormously. But why? Because everybody was there. Was she ever so much pleased at Sheffield, do you suppose, or wherever it was they came from? I am sure she was not. But last night she was pleased because every duchess and marchioness who counts at all was there, as well as heaps that don’t count at all. She’s a snob: probably the finest ever seen, and by what process of reasoning you arrive at the fact that a snob is natural is beyond me. I agree that heaps of nice people are snobs, but snobbishness is in itself the most artificial quality of an artificial age. Snobs are the crowning and passionate protest against Nature—”
“Oh well,” said May in deprecation of this rather lengthy harangue, “I didn’t mean to rouse you, Dora.”
“I daresay not, and in that case you have done so without meaning. But really, when you say that Mrs. Osborne is natural I am bound to protest. You might as well say that your mother is.”’
“Oh no, I mightn’t,” said May quite calmly. “It would be simply silly to call mother natural. She only does things because they are ‘the thing.’ She spends her whole life in doing ‘the thing.’ And yet I don’t know — oh, Dora, what very odd people women are when they grow up! Shall you and I be as odd, do you think? I love mother, and so do you, and we both of us love yours, don’t we? but they are very, very odd people.”
Dora gave a little shriek of laughter.
“Oh don’t,” she said. “I want to talk about snobs a little more.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve often told me that mother was one,” remarked May.
“Yes, the darling; she is, isn’t she? She is the most delicious sort of snob. A month ago she wouldn’t know the Osbornes, and merely said, ‘I have no doubt they are very honest people,’ with her nose at the same angle toward earth as is the Matterhorn; while a week ago she was clamouring for an invitation to the dance last night. In the interval it had become ‘the thing’ to know the Osbornes. My mother saw it was going to be ‘the thing’ to know them long ago, and called at Park Lane almost before they had washed the white blobs of paint off the windows, or hung up those shields of heraldic glass on the stairs—”
“Oh, no, is there heraldic glass on the stairs?” asked May, in a slightly awe-struck tone. “I never saw it.”
Dora, as her friend often declared, really did not always play fair. There had quite distinctly been the satirical note in her own allusion to the heraldic glass, but as soon. as May reflected that in the appreciative reverence of her reply, Dora was down upon her at once.
“And why shouldn’t they have heraldic glass as much as your people or mine?” she asked smartly. “They’ve got exactly as many grandfathers and grandmothers as we have, and there’s not the slightest reason to doubt that Mrs. Osborne was a Miss Parkins, and Mr. Parkins’s heir, who, I expect, was far more respectable than my mother’s father, who drank himself to death, though mother always calls it cerebral haemorrhage. Oh, May, we are all snobs, and I’m not sure the worst snobbishness of all isn’t shown by those who say they came over with William the Conqueror or were descended from Edward the Fourth. Probably the Osbornes didn’t come over with William the Conqueror but were here long before, only they don’t happen to know who they were.”
“I know, that is just it,” said May, calmly. “They don’t know who they were, and yet they put up their coats of arms.”
Dora looked at her friend in contempt.
“I suppose you think you have scored over that,” she said.
“Not in the least. I am only pointing out perfectly obvious things.”
“Then why do it?” said Dora. “What I am pointing out are not perfectly obvious things. At least they appear not to be to you. The whole affair is a game, stars and garters and ancestors, and coats of arms is all a game. Oh, I don’t say that it isn’t great fun. But it is absurd to take it seriously. What can it matter to you or me whether great-grandpapa was a peer or a bootblack?
It only amuses us to think that he was a peer. And if it amuses Mrs. Osborne to think that Mr. Parkins had a coat of arms at all, why shouldn’t she put it up in the hall window? And since, as I said, she was the only child, of course she quarters with the Osborne arms. It’s one of the rules. I believe you are jealous of them, because they are richer than your horrid family.”
Nothing ever roused May except a practical assault upon her personal comfort, and Dora seldom attempted to rouse her. It was invariably hopeless and the present attempt only added another to the list of her failures.
“I think that is partly true,” said May. “I don’t see why common people should have the best of everything. They only have to invent a button or a razor, and all that life offers is theirs. I think it’s deplorable, but it doesn’t make me angry any more than a wet day makes me angry, unless I am absolutely caught in the rain with a new hat. As to coats of arms and things, I think it is rather pleasant to know that one’s grandfather was a gentleman.”
Dora waved her arms wildly.
“But he probably wasn’t!” she screamed. “Mine wasn’t, he was the wicked one, you know, and did awful things. Much worse than Mrs. Osborne’s probably ever dreamed of. Mrs. Osborne’s great-grandfather would certainly have cut mine, if he had had the chance—”
“He wouldn’t have had the chance,” remarked May. “And also Mrs. Osborne herself would cut nobody, who would — would lend lustre to her house. Oh, Dora, let’s stop. It isn’t any good. You are a democrat, and a radical and a socialist, and really it doesn’t matter.
Besides I haven’t seen you for — oh, well, nearly twenty-four hours. What has happened?”
Dora got up.
“I don’t think I can stop,” she said. “Because I want to know what you really think about certain things. Two heads are better than one, you know, even when mine is one of them. Oh, by the way, Austell has let Grote to the Osbornes. They have taken it for seven years from the end of July. It was mother’s doing I think. I — oh, May, you may call me a radical and a socialist and anything else you choose, but I can’t quite see Mrs. Osborne there. She’ll fill it with plush. I know she will. After all, I expect mother is right. I suppose it is better to pay some of your debts, and have other people putting plush monkeys into your house than go on as Austell has been doing. I expect I should be just the same if he was my son instead of my brother. It doesn’t seem to matter much what one’s brother does, as long as he doesn’t wear his hair long, or cheat at cards. But I daresay it’s different if he’s your son.”
Dora gave a great sigh, and was silent. In spite of that series of statements which had led May Thurston, quite reasonably, to call her a radical and a socialist, there was some feeling within her, rather more intimate, rather more herself, that made her dislike the idea of the Osbornes living in Grote, which had always been her home. The Austell finances, especially for the past
two or three years, had been precarious, and though her mother had a jointure that would enable her and Dora to live quite comfortably in her house in Eaton Place, and at the little bungalow at Deal, it had been necessary before now to let the house in Eaton Place during the months of the season, and live at Deal, and to let the bungalow at Deal (it was of the more spacious sort) during August and September, and encamp, so to speak, in a corner of Grote. For Jim Austell, her brother, it could not be denied, was not a person who could possibly be described as dependable. His mother had made the most prolonged attempt to describe him as such, but without success, and she had at length seen the futility of clinging to Grote, a huge Jacobean mansion with an enormous park. In the latter, being of sandy soil, a public golf links had been started, which brought in £192 a year, while neighbouring farmers grazed their beasts on other portions. The total receipts, however, about paid for the flower beds and the trimming of the exquisite bank of rhododendrons that grew round the lake, and after a year or so of trial, the scheme had been pronounced financially unsound, and for the last six months the place had been in search of a tenant. Austell had hoped that his well-known skill at bridge and his knowledge of horses might save him from the extremity of letting it. In this he had been disappointed; they had but contributed to the speed at which it was necessary to do so.