The night was dark and still--so dark that above the tree-tops all
was a soft, abysmal blank, so still that the Japanese lanterns
scarcely swung on their strings among the apple-trees, and the
leaves almost forgot to rustle. From the tent in the corner of the
little garden (little, but large for a garden in London) the quaint,
rapturous music of the Hungarian band floated in fitful
extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously accompanying the
murmur of many voices, the mingled pace of feet, and the lingering
sweep of silken skirts upon the shadowed grass. The light streamed
in broad, electric rays from the open windows of the low, wide
house, and from the tall double doors of the studio, which had been
added at the side, broken continually by the silhouettes of guests
who entered the rooms or sought the cooler air outside, and dulling
to the quiet glow of old stained glass the rich radiance of the
fantastic coloured lanterns.
It was one of the series of summer evenings on which, according to
the cards which had been so widely circulated, Mr. and Mrs.
Lightmark were "at home" to their friends and to their friends'
friends; and Rainham, who was a late arrival at the elaborate house
in Grove Road, was able after a time to recognise many familiar
faces, some of them almost forgotten, among those who had elected to
be present. The rooms, in spite of the outlet afforded by the
garden, were all surprisingly full; and after a hurried exchange of
greetings, which Eve's duties as hostess had compelled her to
curtail, he had passed through a jungle of brilliant toilettes and
unfamiliar figures into the newly-built, bright studio, where he had
been told that he would find his friend. He had abundant leisure to
corroborate the first impression of a splendour for which he was
hardly prepared, which had seized him when he entered the hall and
surrendered his coat to a courteous servant in livery, before
Lightmark, radiant and flushed with success, singled him out in the
corner to which he had retreated in loneliness.
"So glad to see you, old man! we were hoping you would turn up.
Better late than never. Isn't it a crush? I assure you our evenings
are becoming quite an institution. You will find scores of people
you know here. Excuse my leaving you. Not much like the old
studio days, eh? Afternoon tea with Copal's cups and saucers, and
Mrs. Thingumy's tea-cakes. Your friend Lady Garnett is here
somewhere--I'll be shot if I know where. Try the garden; you can
get out this way. See you again later."
"All right, Dick," he answered with equanimity, smiling with a
little inward amusement; "you look after your people. I will find my
way about."
As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who
strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the
trees, or disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn,
feeling himself vaguely exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of
the posturing fiddlers, his eyes caressed by the soft glow of the
Japanese lanterns, strung like antique jewelled necklets against the
almost tangible blackness of the night, he found himself listening
with an half-malicious amusement to the commonplace of the
conversational formulæ affected by the young world of society, the
well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers. It was
very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated
himself from the dreary bondage of such functions. It was croquet
then, lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different.
Presently he encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like
himself, and they found themselves seats before long in the darkest
corner of the garden, where a few chairs had been placed, outside
the radius of the lanterns, underneath a weeping willow.
"And they say painting doesn't pay," said the Scotchman, extending
his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not
saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that
queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in
this world. But if a man's clever and canny, and has the sense to
see on which side his bread's buttered ... why, it's just easier
than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't even an Associate."
"Yes. I suppose he's getting on pretty well," suggested Rainham,
with a lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.
"Getting on! Doesn't it look like it? Isn't he entertaining his
friends like--like a Rothschild? You know, of course, that he has
sold his Academy picture, and next year's as well--and four figures
for each of them?"
"Yes; and he's commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the
Hereditary Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst--an undertaking,
by the way, for which I don't envy him. Oh, Dick's all right! What
have you got in the Academy this year, by the way? I'm ashamed to
say I haven't been there yet."
"You haven't! But you have seen Lightmark's picture? No? Well, it's
a fine thing, and just as clever as---- But, mind you, I'm not
prepared to say that Oswyn wouldn't have made something better out
of it."
"Yes," said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving
about his heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock,
with the haunting shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed
as an offence against his loyalty. "It seems to me that Oswyn has
more real genius in his little finger than Dick has in his whole
body; I am sure of it. It was a pity that they should both have
chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, as to colour and
treatment and so on, are so much the same. But, of course, Dick had
a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew
that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing."
McAllister assented hastily.
"No doubt, no doubt; though Oswyn was just wild about it--you know
his uncivilized ways--and I must admit I was a bit astonished
myself, at first, when I saw the picture at Burlington House with
Lightmark's signature to it. But then I didn't know anything of the
rights of the case. He's a queer, cantankerous devil, and he's
always being wronged, according to his own accounts, and not only by
the critics. No one pays much attention to what he says nowadays.
It's just that absinthe and the cigarettes that are the ruin of him,
day and night. Poor devil! why can't he stick to whisky and a pipe,
like a decent Christian!"
"His queerness is all on the surface," said Rainham gravely. "You
have to dig pretty deep to find out what he's really worth."
Just then Eve hurried towards them through the trees, looking about
her with an air of hesitation, carrying the train of her pale-gray
brocade dress over one bare, girlish arm.
"Is that you, Mr. McAllister?" she asked, recognising first in the
darkness the gaunt figure and tawny beard of the Scotchman. "Oh, and
Mr. Rainham too! This is really very wrong of you, monopolizing each
other in this way. And don't you know," she added laughingly, "that
this corner is especially dedicated to flirtations? You must really
come and do your duty. Mr. McAllister, won't you take Miss Menzies
in to have some supper? You know her, I think--a compatriot, isn't
she? You will find her close to the tent. And you," she pursued,
turning to Rainham, "you must take some one in, you know. Will you
come this way, please, and I will introduce you to somebody. I am so
sorry I was not at home when you called the other day," she said
conventionally, as they edged their way by degrees towards the
house.
"Yes; I seem to have an unfortunate capacity for missing you
nowadays. At Bordighera, for instance. I have certainly had no luck
at all lately. I haven't even had an opportunity of telling you how
charming I find your house."
"Ah!" said Eve vaguely, her eyes wandering over the people who were
grouped upon the gravel walk and under the veranda outside the
windows of the supper-room, "we really seem to see nothing of you
now. Oh, let me introduce you to Mrs. Gibson--Mrs. Everett P.
Gibson. She's American; you'll find her very amusing."
Rainham followed her obediently, thinking, with a quickly repressed
passion of regret, of the child who would have confided to him her
latest impressions of sorrow, of joy; finding something, which
hardly emanated from himself, which made it seem difficult for him
to gather up the threads of the old, charming intimacy with this new
Eve--this woman, with her pretty, dignified bearing, and
self-possessed, almost cold attitude. The introduction was duly
effected, and for the next half-hour Rainham devoted himself
heroically to the mental and physical entertainment (he was not
obliged to do much talking) of the American lady, who hailed from
the Far West, and lectured him volubly, with an exorbitant accent
and a monotony of delivery, which began to tell on his nerves to an
alarming degree, on her impressions of Europe, and especially
England; the immense superiority of gas as a cooking and heating
agent; the phenomenal attainments of her children; and the
antiquities of Minneapolis.
After supper he found himself listening to the band in the garden
with a sentimental young lady, who made him fully conversant with
her adoration of moonlit nights, waltzing, the latest tenor, and the
scenery of Switzerland.
It was already growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it
struck him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a
certain complaisant indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the
briefest of greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only
a glimpse had been vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the
crowded supper-room. He wandered into the studio, where a little,
intimate party had assembled around an easel, and he was fortunate
enough in a few minutes to find himself invited to take possession
of a vacant seat precisely by Mary's side.
"Oh, you wicked person!" said Mary reproachfully. "Why do you never
come to see us? and where have you been hiding yourself all the
evening?"
Rainham laughed gently.
"I feel rather guilty, I own; but you know there is an execrable
proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have
been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been
longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music
didn't fill me with a passionate desire to dance! And how good it is
to be with a person who doesn't ask you whether you play much
lawn-tennis, or whether you prefer London to the country on the
whole. Ah, Mary! I consider myself a model of self-denial; but I am
rewarded now."
"That's rather pretty for you," answered the girl approvingly; "and
you are forgiven, though you have still to make your peace with Aunt
Marcelle. Tell me what you have been doing, and what you have been
reading...."
The conversation drifted on, now and again becoming general, and
including the rest of the circle, but always recurring and narrowing
into the deeper stream of their old intimacy.
"You are the only really satisfactory people I know," he said
presently--"the only people who know how to enjoy life, so far as it
is to be enjoyed."
"You mustn't give me any credit for it; it's all Aunt Marcelle's
doing. But I don't think I know what you mean exactly. Perhaps we
oughtn't to feel flattered?"
"I mean, you are the only people who understand that happiness
doesn't depend on what one does or doesn't do--that it all depends
on the point of view."
"The way of looking at life generally?" she hazarded.
"Precisely. True philosophy only admits one point of view--from
outside. Aren't we always being told that life is only a play? Well,
we clever people are the spectators, the audience. We look at the
play from a comfortable seat in the stalls; and when the curtain
drops at the end, we go home quietly and--sleep."
Mary looked at him for a moment silently.
"I'm not at all sure that we ought to feel flattered! You consider
that you and I and her ladyship are spectators, then. Isn't it very
selfish?"
"More or less. Of course, it's impossible to do the thing thoroughly
without being absolutely selfish--a hermit, in fact. I sometimes
think I was intended for a hermit."
Mary sighed covertly, though the smile still lingered in her brown
eyes.
"I'm afraid I only take a kind of sideways view of things. I should
like to--to----"
"To go up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly,
"and get a bird's-eye view of life?"
"Exactly; and drift about. Only then one would never get really
interested in anything or anybody. I should want someone else in the
balloon."
"You must take me," said Rainham, still smiling.
Mary looked at him quickly, and then turned away, shivering a
little.
"What nonsense we are talking!" she said suddenly. "And I'm afraid
it isn't even original nonsense. We don't, really, want to be
selfish, and we're not; you needn't pretend you are. And isn't it
getting very, very late? Don't you think Mrs. Lightmark looks as if
we ought to go? I don't mean that she looks inhospitable. But isn't
she rather pale and tired? This sort of thing doesn't seem to suit
her as well as her husband. Yes, I must really go."
When Miss Masters had deserted him, after extracting a promise that
he would take an early opportunity of paying his over-due respects
to her aunt, and had gone with Mrs. Lightmark in search of the old
lady, Rainham made his adieux, leaving Lightmark still radiant, and
protesting hospitably against such early hours; and as he walked
homewards, with a cigar unlighted between his lips, he smiled rather
bitterly, as he thought how little he was able to adhere to the
tenets of his philosophy. Why else should he regret so much and so
often the act which had been rung down when ... And how many more
acts and scenes were there to be?
"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One
isn't obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep
their seats until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early
disturbs the other spectators."
While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to
her years and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a
square, wainscoted little room, hung with pale grass matting, and
decorated brightly with quaint Breton faïence and old brass sconces.
"I was so glad to see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while
Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were
afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for
him!"
"Almost as bad as too much society."
"Yes; it's only another form of dissipation."
"I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other
people's society than too much of one's own."
"I don't think I ever regarded him from a--a society point of view.
You know what I mean--like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I
was a child I always thought of him as a sort of fairy godmother--a
person who was always dropping from the clouds to take one for
drives in the country, or with a box for the pantomime."
Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her
curiously for a moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness
or disdain in the clear voice and the pretty, childish face.
"Philip was always like that, the kindest---- He has always been
quite a hero for me--a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off
rather suddenly, finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly.
"Isn't it curious that we should both have known him so long without
knowing each other?"
"I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't
think Philip talks about his friends very much...."
Lady Garnett interrupted the _tête-à-tête_ conversation at this point,
and when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late
guests had left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few
minutes in the deserted drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty
chairs, meditating, with her chin resting on one hand, and her eyes
absently contemplating the scattered petals of a copper-coloured
rose, which had fallen from some dress or bouquet upon one of the
Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet floor.
"Dick," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against
the rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it
ever strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?"
Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window
wonderingly, almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh.
"Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely.
"I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display
of mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?"
"Not much. I was only thinking.... What a pity Charles wasn't here
to-night!"
"Oh, you little enigma! Is it that dear Charles who is to be pitied,
or who? We, for instance?"
But Eve assumed a superior air, and Lightmark, who hated riddles,
dismissed the subject and the end of his cigarette simultaneously.