Lady Halifax and her daughter had met Miss Bell several
times at the Cardiffs', in a casual way, before it occurred
to either of them to take any sort of advantage of the
acquaintance. The younger lady had a shivering and
frightened delight in occasionally wading ankle-deep in
unconventionality, but she had-lively recollections, in
connection with the Cardiffs, of having been very nearly
taken off her feet. They had since decided that it was
more discreet to ignore Janet's enthusiasms, which were
sometimes quite impossible in their verdict, and always
improbable. The literary ladies and gentlemen whom the
ghost of the departed Sir William brought more or less
unwillingly to Lady Halifax's drawing-rooms were all of
unexceptionable _cachet_; the Halifaxes were constantly
seeing paragraphs about them in the "Literary Gossip"
department of the _Athenian_, mentioning their state of
health, their retirement from scientific appointments,
or the fact that their most recent work of fiction had
reached its fourth edition. Lady Halifax always read the
_Athenian_, even the publishers' announcements; she liked
to keep "in touch," she said, with the literary activities
of the day, and it gave her a special gratification to
notice the prosperity of her writing friends indicated
in tall figures. Miss Halifax read it too, but she liked
the "Art Notes" best; it was a matter of complaint with
her that the house was not more open to artists--new,
original artists like John Kendal. In answer to this
Lady Halifax had a habit of stating that she did not see
what more they could possibly want than the president of
the Royal Academy and the one or two others that came
already. As for John Kendal, he was certainly new and
original, but he was respectable notwithstanding; they
could be certain that he was not putting his originality
on--with a hearth-brush, for the sake of advertisement.
Lady Halifax was not so sure of Elfrida's originality,
of which she had been given a glimpse or two at first,
and which the girl's intimacy with the Cardiffs would
have presupposed in any case. But presently, and somewhat
to Lady Halifax's perplexity, Miss Bell's originality
disappeared. It seemed to melt into the azure of perfect
good-breeding, flecked by little clouds of gay sayings
and politenesses, whenever chance brought her under Lady
Halifax's observation. A not unreasonable solution of
the problem might have been found in Elfrida's instinctive
objection to casting her pearls where they are proverbially
unappreciated, and the necessity in her nature of pleasing
herself by one form of agreeable behavior if not by
another. Lady Halifax, however, ascribed it to the
improving influence of insular institutions, and finally
concluded that it ought to be followed up.
Elfrida wore amber and white the evening on which Lady
Halifax followed it up--a Parisian modification of a
design carried, out originally by the Sparta dressmaker,
with a degree of hysteria, under Miss Bell's direction.
She wore it with a touch of unusual color in her cheeks
and, an added light in her dark eyes that gave a winsomeness
to her beauty which it had not always. A cunningly bound
spray of yellow-stamened lilies followed the curving line
of her low-necked dress, ending in a cluster in her bosom;
the glossy little leaves of the smilax the florist had
wreathed in with them stood sharply against the whiteness
of her neck. Her hair was massed at the back of her head
simply and girlishly enough, and its fluffiness about
her forehead made a sweet shadow above her eyes. She had
a little fever of expectation, Janet had talked so much
about this reception. Janet had told her that the real
thing, the real English literary thing in numberless
volumes, would be on view at Lady Halifax's. Miss Cardiff
had mentioned this in their discussion of the Arcadia
Club, at which institution she had scoffed so unbearably
that Elfrida, while she cherished the memory of Georgiadi,
had not mentioned it since. Perhaps, after all, she
reflected, Janet was just a trifle blind where people
were not hall-marked. It did not occur to her to consider
how far she herself illustrated this theory.
But as she went down Mrs. Jordan's narrow flights of
stairs covered with worn oil-cloth, she kissed her own
soft arm for pure pleasure.
"You are ravishing to-night," she told herself.
Golightly Ticke's door was open, and he was standing in
it, picturesquely smoking a cigarette with the candle
burning behind him--"Just to see you pass," he said.
Elfrida paused and threw back her cloak. "How is it?"
she asked, posing for him with its folds gathered in
either hand.
Ticke scanned her with leisurely appreciation. "It is
exquisite," he articulated.
Elfrida gave him a look that might have intoxicated nerves
less accustomed to dramatic effects.
"Then whistle me a cab," she said.
Mr. Ticke whistled her a cab and put her into it. There
was the least pressure of his long fingers as he took
her hand, and Elfrida forbade herself to resent it. She
felt her own beauty so much that night that she could
not complain of an enthusiasm for it in such a _belle
ame_ as Golightly.
They went up to tie drawing-room together, if Elfrida
and the Cardiffs, and Lady Halifax immediately introduced
to Miss Bell a hollow-cheeked gentleman with a long gray
beard and bushy eyebrows as a fellow-countryman. "You
can compare your impressions of Hyde Park and St. Paul's,"
said Lady Halifax, "but _don't_ call us 'Britishers.' It
really isn't pretty of you."
Elfrida discovered that the bearded gentleman was principal
of a college in Florida, and corresponded regularly at
one time with the late Sir William. "It is to that," said
he ornately, "that I owe the honor of joining this
brilliant company to-night." He went on to state that he
was over there principally on account of his health--acute
dyspepsia he had, it seemed he'd got out of running order
generally, regularly off the track. "But I've just about
concluded," he continued, with a pathetic twinkle under
his bushy brows, "that I might have a worse reason for
going back. What do you think of the meals in Victoria's
country, Miss Bell? It seems to me sometimes that I'd
give the whole British Museum for a piece of Johnny-cake."
Elfrida reflected that this was not precisely what she
expected to experience, and presently the hollow-cheeked
Floridian was again at Lady Halifax's elbow for disposal,
while the young lady whose appearance and nationality
had given him so much room for hope smilingly drifted
away from him. The Cardiffs were talking to a rosy and
smooth-faced round-waistcoated gentleman just returned
from Siberia about the unfortunate combination of accidents
by which he lost the mail-train twice in three days, and
Janet had just shaken hands with a short and
cheerful-looking lady astrologist.
"Behind that large person in the heliotrope brocade--she's
the wife of the _Daily Mercury_--there's a small sofa,"
Janet said in an undertone. "I don't think she'll, occupy
it, the-brocade looks so much, better standing--no, there
she goes! Let us sit down." As they crossed the room
Janet added: "In another minute we should have been shut
up in a Russian prison. Daddy's incarcerated already.
And the man told all he knew about them in the public
prints a month ago." They sat down luxuriously together,
and made ready, in their palm-shaded corner, to wreak
the whole of their irresponsible youth upon Lady Halifax's
often venerable and always considerable guests. The warm
atmosphere of the room had the perceptible charge of
personalities. People in almost every part of it were
trying to look unconscious as they pointed out other
people.
"Tell me about everybody--everybody," said Elfrida.
"H'm! I don't see anybody, that _is_ anybody, at this
moment. Oh, there's Sir Bradford Barker. Regard him
well, for a brave soul is Sir Bradford, Frida mine."
"A soldier? At this end of the century one can't feel an
enthusiasm for killing."
"Not in the least. A member of Parliament who writes
verses and won't be intimidated by Punch into not publishing
them. And the man he is talking to has just done a history
of the Semitic nations. He took me down to dinner last
night, and we talked in the most intelligent manner about
the various ways of preparing crabs. He liked them in
five styles; I wouldn't subscribe to more than three.
That little man with the orchid that daddy has just seized
is the author of the last of the 'Rulers of India'
series--Sir Somebody Something, K.C.S.I. My unconscionable
humbug of a parent probably wants to get something
approaching a fact out of him. Daddy's writing a thing
for one of the reviews on the elective principle for
India this week. He says he's the only writer on Indian
subjects who isn't disqualified by ever having been there,
and is consequently quite free of prejudice."
"Ah!" said Elfrida, "how _banal!_ I thought you said
there would be something real here--somebody in whose
garment's hem there would be virtue."
"And I suggest the dress-coat of the historian of the
Semitic nations!" Janet laughed. "Well, if nearly all
our poets are dead and our novelists in the colonies, I
can't help it, can I! Here is Mr. Kendal, at all events."
Kendal came up, with his perfect manners, and immediately
it seemed to Elfrida that their little group became
distinct from the rest, more important, more worthy of
observation. Kendal never added anything to the unities
of their conversation when he joined these two; he seemed
rather to break up what they had to say to each other
and attract it to himself. He always gave an accent to
the life and energy of their talk; but he made them both
self-conscious and watchful--seemed to put them, as it
were, upon their guard against one another, in a way
which Janet found vaguely distressing. It was invariably
as if Kendal turned their intercourse into a joust by
his mere presence as spectator; as if--Janet put it
plainly to herself, reddening--they mutely asked him to
bestow the wreath on one of them. She almost made up her
mind to ask Elfrida where their understanding went to
when John Kendal came up, but she had not found it possible
yet. There was an embarrassing chance that Elfrida did
not feel their change of attitude, which would entail
nameless surmises.
"You ought to be at work," Janet said severely to Kendal,
"back at Barbizon or in the fields somewhere. It won't
be always June."
"Ah, would you banish him!" Elfrida exclaimed daintily.
"Surely Hyde Park is rustic enough--in June."
Kendal smiled into her face. "It combines all the charm
of the country," he began.
"And the chic of the town," Elfrida finished for him
gaily. "I know--I've seen the Boot Show."
"Extremely frivolous," Janet commented.
"Ah, now we are condemned!" Elfrida answered, and for an
instant it almost seemed as if it were so.
"Daddy wants you to go and paint straggling gray stone
villages in Scotland now--straggling, climbing gray stone
villages with only a bit of blue at the end of the 'Dead
Wynd' where it turns into the churchyard gate."
"How charming!" Elfrida exclaimed.
"I suppose he has been saturating himself with Barrie,"
Kendal said. "If I could reproduce Barrie on canvas, I'd
go, like a shot. By the way, Miss Bell, there's somebody
you are, interested in--do you see a middle-aged man,
rather bald, thick-set, coming this way?--George Jasper."
"Really!" Elfrida exclaimed, jumping to her feet "Oh,
_thank_ you! The most consummate artist in human nature
that the time has given!" she added, with intensity.
"There can be no question. Oh, I am so happy to have seen
him!"
"I'm not altogether sure," Kendal began, and then he
stopped, looking at Janet in astonished question. Elfrida
had taken half a dozen steps into the middle of the room,
steps so instinct with effect that already as many heads
were turned to look at her. Her eyes were large with
excitement, her cheeks flushed, and she bent her head a
little, almost as if to see nothing that might dissuade
her from her purpose. The author of "The Alien," "A
Moral Catastrophe," "Her Disciple," and a number of other
volumes which cause envy and heart-burnings among
publishers, in the course of his somewhat short-sighted
progress across the room, paused with a confused effort
to remember who this pretty girl might be who wanted to
speak to him.
Elfrida said, "Pardon me!" and Mr. Jasper instantly
perceived that there could be no question of that, with
her face. She was holding out her hand, and he took it
with absolute mystification. Elfrida had turned very
pale, and a dozen people were listening. "Give me the
right to say I have done this!" she said, looking at him
with shy bravery in her beautiful eyes. She half sank on
one knee and lifted the hand that wrote "A Moral
Catastrophe" to her lips.
Mr. Jasper repossessed himself of it rather too hastily
for dignity, and inwardly he expressed his, feelings by
a puzzled oath. Outwardly he looked somewhat ashamed of
having inspired this unknown young lady's enthusiasm,
but he did his confused best, on the spur of the moment,
to carry off the situation as one of the contingencies
'to which the semi-public life of a popular novelist is
always subject.
"Really, you are--much too good. I can't imagine--if
the case had been reversed--"
Mr. Jasper found himself, accustomed as he was to the
exigencies of London drawing-rooms, horribly in want of
words. And in the bow with which he further defined his
discomfort he added to it by dropping the bit of stephanotis
which he wore in his buttonhole.
Elfrida sprang to pick it up. "Oh," she cried, "broken at
the stem; see, you cannot wear it anymore. May I keep it?"
A deadly silence had been widening around them, and now
the daughter of the historian of the Semitic races broke
it by twittering into a laugh behind her fan. Janet met
Kendal's eyes instinctively; he was burning red, and his
manner was eloquent of his helplessness. Angry with
herself for having waited, so long, Janet joined Elfrida
just as the twitter made itself heard, and Mr. Jasper's
face began to stiffen with indignation.
"Ah, Miss Cardiff," he said with relief, "how do you do!
The rooms are rather warm, don't you think?"
"I want to introduce you to my Am--my very great friend,
Miss Bell, Mr. Jasper," Janet said quickly, as the buzz
of conversation began again about them.
Elfrida turned to her reproachfully. "If I had known it
was at all possible that you would do _that_," she said,
"I might have--waited. But I did not know."
People were still looking at them with curious
attentiveness; they were awkwardly solitary. Kendal in
his corner was asking himself how she could have struck
such a false note--and of all people Jasper, whose polished
work held no trace of his personality, whose pleasure it
was to have no public entity whatever. As Jasper moved
off almost immediately, Kendal saw his tacit discomfort
in the set of his shoulders, and so sure was he of
Elfrida's embarrassment that he himself slipped away to
avoid adding to it.
"It was all wrong and ridiculous, and she was mad to do
it," thought Janet as she drove home with her father;
"but why need John Kendal have blushed for her?"