THE
FRANTIC MASTER
BY
DOUGLAS PULLEYNE
AUTHOR OF "SPRING SORREL"
"And in particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once
asked in my presence, 'How do you feel about love, Sophocles? Are
you still capable of it?' To which he replied, 'Hush, if you please;
to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had
escaped from a frantic and savage master.'"
_The Republic of Plato._
CHAPMAN
AND HALL LD.
LONDON : MCMXXVII
_AUTHOR'S NOTE_
_The incident, in essentials true, of the soldiers in the railway
carriage, overheard by "Cyprian," is the seed from which this book
grew. To explain his attitude, it is, therefore, included with
acknowledgments to that Editor of the_ "PIONEER" _who first recorded
it for me. "Shoan and the Mermaid" is also true, as an example of a
tale told to the Nicobarese by a traveller, and retold by them, and
may be found in Sir Richard Temple's Census Report, preserved to the
best of my belief in the Offices of the Chief Commissioner in the
Andamans._
_I make no apologies to my old friends, Scarecrow, Friend-of-England
and others for describing them under their own names, feeling sure
that they would expect no evil magic to come of it. To the workers
of the Mission at Car Nicobar, one of whom it is well-known spent
twelve years in the islands translating the Prayer Book into
Nicobarese, I would say that little Jellybrand is only the portrait
of a type I have met--of which is the Kingdom of Heaven, and which
neither looks for nor will find recognition on earth for much simple
heroism._
_A somewhat delightful brother of mine may be inclined to suspect a
portrait in "Peter." Let me assure him that I have known many
Peters._
_Printed in Great Britain
by Burleigh Ltd., at_ THE BURLEIGH PRESS, _Bristol_
WRITTEN FOR
A SOLDIER, A DOCTOR
AND
A SCIENTIST
YOU THREE,
This fulfilled promise, possibly, by now, nearly forgotten by you,
will find the four of us in different countries, or even different
continents; but find you it will, to recall to your minds a memory of
five long weeks, during which we formed a perfect square; when, alike
under the Colombo palms or the hot rocks of Aden, among the lights of
Port Said or in the shadow of Gibraltar, the discussion, ever and
again, would veer round to that which the fool hath said in his heart.
People on this earth evolve and alter; it is to you, as I knew you
then, that this is addressed. Try to put back the clock and think as
you thought then.
I have still in your neat hand-writing, "C"--I wonder whether your
prescriptions are as clear to read?--the account of your conversion
to that Spiritualistic Theosophy which used to make "L.B." impatient.
I inserted the page in the first book I wrote for you all, but which,
to the agent's surprise, I suddenly withdrew, doubting lest I was
still too near the Three of you and those endless conversations to
have made my characters impersonal enough and, also, doubting the
fairness of putting into cold print anything which had been given me
in the special circumstances of our friendship.
So Cyprian and Ferlie come late on the scene to show you by their
problem much that I have left unsaid (even to you, "L.B.") during the
star-spangled nights in tropical waters and, afterwards, in the grey
streets of Westminster and those greyer and darker streets elsewhere,
down which the Other Half live and the Men in Black go to and fro.
Let me say now, since it was hardly permitted for me to tell you
then, that what you did was one of the bravest things I have ever
known a man do. This, in case you have, in retrospection, doubted
and regretted the impulse as abnormal or unbalanced.
Some travellers across my horizon last winter recognized your
photograph, and I gathered from them that you are now on the way to
be reckoned among the Senior and the Great.
To you, "C," I have always wished to confess, in acknowledgment of
your wisdom as physician and psychologist, that your warning nearly
came true and, two years ago, I thought a great deal about it, and
you, in hospital.
And of you, "L.L.": I have often wondered whether you found your
Golden Girl according to Le Gallienne? Well, I owe much to the
passing of our ships: hence this dedication.
I have only the one wish for you all Three, but particularly will
"L.B." understand it: it is, that to the end of the voyage you may be
able to trust the Pilot you have chosen.
Under a signature only part familiar to you,
Yours,
H. E. DOUGLAS-PULLEYNE
THE FRANTIC MASTER
CHAPTER I
When a man has been turned down by the Only Girl (although she isn't,
and never was) and, subsequently, finds her present in the same batch
of dinner-guests as himself, it is hardly to be expected that he will
prove the life and soul of the party.
But, thought Mrs. Carmichael, vexed with herself for a blundering
hostess who ought to have known, and still more vexed with Cyprian
Sterne for not having waited until after the 17th to try his luck
with Muriel, there was no need for him to gloom at his soup as if he
were gauging its depths for a suicidal dive and there was no need for
him to have waved aside the champagne. Champagne was clearly
indicated on the occasion, medicinally, if not (as she felt inclined
to insist, herself, despite appearances) in felicitation.
Cyprian always showed himself so ridiculously sensitive. And Muriel
looked so ... adamant. Yes, that was the word; hard and bright like
a crystal prism you could not see through clearly, however often the
attractive suggestion of buried rainbows within might tempt you to
hold it close to your eyes. With the closeness even the rainbows
became blurred.
"An incarnation of the three B's which constitute the Perfect Woman,"
said her men-admirers.
Brain, Beauty and Breeding. All by heredity. No wonder she behaved
as if she had the right to wealth also, of a standard not to be
extracted from the scholarly pockets of Cyprian and his like.
Had he a like? Mrs. Carmichael doubted. She wondered what mislaid
edition of Persian verse or Grecian ethics was, even now, spoiling
the symmetry of his evening coat. A little bowed, the shoulders,
even when he stood upright. The scrutiny of the very blue eyes a
little fixed when he addressed you with that air of seeing behind
things which betrays the short-sighted. Interesting, the long dreamy
face, but hardly handsome. And his acknowledged cleverness did not
flash in your face like Muriel's, so that, waiving her awareness of
his Double Firsts at Oxford and all that, she had been heard to tick
him off as "a dry old stick." Encouraging his transparent admiration
the while. Minx!
One had wished he would hurry up and propose and get the inevitable
yearnings for a premature grave over and then forget. And now he had
completed the first item on that programme--most inconsiderately
before the 17th--and the yearnings were upon him and he was ruining
his end of the dinner-party.
Muriel sat opposite him and it was comprehensible that he should not
want to look at her and, therefore, incomprehensible why he insisted
on trying to.
As usual, she was worth looking at. Those very fair women,
particularly when dressed in soft watery greens, recalled old legends
of sirens who floated gold hair about their insinuating bodies,
luring mankind by music and provocative laughter to its destruction
despite the warning, eternally present, of white bones on the sand.
A pity that Cyprian's mental vision was as myopic as his physical
when it came to those bones.
Mrs. Carmichael could see them quite clearly herself: here, the skull
of Major Ames (a nice little man, and of course, that hunting tragedy
_had_ proved an accident, although at the time They said...) there,
the femur, rather nobbly, of Maurice Waring who had parted, not
exactly with his life, to be sure, but certainly with his wife since
sighting the siren's shining head. But those two had never got on
anyhow, and if, eventually, he managed the divorce ... how much more
nearly would he and Muriel prove birds of a feather than she and poor
Cyprian with his good old-fashioned conviction that this modern
laxity in matrimonial matters was a national menace. Refreshing, to
find a man like Cyprian, even though as he was not safely religious
one was inclined to wonder, when it came to personal influence, would
Muriel...? Mrs. Carmichael's subconscious musings (for consciously
she was smiling eager attention to ex-Colonel Maddock's--he was now,
by virtue of a dead American wife, by way of being a millionaire,
which is far better--account of his last yachting cruise, and praying
Providence for the strength and the strategy to resist suggestions
that she and Robin should join him next time) were shattered by the
despairing howl of what sounded like a soul in torment. Only, it
emanated from regions too nearly at the top of the house to be
described as "nether."
"It's that child again," remarked Robin accusingly down the long
table, interrupted in an intense discussion with Miss Mabel Clement,
the playwright: "I have always said we would suffer for it if you
were so weak with her in the beginning."
"To any child born in the East, English nursery-life is impossibly
terrifying," and Mrs. Carmichael apologetically sought the support of
her guests. "Since Peter went to school she has had to sleep alone.
It's all very well for Robin to call me weak but I can't believe it
is good for a child's nerves to..."
Another wail crescendoed to the uttermost heights of horror and died
away.
"That noise does not improve mine," Robin Carmichael answered dryly:
"What is the nurse thinking of?"
"It's her evening out."
And, inwardly, his wife sighed for their return to Burma where
servants did not have evenings out, and ... and people were too
enslaved to official etiquette to show their feelings at
dinner-parties.
A chair grated harshly back, rumpling the rug on the polished parquet
floor.
"Let me go up to her for a moment," said Cyprian, "I undertook to
visit the nursery when I arrived but was told she had gone to sleep."
Well, if it would take his mind off himself and his stricken face
from the vicinity of the Hon. Mrs. Porter, who was beginning to wear
a worried look. Mrs. Carmichael knew that Robin would say that it
was all wrong, of course, in the morning, but she could hardly let
Ferlie howl throughout dinner and, if the parlour-maid went up, Rose
would have to hand round the fish single-handed and she was under
notice to go, and therefore, under no obligation to behave. In Burma
there had always been someone to sit with Ferlie if she woke.
"Tell her to go to sleep at once then," and Ferlie's mother favoured
Cyprian with an indulgent smile. His fondness for the child was
really too quaint. In the circumstances, pathetic.
The incident might well arouse Muriel's better nature ... but no, not
quite.
It would, in all likelihood, encourage her worse one, since she was
no character in a book written with a mission behind it. Already her
clear eyes were glinting humorously and something she remarked to
Captain Wright, in an undertone, had just made that young gentleman,
who never at any time required much encouragement to giggle, choke
violently into his napkin. Why couldn't Cyprian realize that he
didn't in the least want Muriel, but a Womanly Woman of Yesterday?
* * * * * *
Meanwhile, Cyprian, incapable of perceiving his desire for any woman,
save one who was the figment of his own imagination, clothed in a
blurred semblance to Muriel Vane, mounted the stairs to an airy room
with a sloping roof which lent queer profundities to the dancing
shadows born of Ferlie's night-light. Found Ferlie sitting up among
the pillows with the sheet over her head and the fear of the devil in
her soul. Ferlie, at seven, was afraid of darkness, being
accidentally buried alive, and wolves. Not lions and tigers: only
wolves. This, since she had never seen a wolf; though tigers,
looking loose and heavy, had been marched across her horizon more
than once by excitedly shouting coolies, when everyone was in holiday
camp and Mr. Carmichael had been out shooting. They inspired
sympathy rather than respect in that condition, and lions, naturally,
slipped into the same category of beasts one's father could, if he so
desired, bring home on poles and transform into carpets for the
bungalow. Wolves were different. She had a book concerning their
activities in a land called Siberia. They chased people there for
miles and miles over stuff like ground-rice pudding, commonly known
as "snow," and even ate the sleigh. England, in which she now found
herself, might very easily resemble Siberia in this particular: it
was cold also, and snow came with cold. The birth of the
being-buried-alive fear dated from a conversation overheard between
her parents anent the accuracy of the Bible with regard to the
reappearance from the grave of one, Lazarus.
Her father was a thoughtful sceptic, but Ferlie did not find him out
for many years. Her mother's views were founded on the Book of
Common Prayer and the story, "There, but for the Grace of God ..."
though she was divided in her mind whether Bunyan had invented the
one and Gladstone said the other, or vice versa. Her own father, a
bishop, and a busy one, had rather taken her catechism for granted
when he confirmed her, on the assumption that a daughter educated in
a godly ecclesiastical household and never exposed to the youthful
heresies of a boarding-school must necessarily be in a perpetual
state of knowledgeable grace. And he had passed on his gaiters as a
matter of course before retiring to her elder brother.
Her husband explained away miracles by Euclidean methods which struck
terror to her orthodox heart.
"A possible and recorded case of suspended animation," had been his
verdict on Lazarus. "Occurs every day. Read _Hudson's Psychic
Phenomena_." Mrs. Carmichael had no intention of doing any such
thing.
"There are countless instances of people being buried alive,"
continued Mr. Carmichael. And, after racking his brains for two,
cited them in clear convincing tones. Ferlie had scooped the last
grains of melting sugar out of an empty cocoa-cup and thoughtfully
left the room. Mrs. Carmichael vaguely hoped that God was not
listening to the conversation and then forgot all about it. So did
Robin. Ferlie remembered. Always at night in this England, deprived
of her patiently crooning Burmese nurse, she remembered. The wigwam
of sheets and blankets was to shut out Fear.
She knew the footsteps on the stairs which were coming to the rescue
now; though he was not, in his customary accomplished fashion, taking
two steps at a time.
"Is that you, Cyprian?"
"Yes, old lady."
"I thought it might be Satan."
"Why Satan?"
She came out of her fastness with a shudder.
"They call him the Prince of Darkness, you know. This is the
witching hour when I think he probberly might..."
"Might what?" Vainly he tried to sort the tumbled bed-clothes. Her
Viyella night-dress was dripping wet.
"Might take an' bury me in the Tomb," said Ferlie in a hoarse
whisper. Cyprian tried to make his laugh aggressively reassuring.
"Who on earth suggested such nonsense to you?"
"It can't be nonsense if it's in the Bible. An' in a book by a man
named Hudson. He makes the kitchen soap 'cos Cook told me so when I
asked. He must be clever for every person to buy his soap. An' he
buried Lazarus."
It was beyond Cyprian's power to disentangle her from this web. The
servants must have been frightening the child. It was common
knowledge that the best of nurses were often grossly imaginative.
He stroked the russet mop of fluff resting against his shoulder and
resorted to practical conversation. Except that it concerned her own
private affairs and was therefore connected with Teddy-bears, the
duck-pond in the park, the little-girl-next-door, and other important
personages of summers six to ten, it was conducted as gravely as
though they were of an age.
Cyprian did not really understand anything about talking down to a
child's level and that was why Ferlie loved him. She detected the
simple sincerity behind his sometimes complicated language and when
he used words beyond her ken it was seldom she failed to grasp the
drift.
Neither the child nor the man realized that each being sensitive to a
fault, they affected one another atmospherically and their true
conversation existed in emotions experienced side by side rather than
in sentences interchanged. Thus, to-night, her quick intuition
arrived at the cause of that veiled look in his eyes.
"Are you going to be married to that Vane girl?" she enquired,
betraying instantaneously to Cyprian that there were those who
disapproved of his matrimonial projects.
He answered, "No," quietly, after an instant's pause.
"Why not?" asked Ferlie suspiciously. "Nurse says she's a hussy."
"No one should have said such a thing to you."
"It wasn't to me: it was to Rose. Rose used to live in her house,
an'..."
"It doesn't matter what either Rose or Nurse says," said Cyprian.
"But who told you about my marrying anyone, Ferlie?"
"I think that was just in my head," struggling to remember where the
impression had first indented itself upon her responsive brain. "Why
aren't you...?"
He saw there was no help for it and replied patiently, "She does not
want to marry me; that's all."
"Then she's a dam fool," said Ferlie with complete conviction. He
was genuinely shocked.
"You must never say that of anyone, dear, even if you don't like
them."
"Dad says it of mostly all peoples, whether he likes them or not."
"That's different."
"How?"
"He's grown-up."
"How can grown-ups...?"
"And he's a man," Cyprian went on, desperately aware that he was not
doing very well. "Ladies don't use such words."
Then Ferlie played her trump card. "Miss Vane does," she said coldly.
Cyprian preserved a masterly silence. Good gracious! she was modern
enough, of course. Muriel! There was music in her name ... and in
her throat when she sang ... and in the delicate hands moving over
the keys of the grand piano downstairs; for she always played to them
after dinner in the evenings. She had the whitest throat he had ever
seen and the most beautiful hands.
"_Why_ do people always want to marry other people?" insisted his
companion, alive to mysteries unsolved and femininely peevish in
consequence. Cyprian considered this himself before attempting to
clear it up.
"I suppose they grow lonely living just for themselves," he said at
last.
"I don't believe that there girl would make loneliness feel better,"
declared Ferlie.
"You don't understand, dear." She cuddled his sleeve, ecstatically
sympathetic with that which she _did_ understand, his tone of voice.
"Are you so sorry you can't get married, Cyprian? Why not make Miss
Cartwright marry you astead? She'd do it, I daresay, 'f I begged her
for _my_ sake. She says she'd do most things for me, only not run
upstairs backwards at her timerlife. An' she cooks lovely choclick
fudge. Miss Vane can't, I'm sure. You ask her."
"I think you are probably right about that."
"Then we've settled it," much relieved. "I wouldn't go marrying
anyone myself 'less they had a hand for fudge. I'll tell Miss
Cartwright to-morrow that you want to get married to her this
directly immejantly, an' I was to ask her not to say 'No' like Miss
Vane."
"Good God!" exclaimed Cyprian rousing himself. "I beg your pardon--I
mean--you must never say that, Ferlie. But neither must you say
anything to Miss Cartwright. Promise! It's just--you see, this must
be a dead secret between you and me, about Miss Vane and all." Happy
thought! He might trust Ferlie to the stake with their numerous
unique secrets.
"But, Cyprian, why..."
"Dear, my dear," said the man, speaking more to the beauty of her
upturned face than to the child, "when you want to marry it is only
the one person who counts. The one person with all her faults and
weaknesses--because those, too, are part of her. Chocolate fudge
(and there are more kinds of that than you know) doesn't come into it
with the averagely decent man. You just love the person or you
don't. You will understand all about it some day, when you are
older."
The comforting arms which stole round his neck might have understood
all about it now.
"Do you really love that Miss Vane?"
"Heaven help me, I do!"
"Can't you stop if you want to?"
"Apparently not; but one doesn't want to. That's the ridiculous part
... the thing grips you, like invisible iron hands, to drag you along
a road of withered flowers, forcing you to breathe the rot of that
Dead Sea fruit which fills the air with the bitter fumes of jealousy
and passion.... Fruit?"
"Cyprian, didn't you not bring me up a cryssalized apricot?"
He nearly chuckled as he stumbled back along his "withered paths" to
Reality.
"Sorry, Little Thing. I forgot. You shall have a whole box
to-morrow."
"I shan't get a moment's peace to eat them unless we have it as a
secret," she suggested wheedlingly.
"Oh!" he cried, delightedly hugging her, "You'll be a woman so much
too soon."
"Mother says..." she began dreamily, and that reminded him.
"She said I was to tell you to go to sleep at once."
"Such a silly sort of thing to say to a child!" said Ferlie, palpably
quoting, "Sleep is like that marrying feeling of yours: it can't be
made to go or stop ... Cyprian..."
"Well!"
"You did a wriggle. You aren't goin' away."
"Not if you'll shut your eyes," he undertook feebly. "But, you know,
there is really nothing to be afraid of, Ferlie, whether I am here or
not."
She knew better. "And that's another thing you can't let go nor
stop, neither," she told him.
Considering it, with her head growing heavier every moment against
his shoulder, Cyprian came to the conclusion that she was right. The
darkness deepened about them as someone shut the door between hall
and stairs.
"Cyprian."
"Dear."
"Whoever you get married to, you will always like me best, won't you?"
"Why, of course," said Cyprian. "Of course..."
Her breathing became contentedly regular.
* * * * * *
Downstairs, Muriel Vane had been very clever at his expense.
More like a siren than ever, perched behind the looming rock of the
grand piano, a few gleaming threads of escaping hair picked out
against the background of polished wood, while, every now and again,
her fingers rippled the accompanying chords of some haunting French
song.
She usually sang in French.
"To shock folk in legitimate ignorance," she informed Captain Wright,
leaning over her with every symptom of shortly shedding his bones in
the vicinity.
"Dear Muriel!" placidly reproved Mrs. Carmichael. She did not
understand sung French, or for that matter, any but the brand which,
by dint of firm repetition, brings you your hot water and "Du
thé--pas chocolat. Pas!" in Parisian hotels at eight a.m.
Muriel's sort of French was of little use to anyone but foreigners,
and there were so seldom foreigners present.
"Sing 'Sanson et Dalila'," begged the Hon. Mrs. Porter, feeling surer
of her ground when dealing with passion in opera, where, however
unbridled, it remained respectably unconvincing to the mind of the
British matron.
"I was saving that till Cyprian Sterne had finished rocking the
cradle upstairs," said Muriel. "It happens, quite unsuitably, to be
his favourite song, and the hand that rocks the cradle rules the
girls--in that its action suggests a future peacefully free from that
domestic duty for them."
"I have sent up two messages," Mrs. Carmichael anticipated her
husband plaintively, "but he replied that he was not feeling very
well to-night and would join us after dinner."
"I have repeatedly said----" began Mr. Carmichael, but was firmly
interrupted: "I know you have, dear, but if half an hour with Ferlie
amuses him, I think it would be better to leave him alone to-night."
She looked across, meaningly, at Muriel and closed her lips. Tact
was a thing nobody seemed able to acquire who had not been born with
it.
Muriel made a little grimace and burst suddenly into a very simple
melody:
"J'ai pris un bluet Fluet
Enclos parmi l'herbe
Et quelqu'un m'a dit; Mon Dieu!
Il n'est pas de bleu plus bleu
Que ce bleu superbe.
Moi, qui sais ce que je sais--
J'ai souri sans lui rien dire
Car à tes yeux je pensais--
Sans rien dire, sans rien dire."
The notes quickened with heartless mirth, and the pure voice rang out
again:
"Au rosiers fleuris j'ai pris."
Mrs. Carmichael, ruminating that the piano, at any rate, kept Muriel
out of mischief, here clutched thankfully, decided that the song
concerned roses, and framed an intelligent appreciation, on that
hypothesis, against its finish.
Cyprian walked into the room as the last verse, reckless with desire,
was sweetening the air:
"J'ai pris un pavé, trouvé
Au fond de cratère
Et quelqu'un m'a dit, Mon Dieu!
Plus dur pavé ne se peut
Trouver dans la terre.
Moi, qui sais ce que je sais--
J'ai pleuré sans lui rien dire,
Car à ton c[oe]ur je pensais--
Sans rien dire... Sans rien dire...."
"I always like songs about flowers, don't you?" queried their hostess
of the world.
And "Here you are at last," her husband remarked to Cyprian before
Muriel's curving lips could make the most of that joke; "you really
should not spoil Ferlie."
"She is such a highly-strung child," the Hon. Mrs. Porter volunteered
languidly, waving a gold-tipped ostrich feather, though, had she
stopped to consider the matter, she would have discovered that she
was cold in her chair near the door.
"Never yet," said Colonel Maddock, who adopted the criticizing
privileges of an unofficial uncle in the house, "have I met the
fortunate mother whose children were not exceptionally highly-strung.
What does the term mean exactly?"
"That they need a disciplined existence," said Mr. Carmichael. "All
these modern methods of making things easy for children are wrong.
Life is not easy. They must be fitted to overcome difficulties."
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control!" mocked Muriel, with
accusing eyes on Captain Wright who was trying to press her hand
behind the music-stand. "I cannot bear a man, particularly, without
self-control; and the child is father to the man--in Ferlie's case."
Cyprian dejectedly decided that he had let himself go, rather, at the
scene of the proposal. She had looked so infinitely desirable.
"Ferlie was frightened," he said, rather lamely. "I think, perhaps,
the servants----"
"There!" cried Mrs. Carmichael. "What did you tell Robin about
English servants?"
"You should discipline her out of being frightened," declared Muriel.
"Why make it easy for a child to go to sleep with night-lights and
such nonsense? Think of all the insomnia she will have to battle
against in future years. Let her learn to overcome----"
Mr. Carmichael was looking so stiff that his wife intervened.
"Dear Muriel! You do talk such nonsense. Robin did not mean that."
"No?" Muriel turned limpid eyes on Cyprian. "And what line did you
take with her?"
"We talked a little," he said, blinking quickly at the carpet, "and
presently she fell asleep. I must thank her for affording me the
excuse to get rid of a slight headache."
"I thought you were not yourself at dinner," said Mrs. Porter
forgivingly. "You are fond of children?"
"No," said Cyprian, somewhat bluntly. He was not fond of children.
"Really! Ferlie is so devoted to you."
"She is about the first child I have ever addressed, and will
probably be the last."
"If she were a normal specimen, the first time you addressed her
_would_ have been the last," said Muriel, "I have heard you doing it.
I am glad when you are with me you talk down to my level, Cyprian. I
have not Ferlie's pristine trust in dictionarial expressions. I
should imagine that you were swearing at me half the time."
"I think he talks very good English," said Mrs. Carmichael kindly.
"We none of us speak enough like books these days."
Mabel Clement who, during the greater part of the evening had been
scrutinizing Muriel and Captain Wright with a view to working them
into her new satire, "The Man-Eater," came out of a frowning
wilderness of thought, wherein the others had completely forgotten
her, to say that the ideal language, as yet unborn, should consist
merely of a riot of sound, expressing the emotion it was required to
convey.
"Our spelling is execrable, our grammar clumsy, and the elegant
diction of the one-time popular novelist of the Jane Austen calibre
was affected in the extreme. Life is too short for these chains of
superfluous sentences, and far too short for us to master all the
tongues of Babel before we can test the mentality of other nations.
It should be possible to invent a tongue, common to all, conveying to
the brain, by sound, what it is desired to express."
"Let's begin to invent it now," Muriel suggested rapturously:
"Colonel Maddock! Whu-u! Why! Whu-u-u! Isn't my meaning perfectly
clear?" She tilted her flower-face up to his, drawing in her breath
in a series of staccato jerks.
The Colonel grinned down amiably as he inhaled the fragrance of a
delicate hair-wash.
"I know!" Captain Wright bawled triumphantly from his corner: "she
wants a drink!"
In the storm of merriment which followed, Mabel Clement smiling
resignedly, retired again into the fastness of her soul, while
Cyprian crossed the room to a tray containing, Eastern fashion,
several long bottles and a syphon.
While the party were breaking up in a fizzling glitter of glasses,
Mrs. Carmichael drew close and gently touched his sleeve. Then and
there the memories were blotted out of occasions when he had wondered
how a clever man like Carmichael stood her! Madonna-sweet, her smile
at that moment.
"Wait a bit after the others leave," she said in an undertone; "Robin
and I have been wondering about your plans. And I want to consult
you over Ferlie's school."
The note on which the last word was spoken broke in two. When she
and her husband returned to Burma they would be minus encumbrances.
Subtly conveying her own need of a little sympathy in the only idiom
she knew, Mrs. Carmichael remained unaware that in so doing she
represented to Cyprian the beauty of the Essentially Feminine.
She kissed Muriel "Good night," reflecting cattily how boring women's
kisses must seem to her after ... and staved off the Colonel's last
broad approach to the forthcoming pleasure-cruise in the yacht.
"Good night, Mrs. Porter."
"Good night, dear. Such a pleasant... Yes, thank you, that is my
vanity bag, though at my time of life you may well be wondering ...
and Muriel with a Vinolia complexion has no business to own such a
thing."
"Robin, will you... Ah! Here is the parlour-maid...."
A low-murmured plea from Captain Wright, whose arms encircled
Muriel's cloak.... The diamond glitter of answering eyes....
Good night.... Good-night.