On that same evening, and at the same hour at which Dominic Iglesias
bound himself to the practical assistance of a personally unsavoury and
professionally unsuccessful playwright, a conversation was in progress
between two persons of more exalted social station in the drawing-room
of a pleasant house in Chester Square. The said drawing-room,
mid-Victorian in aspect, was decorated in white and gold and
unaggressive green. The ground of the chintz was very white, sprinkled
over with bunches of shaded mauve roses unknown to horticulture. Lady
Constance Decies' tea-grown was white and mauve also. For she was still
in half-mourning for her father, the late Lord Fallowfeild, who had
died some eighteen months previously at a very venerable age, and with
a touching modesty as though his advent in another world might savour
of intrusion. He had always been a humble-minded man. He remained so to
the last.
The windows stood open to the balcony. And the effect of the woman, and
of the soft lights and colours surrounding her, was reposeful. For at
the age of fifty Lady Constance, though stately, was a mild and very
gentle person upon whom the push of the modern world had laid no hand.
All the active drama of her life had been crowded into a few weeks of
the early summer of her eighteenth year; since which, now remote,
period she had enjoyed a tranquil existence, happy in the love of her
husband and the care of her children. Her pretty brown hair was
beginning to turn grey upon the temples. Her eyes, set remarkably far
apart, had a certain vagueness and a great innocence of expression. She
was naturally timid, and cared but little for any society beyond that
of her near relations. To-night she was particularly content, mildly
radiant even, thanks to the presence of her favourite brother, the
present Lord Fallowfeild, and his avowed admiration of her younger
daughter--a maiden of nineteen, who stood before her, with shining
eyes, in all the delicate splendour of a spotless ball-dress.
"Yes, darling, you look very sweet," she said. "Just lean down--the
lace has got caught in the flowers on your _berthe_. That's right.
Don't keep your father too late."
"And in all things be discreet"--this from Lord Fallowfeild. "It's been
my motto through life, as your mother knows. And you couldn't have a
brighter example of the excellent results of it than myself.
Good-night, my dear. Enjoy yourself," and he patted her on the cheek,
avoiding the kiss which she in all innocence proffered him. "Pretty
child, Kathleen, uncommonly pretty," he continued as the door closed
behind the graceful figure. "It strikes me, Con, your girls have all
the good looks of the family in the younger generation, with the
exception of Violet Aldham. But she's getting pinched, a bit pinched
and witch-like. Then she makes up too much. I have no prejudice against
a woman's improving upon nature where nature's been niggardly. But it
is among the things that'll keep. It's a mistake to begin it too early.
In my opinion Violet has begun it too early--might quite well have
given herself another ten years' grace.--Maggie's girls are gawky, you
know; and, between ourselves, so terribly flat, poor things, both fore
and aft. Upon my word, I'm not surprised they don't marry."
"I am afraid Maggie feels it a good deal," said Lady Constance.
Satisfaction mingled with pity in her soul. The disabilities of other
women's children are never wholly distressing to a tender mother's
heart. "You see, she's so anxious the girls should not marry the
bishop's chaplains; and yet really they hardly see any other young men.
I think it is a very difficult position, that of a bishop's wife."
Lord Fallowfeild smiled, settling himself back in the corner of the
wide sofa and crossing his long legs. He had thought more deeply on a
good many subjects than the majority of his acquaintance supposed; with
the consequence that he occasionally surprised his fellow-peers by the
acuteness of his observations in debate. Lord Fallowfeild, it may be
added, took his recently acquired office of hereditary legislator with
a commendable mixture of humour and seriousness.
"Their position is an anomalous one," he said; "and an anomalous
position is inevitably a difficult one--ought to be SO; in my opinion.
But that's not to the point. We were talking, not about the episcopal
ladies, but about this little business of Kathleen's. So you believe
Lady Sokeington has views and intentions?"
"I know that she has. But you see, Shotover," Lady Constance went on,
returning to the name which that gentleman had rendered somewhat
notorious in earlier years by a record in sport, in debts, in amours,
and in irresistible sweetness of temper--"I want to be quite sure he is
really good. Because the affair has not gone very far yet and it might
be put a stop to--at least I hope and think it might--without making
darling Kathleen too dreadfully unhappy. You do believe he really is
good?"
Lord Fallowfeild leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of
fluff off his left trouser leg just above the ankle.
"My dear Con," he answered, "you are very charming, but you are a
trifle embarrassing, too, you know. Haven't you learned, even at this
time of day, that very few men in our world are good in a good woman's
sense of the word?"
Lady Constance's smooth forehead puckered into fine little lines.
"Shotover, dear," she said, "you're not getting embittered, I hope?"
"Me? Bless you, no, never in life!" he returned, smiling very
reassuringly at her. "Don't worry yourself under that head. I quarrel
with nobody and nothing, not even the consequences of my past
iniquities. It is a very just world, take it all round, and has been
kinder to me than I deserve."
"Oh! but you do nothing, you--you are what--you won't think me rude,
Shotover?--what the boys call 'very decent' now."
Lady Constance spoke hurriedly, her colour rising in the most engaging
manner.
"As decent as I know how, you dear soul," he said, taking her hand in
his. "But that makes no difference to one's knowledge of one's own
ways, in the past, or of the ways of other men."
"But Alaric Barking?"
"Neither better nor worse than the rest."
Then Lord Fallowfeild shut his small and beautiful mouth very tight, as
though he would be glad to avoid further cross-questioning. Lady
Constance's forehead remained puckered.
"It's dreadfully difficult when one's girls grow up," she said
plaintively. "One can be comfortable about them, poor darlings, and
enjoy them when they are in the nursery--even in the schoolroom, though
governesses are worrying. They know so much about quantities of
subjects which seem to me not to matter. One never refers to them in
ordinary conversation; and if one should be obliged to it is so easy to
ask somebody to tell one. And yet they manage to make me feel
dreadfully uncomfortable and ignorant because I know nothing about
them. But when they grow up----"
"Who, the governesses?" Lord Fallowfeild inquired. "I never supposed
they stood in need of that process--thought they started out of the egg
all finished, as you might say, and ran about at once like chickens."
"No, no, the girls, poor darlings," Lady Constance replied. "One does
get dreadfully anxious about them, Shotover, really one does--specially
if one has escaped something very frightening oneself and has been very
happy--lest they should fall in love with the wrong people, or lest
they should be anything which one did not know beforehand and then
everything should turn out dreadful. I should be so miserable. I don't
think I could bear it. I know it is wrong to say that, because if one
was really good, one would accept whatever God sent without murmuring.
So I could for myself, I think. In any case I should earnestly try to.
But for the children it is so much harder. If they were unhappy I
should feel ashamed of having had them--as if I'd done something
horribly selfish; because, you see, there can be nothing so delightful
as having children."
She looked at Lord Fallowfeild in the most pathetic manner, the corners
of her mouth a-shake. And he took her hand and held it again, touched
by the sincerity of her confused utterance, and the great mother-love
resident in her. Touched, perhaps, by the age-old problem of man and
maid, also.
"Dear little Con, dear little Con," he said, "I'm awfully sorry you
should be worried, but I'm afraid we've got to look facts in the face.
And it's no kindness for me to lie to you about these matters. I don't
pretend to say what's right or what's wrong; I only say what it is. We
can't make society, and the ways of it, all over again even to save
Kathleen a heartache. I don't want to seem a brute, but she must just
take her chance along with the rest of you. Marriage always has been a
confounded uncertain business, and will always remain so, I suppose.
The sort of remedies excited persons suggest to mitigate the dangers of
it are a good deal worse than the disease, in my opinion. Every woman
has to take her chance. Every man has to take his, too, you know--and
the chance strikes some of us as such an uncommonly poor one, that,
upon my honour, it seems safest to wash one's hands of it altogether."
"But you're not unhappy, Shotover, dear? You're not lonely?" Lady
Constance inquired anxiously.
"Abominably so sometimes, Con. But I manage, oh! I manage. I have my
consolations"--he smiled at her, perhaps a trifle shamefacedly. "But
now about Kathleen," he went on, "as I say, she must take her chance
along with the rest of you, poor little dear. After all, you took your
chance when you married Decies, and it has not turned out so badly, you
know."
Lady Constance became radiant once more, as some mild-shining summer
moon emerging from behind temporarily obscuring clouds.
"Oh! but then," she said, "of course that was so entirely different."
Lord Fallowfeild patted her hand, his head bent, looking at her
somewhat merrily.
"Was it, my dear, was it?--I wonder," he said.
She withdrew her head with a certain dignity. Notwithstanding her
softness and tenderness, there were occasions--even with those she
loved best--when Lady Constance could delicately mark her displeasure.
"I think you are a little embittered, Shotover," she asserted.
He leaned back, still smiling, and shaking his head at her.
"Old and wise--unpleasantly old, and not quite such a fool as I used to
be, that's all," he answered.
For a time there was silence, both brother and sister thinking their
own thoughts. Then the latter spoke. Like many gentle persons, she was
persistent. She always had been so.
"I should be so grateful if you would tell me, because I think I ought
to know, and then I should try to turn the course of darling Kathleen's
affections before it all becomes too pronounced. Is there any
entanglement, anything amounting to what one calls an impediment,
in--well--you understand--against Alaric Barking?"
Lord Fallowfeild got up, took a turn across the room, came back, and
stood in front of her.
"I wish you wouldn't, Con," he said. "Upon my soul, I wish you
wouldn't. It's a nasty thing for an old man, who has gone the pace in
his day pretty thoroughly, to give away a lad who may have made a slip
just at the start, and who is doing his best to get his feet again and
run straight. Alaric Barking's a good fellow. I like him. I never have
been and never shall be partial to that family. Your sister Louisa
cried up their virtues and their confounded solvency, in the old days,
till she made them a positive nuisance. She's not a happy way of
inculcating a moral economic lesson, hasn't Louisa. But I own I'm fond
of this boy. He's far the best of the whole lot--gentlemanlike, and a
sportsman, and good-looking--unusually so for one of that family--and,
my dear, he's downright honestly in love with Kathleen. I've watched
him--did so when he was down at Ranelagh one day last month with her
and Victoria Sokeington--and I know the real thing when I see it."
"But--but, I am afraid, Shotover, you mean me to understand there is
some impediment?" Lady Constance repeated.
"Oh! well, hang it all, I'm awfully sorry, but if you are determined to
have it, Connie, perhaps there is. Only for heaven's sake don't be in
too much of a hurry. Between ourselves, I happen to know the boy's
doing his best to shake himself free in an honourable manner. So don't
rush the business. Like the dear tender-hearted creature you are, have
a little mercy on the poor beggar. Let the whole affair drift a little.
It may straighten out."
Lady Constance meditated for a minute or so.
"It's very dreadful that there should be any impediment," she said.
"I'll back Alaric to agree with you there," Lord Fallowfeild answered.
"You'll do what you can, Shotover, won't you, to help Kathleen? I never
forget how you helped me once!"
Lord Fallowfeild's handsome face expressed rather broad amusement.
"I'm afraid the two cases are hardly parallel, my dear," he said.