Lady Grote did not consider it part of her duties as a hostess to appear
at breakfast on Sunday morning; indeed, she would have considered it
rather a breach of them to do so. The women of the party had their
breakfasts in their own rooms, and she knew quite enough of men to be
sure that, however sprightly in disposition, they vastly prefer a
smoking-room kind of meal, sitting sideways to the table, not speaking
unless they feel disposed, and with the power of erecting a palisade
round themselves by a propped-up morning paper, to making themselves
agreeable, even to the woman who most engaged their attention the
evening before.
The Frenchman is differently constituted, and at however immature an
hour likes to take up again, as near as possible to the point at which
he left it, his mood of the evening before; but upon the English mind
sleep seems to leave a sort of tarnish which must be scoured off in
silence with fish and sausages before it becomes an agreeable and
polished surface again. Then, after a round of golf or a game of tennis
for those who require “exposure,” like a photograph, before their proper
image reappears, or an hour or so in an armchair in a well-shaded light
for those to whom, like a mushroom, darkness and warmth are necessary
for their morning development, the Saturday-till-Monday Englishman
finds that the burden of life is light again.
But mere avoidance of her guests from notions of politeness did not form
the entire reason of Lady Grote’s self-effacement on Sunday morning. A
whole catechism of telephonic inquiries delivered here and at her house
in London yesterday evening required her attention, and she was busy
with her secretary for an hour over these and over a similar catechism
which she sent forth on her own account.
One evening during the ensuing week she was giving a party at her London
house, at which two Russian dancers would appear, and she must issue
some more invitations for that; on another evening she had a
dinner-party, at which the principal guest was one who was entitled to
inspect the proposed list of those he would meet, and intimate if there
was anyone else he would like to be present. (He had just instructed
that he would like to see an extraordinarily dull couple, who must
accordingly be invited.) That disposed of Tuesday and Thursday evening,
on Wednesday and Friday she was dining out, and on Saturday again she
came down here to entertain. That only left Monday evening, and on that
she was going to the opera to hear Kuhlmann sing Tristan. It was
necessary, she was afraid, to ask two or three people to her box, for
she could scarcely occupy it alone. But that was what she longed to do:
she wanted to be quite by herself, without the distraction of any other
presence, and give herself up to the mood which that wonderful voice,
and that soft-pawed savage personality produced in her....
The evenings then were simple enough, but the rest of the five days was
more complicated, and the things she wanted to do, and the people she
wished to see, had to be fitted into the hours like the closely-joining
fragments of a jig-saw puzzle. She had all the time there was: every
moment of the next week belonged to her, but it was maddening to think
that there were so many under vitalized and uninterested people in the
world, on whose hands time hung heavy, who invented dreary employments
to fill the undesired hours, who were glad (so far as they were capable
of any positive emotion) when the day was over, who went to sleep in
chairs, or read books that did not in the least amuse them merely in
order that the hands of the clock should trace their circles
unyawned-at.
It was a hideously stupid arrangement, that whereas you could buy or
somehow or other obtain, if you were rich and clever, everything else
that made life pleasant, all your cleverness and all the wealth of Midas
could not purchase for you one single second of time, without which
everything else was non-existent! And to think of all those people who
had much more time than they wanted, and had no idea how to use it!
Think also of the armies and battalions of the young who had no
conception of the value of the golden treasure that ran through their
fingers! Poor people, too, how many a poor man would gladly accept, say
a thousand pounds in return for a year! That would come to twenty pounds
a week: she would gladly have taken any amount of weeks at that rate.
Fancy having the chance of living the last twenty-four hours over again
for three pounds and a few shillings! Why the joy just of waking this
morning was worth a hundred times that, but by no expenditure of
millions could she ever get it back again. It had gone down plump into
the dark well, where all dead days and moments lay faintly glimmering,
or black and forgotten.
Certainly it was a waste of that most precious and unpurchasable
commodity to devote a single moment to a regret so unavailing, but she
did not at once pull herself up (while waiting for Miss Armitage to
unravel the complication of engagements that caused the hours of Tuesday
to overlap in so inconvenient a manner), or use the minutes in skating a
little further on the very thin ice of the French short stories that had
been recommended her, or even call in her manicure. Every now and then,
and, so it seemed to her, with increasing frequency during this last
year or two, some shadow fell across the brilliance of the sunshine that
lay on her path. It did not come from any intervening object, any
troublesome circumstance that interposed itself between her and the sun,
it seemed rather as if the sun itself blazed less brightly, making a
dusk even at noonday.
Nor was this failure to be laid to the door of that thief, Time, the
inveterate flower-stealer, for she had still too many flowers in her
garden, and even buds yet undeveloped, to miss the spoils of his
maraudings. Nor again did she fear the approach of old age, for it was
mere waste of energy to spend a thought over the inevitable, or the
final arrival of the grim doorkeeper, who equally certainly would open
the portals that led into whatever lay beyond.
For herself, she had no doubt as to what lay beyond: she was so sure
that when once that door closed behind you there would be nothing any
more, fair or foul, bright or dark, that no speculation on the subject
could have the smallest interest. It would all be over and done with:
out of the dark stream above which in the sunshine the fly danced and
hovered would come a great sucking mouth, and gulp it down. There would
be a ripple on the surface which would in a moment die away, and most
assuredly there would be no fly there in the sunshine. Sometimes the
great fish rose at you, and missed you, and you had another dance, but
sooner or later he swallowed you. Sometimes you were already floating,
water-logged, on the stream, not dancing any more--that was what old age
meant--and then, perhaps, the sooner the great ugly mouth caught you,
the better.
But the shadow that sometimes, as now, lay across her garden was not of
this nature: it was derivable from no fear of old age or death. It was
rather due to a certain obstinate, uninvited questioning as to what was
the good of it all, this intense pursuit of distraction of any kind that
frightened away tranquillity and leisure, this hot fever of living. But
good or bad, the only alternative to amusing yourself was boring
yourself, which was a more obvious idiocy. Yet was there, possibly, a
certain tedium arising out of the mere repetition of experience and
excitements, however delightful in themselves, if there was nothing, in
Mrs. Cyril Pounce’s inimitable American phrase, “back of them?”
Well, her secretary had disentangled Tuesday for her, and read out in
her calm, monotonous voice the hours of her engagements. One had to be
omitted, but as that was only a bazaar in aid of something, it was quite
as easy to send a suitable cheque without demanding an equivalent, as to
visit the bazaar in person and carry away something she didn’t want.
Certainly there was nothing “back of” the bazaar. She was sorry for the
blind or for indigent spinsters, or for anybody who wasn’t enjoying
himself, but she couldn’t make them any happier by buying an object,
than by paying for it without getting it.... Mrs. Pounce! That wonderful
woman was coming down in time for lunch to-day, and was to motor back to
town after dinner. She would probably be dressed in diamonds, with a
petticoat of pearls. She was much richer than anybody else had ever
been, and so was entitled to respect, but at the moment what Lady Grote
envied her for was her simple rule of life, which was never to do
anything “back of” which there was not something more.
At present her chief ambition seemed to be to know the whole of London.
She had nearly accomplished that, but one of the few vacant spaces in
her social stamp-book was the place where the Lord Thorley specimen
should have been. She knew she would meet him here, and so, with great
good nature, Helen Grote had invited her down for Sunday afternoon. That
seemed about fair--Henry had a vague horror of her as a collector, so
Lady Grote had not asked her down from Saturday till Monday. But Henry
must just put up with her for a few hours, that was not too much to ask,
especially since so many other people were coming down for this
curtailed visit, people she had not room to saddle herself with for a
whole week-end, but people who wanted so much to get to Grote somehow.
Mrs. Pounce! And at the thought of Mrs. Pounce and the divine
applicability of her name to her methods, Helen began to come out of the
shadow again. There was Mrs. Pounce, who had travelled ten or fifteen
years longer than she in this vale of tears, and yet had abated not one
jot of her insatiable demands on life, or had ever begun to weep. But
then, Mrs. Pounce had had the great luck to begin her explorations from
the very bottom of the ladder, whereas poor Helen had started on the
very topmost rung. If you started there, you had either to descend, or,
take wings and soar. But for soaring there had to be something “back of
it” all.... Mrs. Pounce could never really arrive at the haven where she
would be, and certainly long before she ever thought she had got there,
the great fish would have got her instead.... And even if she ever
thought she had quite got there, her whole time would be taken up in
maintaining her precarious balance, whereas Helen Grote would be obliged
to do something quite outrageous ever to lose hers.
Society, success, position, all that vocabulary of ridiculous phrases,
had only a meaning for such as had not got them. If you had all these
things, not even round you but at your feet, you were unconscious of
them: the words became gibberish. The only happiness was in getting:
what you had got you took for granted. You didn’t want to possess
anything of which the essence was yours, just as you never bought a book
you had already read. And Lady Grote had read a very large number of
such books.
But the shadow cleared off when Miss Armitage produced such a smooth
Tuesday for her, and the thought of Mrs. Pounce proved such a tonic. She
was about a hundred times as clever as Mrs. Pounce, and it would be
absurd to allow even a half-hour of shadow to darken her own existence,
when Mrs. Pounce so gladly stepped ahead through thunderclouds and
baffling storm to secure her ultimate serenity.
So, dismissing Miss Armitage, she sent for the manicurist, who always
paid a visit here on Sunday morning, coming down from London, quite at
his own expense in the sure and certain hope of securing an admirable
return on his speculation. There were always half a dozen woman in the
house who would take advantage of his services and, since Mr. Boyton was
here, at least one man. Mr. Pantitzi, for such was his florid name was
also an expert on the hair, and brought down in his discreet wallet
little bottles, whose contents, judiciously selected and mixed, produced
colours that defied detection. Lady Grote adored talking to Mr.
Pantitzi about the wickedness of the world as he, with his sad, cynical
face, made the requisite mixture. “And our tears,” as she once expressed
it, “mingle with the poisonous dye.”
The passing of the shadow produced a reaction, and, looking at herself
in the glass, after Miss Armitage had gone to the telephone, she
determined to have a crowded hour of glorious Mr. Pantitzi, and to
introduce a rather deeper shade of red into her hair. As a girl, she had
owned a superb Titian hue, but Mr. Pantitzi’s ministrations had only in
part preserved it. But now was the time to start again: it had not yet
“gone so far” as to render a rejuvenescence absurd, and she intensely
wanted to encourage herself by presenting to the world the vivider hues
of youth.
She was forty, and she owned, even with eagerness, to that exact number
of years, conscious that she looked not within six years of that age
which gives pause to every woman. Probably nobody believed her, for
apart from the fact that she had a son of nineteen there was no record
in the kindly page of Peerages which gave away what she quite freely
admitted. But the right criterion of youth is the consciousness of
youth, and this morning, after the passage of the shadow, she felt ten
years younger than her age.... It was worth while looking the age you
felt, and recalling the excitements of the early thirties, she knew that
she could live back into those agitating days, if her hair would back
her up. At the moment it had got a little _cendré_; there was a dullness
as of ashes about it. But with an hour to spare she would rectify all
that.
The room where she sat adjoined her bedroom, on the other side of it was
her bathroom; beyond that again was her maid’s room. It was not quite an
ideal arrangement, since she had to pass through her sitting-room to
reach her bathroom, but the little suite formed a corner of the house,
and was pleasantly withdrawn by baize doors and a little passage of its
own from the big corridor. Her maid, as a matter of fact, never slept in
the room beyond the bathroom, but only used it as a sort of
dress-wardrobe, and sewing-room by day. In fact, the little nest of
rooms was really a sort of flat, an island of her own in the great hotel
of a house. No one penetrated there uninvited: if anyone from the rest
of the house, even Gracie or Grote, wanted to see her, inquiry must
first be made over the silver and white enamel telephone that stood on
her table as to whether she was disengaged.... Silver and white were
indeed the only two colours used in the furnishing and decoration of the
room. The floor was painted white, and on it were strewn white skins:
the walls were of white _boiseries_ with silver panels: there were
silver brocade chairs and chairs of white embroidery: silver fire-dogs
stood on the white-tiled hearth, and Gracie the consistent used to tell
her that she should have the logs of wood white-washed. Without
accurately knowing why, she, with all her vivid colour-scheme of life,
felt an intense satisfaction in this uncoloured nest that somehow
represented her, and, as all rooms should be, was a projection of
herself.
People were apt to smile at the mention of the famous little white room:
those unkindly disposed called it the most finished cynicism, while even
her friends were inclined to think it an affectation, though they would
have been puzzled to be obliged to mention any other instance of pose in
her works and days. But, as a matter of fact, both friends and foes were
wrong in their judgments; the room was the sincerest possible
translation of something that she truly and intimately felt. Those who
knew her superficially, and, even more, those who knew her with a
certain thoroughness, would have beggared the rainbow of its hues before
they hit on white as the colour that matched her, and there was only one
person in the world, and that Robin, to whom this white room seemed the
real setting for his mother.
Naturally enough, the boy was utterly ignorant concerning the sum of
what the world gabbled or whispered about her, and had he been told it,
or any portion of it, he would have believed not a single syllable. But
on the other hand he had that instinctive knowledge, not of what she did
but of what she actually was, which no man but a son can have, and that
only when it concerns just one woman in the world. For if the love of a
boy for a girl is the blindest of passions, that of a son for a mother,
when it has any real existence at all, is the most clear-sighted,
piercing through mind and husk unimpeded, like some magical ray, and
recording only the bone, the structure itself, on which the skin and
tissues are hung.
Robin alone, then, in his right of entry into a certain secret place in
his mother’s heart, was alone also in his right of entry into this room
without inquiry, and presently he came whistling in.
“Morning, mother,” he said. “When are you and I going on the river? Oh,
I say, I was sorry for you last night, being left with that fellow. Or
do you like him?”
“Mr. Kuhlmann? Yes, don’t you?”
Robin picked up a cigarette.
“Well, speaking quite candidly, isn’t he rather a bounder?”
She laughed. Nobody but Robin could possibly have said that to her:
there was the unique refreshment of it.
“I rather think he is,” she said. “But, then, you and I settled long
ago, darling, that I liked bounders.”
“I know. Frightfully catholic of you. Sings, doesn’t he?”
“So much so that nobody else can be considered to sing.”
Robin considered this.
“Well, that’s something,” he said. “He wanted to tip me, too, which was
quite kind in intention. He thought I was at school.”
“You do look about sixteen,” said his mother. “How much was it? Did you
take it?”
“Very likely, isn’t it? Especially when I won eleven pounds last night.”
The mournful Mr. Pantitzi, who had been sent for, entered at this moment
with his restorative little wallet. He looked as if he had come to
announce a death, and Lady Grote felt a slight tremor of suppressed
laughter run through Robin’s side as he leaned against her, perched on
the arm of her chair.... So Mr. Pantitzi was sent to be sad in the
bathroom.
Robin waited, heroically self-contained, until he had vanished.
“My!” he said. “Who sent for the undertaker? What is it?”
“My Italian stainer and polisher, dear. He’s going to stain and polish
me. Mind you don’t scream when you see me at lunch, because I shall have
red hair by then!”
“Whaffor?” asked Robin.
“Just a change, darling. Besides, it used to be red. Not too red, you
know; coppery, like a new penny.”
“Why shouldn’t I have mine dyed, too?” asked Robin. “I’ll have it dyed
emerald green, I think. We should be a pretty pair.”
“Do, darling, and we might give an acrobatic performance as the
Polychromatic Linnets. Don’t talk such nonsense, but tell me exactly all
about yourself. Are you playing cricket for Cambridge?”
“Rather not. There came a day after which I didn’t make a run.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Robin. I know you wanted to,” said she. “And to think
that I spent a whole hour at Lord’s the other day, in order to try to
understand what it was all about.”
“Any success?”
“No, dear, not a particle. It seemed to me the most confused thing I
ever saw. Everyone kept walking about every minute or two. Why did they
do that? And if I made the rules, the man who hit the ball away would
have to go and fetch it.”
Robin pondered over this remarkable innovation.
“Certainly it sounds fairer,” he admitted, “but, then it wouldn’t be the
same game.”
“I thought that would be such an advantage. But I was determined to
understand something about it, if you were going to play for Cambridge.
I was going to Lord’s again this week.”
“Well, you needn’t now. That’s a silver lining to the black cloud.”
“What cloud?” she asked. “Oh, I see, the fact of your not getting into
the--the--eleven, aren’t there?”
“Yes. You used to know that well enough when I was at school.”
“I know I did. But I’ve forgotten. You see, cricket doesn’t enter really
very essentially into my life, except when it concerns your precious
self. Go on, Robin; tell me heaps more about yourself. My appetite for
cricket is rather bird-like. I peck and go away. Birds, isn’t that what
they call you?”
“If you happen to be a Robin and a Linnet there’s not much else to say,”
remarked Robin.
“No, it sounds natural. But go on--I didn’t mean to interrupt. Have you
fallen in love with anybody lately?”
“Yes, last night, with Mrs. Lockwater. O-oh!”
Lady Grote burst into a peal of laughter.
“My dear, she’s a little old for you, isn’t she?” she said. “And she’s
got a husband already, which is a pity.”
“But you don’t want to marry everyone you fall in love with, do you?”
asked he. “You want--you just want. I don’t mind about her husband a
bit.”
“You would if you saw him. But perhaps she would divorce him. He’s got
whiskers.”
“Lor! Why did she ever marry him, then? Or perhaps he grew them
afterwards!”
“No, he’s the sort of person who always had whiskers. Do promise me that
you will never grow whiskers, darling. They seem to damn the soul, don’t
they! I should turn in my grave if I thought you were growing whiskers.
So if by chance, when I am quite dead, you want to grow whiskers, mind
you dig me up with an order from the Secretary for Cemeteries, whoever
it is, and you’ll find me lying on my face, and--and a trace of mineral
poison in my lungs.”
“Why that?” asked Robin.
“Just to make it more exciting. I was only adding detail to a bald
narrative. Isn’t there anybody else besides Mrs. Lockwater? Surely there
was somebody last Easter.”
Robin laughed.
“Yes, there was,” he said. “There was a girl in _Tiddlewinks_.”
“What are they? How do you get there?”
“It’s a _revue_, mother. I had forgotten all about it till you suggested
it. She sang ‘Oysters on the Pier.’ You never saw anybody so fetching.”
“Oh, but she mustn’t fetch you. I don’t think I should like her as a
daughter-in-law. Or are oysters ‘off’ now, since it is June?”
“Fairly off. But they might come on again. I wish you’d go and see her.
You might tell me what you thought.”
“That is a very odd thing to ask of an aged and respectable mother,”
said Lady Grote, looking about twenty-five.
“No, it isn’t. I could ask you to do anything, because you would
understand. Of course it’s all chaff----”
She laid her hand on his, interrupting.
“My dear, you’ve said something that isn’t all chaff,” she said. “You
told me you could ask me to do anything because I would understand. Oh,
Robin, don’t ever forget that you felt that. It’s an enchanting thing
for a mother to have said to her by her son. Oh, you bone of my bone! I
almost wish you would do something quite out of the pale, in order to
see whether I didn’t stick to you. Do be had up for some really awful
charge, like taking a penny from a blind beggar.... There’s that damned
telephone ringing. Just see what it wants, or tell it quite straight
that it can’t have it.”
Robin listened, and as he listened, stiffened slightly.
“Oh, yes,” he said, with so icy a politeness that his mother instantly
guessed to whom he was speaking.
“Yes, I’m afraid that she’s particularly engaged just now.”
Lady Grote got up.
“Hold on a minute, Robin,” she said. “I want to say one word to Mr.
Kuhlmann.”
Robin very rudely made what is called “a face” at his mother, and
replaced the receiver with so great a peremptoriness that he chipped a
piece of enamel off it.
“Darling, you’ve got no manners,” she said.
“I know. Badly brought up. But, then, you see I’ve got you for the
present. And then it’s the turn of the undertaker. But I wish you would
come on the river instead.”
“But, darling, Mr. Pantitzi with--with his plumes and his coffin. Don’t
insist.”
“Will you come if I insist?” asked the boy.
“I suppose so. What a bully you are! No one else in the wide world
treats me like that. Go away, while I finish dressing and explaining to
Mr. Pantitzi. We won’t take anyone else, shall we?”
“Not even Mr. Kuhlmann,” said Robin confidently.
* * * * *
Some twenty more guests came down from London that morning in time for
lunch, to spend the afternoon, dine and scurry back to town again by
train or motor that evening, since the sleeping accommodation of the
house was already taxed to its limit. Mrs. Pounce, very nearly covered
with pearls, glided about from group to group as they sat in the loggia,
or beneath the big awning that covered in one end of the terrace, as if
moving on castors, and steadily and relentlessly worked her way into
introduction to and conversation with anyone whom she did not know who
was worth knowing. There was an excursion in the steam launch five miles
up the river to where another hostess was keeping open Sunday, and a
party of her guests came down the river to have tea at Grote. Some
played lawn tennis, and since the man who had just won the open
championship at Wimbledon was among the Sunday arrivals, there was a
sort of queue of incompetent but eager ladies to be his partner, and the
poor young man, who would far more contentedly have sat in the shade,
and flirted desperately with each of his partners for the period of a
set, was obliged to play for some four hours on end.
Others were taken to a golf links some twenty miles distant and indulged
in mixed foursomes, and the more sedentary, having exhausted the current
scandalous topics, made up bridge-tables in the loggia. A troop of
servants hovered about all afternoon with trays of cigarettes and iced
drinks in long glasses, to give support and stimulant to the hours that
intervened between lunch and tea, between tea and dinner.
A fever of mere living, a determination to make the most out of the
present moment, whether bridge or scandal or games were the tincture in
which the present moment was administered, pervaded the huge,
extravagant restaurant, in which were collected the prettiest women and
the most notable men who at the moment were the cream on that great
saturated tipsy-cake called “the great world,” as opposed to the world
generally.
From all nations, peoples and languages were they gathered together;
France, Germany and Russia all sent representatives to this court of
Mayfair, which was as exclusive in one sense as it was democratic in
another. For into other courts any successful grocer and his wife can
penetrate and make their obeisance, provided they have wealth,
benevolence and respectability to be their sponsors, but mere
benevolence and respectability were as powerless as unweaned babes to
secure an entry on to Lady Grote’s lawn. So, too, was mere birth; the
door was shut courteously but perfectly firmly in the face of anyone
whose sole claim to coming in was something to do with William the
Conqueror or Plantagenets generally; Lady Grote, in fact, was very
exclusive in her hospitalities towards her own class, which, as a rule,
consider it to be its right not so much to be excluded but to exclude.
On the other hand, as opposed to the usual procedure of less notable
courts, the complete absence of anything approaching respectability was
by no means a bar to entrance, though dullness, just ordinary,
uncriminal, respectable dullness, quite unaccustomed in other places to
be turned away, was here ejected with remarkable swiftness. But wealth,
given that it was of Pounce-like proportions, here as elsewhere could
show a ticket of admittance, even when totally unaccompanied by
benevolence and respectability, for wealth in sufficient quantities had,
in Lady Grote’s mind, a certain distinction: it implied power....
* * * * *
Wealth, indeed, to-day was considerably represented, and notable blends
from America, Germany and (originally) Palestine could, by forming a
small Semitic syndicate, have bought up the rest of the crowd, had it
been for sale. Not to mention Mrs. Pounce, Sir Isaac Levison was there,
playing bridge for extremely small points and almost squealing with
dismay when his partner, greatly daring, incurred penalties. Lady
Gurtner was there, too; she had two valid claims for admittance, the
first of which was the really colossal wealth of her husband, Sir
Hermann Gurtner, a German Jew, like in appearance to a small London fog,
all black and yellow; the second her own almost lascivious enjoyment of
the circles into which she had so firmly and industriously climbed. Like
all her sisterhood, she had a speciality to attract people to her house
beyond mere food and magnificent tapestries, for with a good deal of
acumen, on her entry into London life but a few years ago, she had
foreseen a “boom” in poetry, and made her house an absolute Parnassus.
There all the bards, French, English and German, congregated, and read
aloud their latest productions. Nobody, or very few at the most, really
cared about poetry, bad, good, or indifferent, but in a certain
prominent set in London it was the fashion to simulate a passion for
verse, and on the “viewless wings of poesy,” with this set as pilots,
she soared with prodigious rapidity. In bright blue stockings, assumed
for the purpose of flight, she mounted into the blue, and now being able
to pick and choose her friends, instead of having eagerly to welcome
anybody who would come, she was beginning to throw both the poetical set
and the poets overboard like ballast, for she found there were others
whom poetry, especially the recitation of it after dinner, when they
preferred poker, positively kept away.
She was a very good linguist, being German on her mother’s side, and
having lived much as a girl in France, and before Sir Hermann married
her had been a governess in a family, where, as is the custom with
governesses, she did not come down to dinner. Now, by the revolution of
the wheel of fate, she was able to ask her late employers to dinner, and
send them in towards the tail of her more resplendent guests. She was a
snob of purest ray serene, and dressed her tall and beautiful figure in
the most amazing gowns.
Sir Hermann had lately built an enormous house in Curzon Street, and had
furnished it with anything in the way of tapestry, lacquer, Louis XV.,
and old oak that was expensive enough. There was no taste of any sort
exercised over his purchases; the only point was that they should be
extremely costly, and in consequence the whole house resembled a museum.
He spoke German with an English accent, French with a German accent and
English with a Yiddish accent. But he spoke all three sparingly, for he
had nothing much to say in any of them.
To-day Lady Gurtner had brought down a young Neapolitan poet on Lady
Grote’s invitation, who recited some amorous outpourings of his own to
an enraptured audience, who understood not a word he was saying, for he
shouted and whispered and bellowed and hissed in the dialect of the
Neapolitan Camorra, of which society he was a prominent and active
member. But it was wildly exciting to see anybody get so excited,
especially since it was a sort of Apollo who raved, and he was further
notable for having killed his wife, whom he passionately adored, for the
very best of motives. These stanzas were addressed to her, and when he
came to the last line in which he told her that her last hour was come,
he gave a wild scream (which so startled the tennis-champion that he
served a double fault) and burst into a torrent of tears. This was
immensely thrilling, and he was a great success until, on his being
sufficiently comforted by Lady Gurtner and a friend or two of the
poetical fanatics, whose hands he grasped so hard that they were covered
with bruises next day, he proceeded to console himself further by
getting drunk, and was in consequence unable to appear at dinner. But he
had done his “stunt,” he had contributed his quota of excitement, and it
did not particularly matter what happened to him afterwards, for nobody
really wanted to hear “Giustizia” again.
It was Lady Grote’s amiable custom to devote some portion of the hours
to each of her guests after the morning, which she claimed as her own,
and since she had not yet had a word with Mr. Boyton she took him for a
short stroll in the woods above the river in the half hour before
dinner. Sunset flamed between the powdered trunks of the beech-trees,
but the river in the valley below, from which the light had been
withdrawn, lay like a broad riband of pale green, reflecting the sky
above the flaming west.
His admiration for her was perfectly sincere, his expression of it
verged on the dithyrambic, because that was his habit of speech when he
paid his florid tributes to the aristocracy, and because he also wished,
if possible, to get an invitation for next Sunday, when, so he had
ascertained, some very august people were expected.
“I want to applaud you, my dear lady,” he said, “every moment of the
exquisite day that I pass here. If I followed my inclination, my hands
would be mere ribands of raw flesh before evening. Like some celestial
and magical amalgam you weld into a complete whole the amazingly
different units that come here to pay you homage. Why is it that no one
else has the smallest idea of how to do it, or, to put it differently,
how is it that you have so complete a recipe for making us all
homogeneous?”
Lady Grote, for all her splendour, was the most modest of mankind, but
she rather liked other people being immodest, so to speak, about her.
“Oh, Mr. Boyton,” she said, “do you think they are really enjoying
themselves? If they are, it has nothing to do with me----”
He interrupted.
“Let us instantly find a horse-marine,” he said, “to whom to confide
that astounding information. Where is a horse-marine; I insist on a
horse-marine being produced without delay. You are like that
industrious conjurer whom I remember seeing in ancient days at the
Egyptian Hall, who kept with a touch of his deft hand half a dozen
plates and a washing basin all miraculously dancing together on a small
table without pause or collision. You have the touch--nature is it, or
art? I suspect the consummate art that counterfeits nature--the touch
that makes the whole world grin. We, cross-grained people, are just a
collection of smiles when we are here. And what a supreme collection! I,
the commonest of your specimens, cannot help swelling with scarcely
decent exultation at the fact that for the moment I belong to it. Think
of them! Lord Thorley moving about in worlds not realized. I always feel
inclined to address him, ‘Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain
height.’ There is something virginal about that beautiful, aloof mind.”
She laughed.
“I saw him revoke just now at bridge,” she said. “That was human of
him.”
“No, I take it the other way round. He was soaring somewhere on eagle’s
wings; his revoke was but a moulted feather, an eagle’s feather that
fluttered down from the empyrean. But I insist on going on with the
survey of your spinning plates. There is our dear Duchess, whom I take
to be no other than an incarnation of _La Grande Bretagne_ out on a bank
holiday. There is Monsieur Pelleton, who no less surely stands for
France, and there is Sir Hermann Gurtner, who, although he plays bridge
by the Thames, is no less surely the spirit of the ‘Watch by the Rhine,’
for the moment, it is true, asleep. There is Mrs. Pounce, in whom we are
right to behold the States of America united in one small and
imperfectly constructed human frame, for the shortness of her legs is as
remarkable as the length of her tongue. There is Geoffrey Bellingham,
in whose eyes abide the visions of Velasquez, and in whose mouth a
confused noise welters; there is Kuhlmann, in whose mouth Song itself
makes its home, and in whose eyes, as far as I can judge, a wild cat.
And each of these great personages requires, in the ordinary way, a
whole stage to himself, with a mute and enthralled audience. But here
they are merely harmonious and humble spectators, who but rise from
their seats to applaud.”
Mr. Boyton outlined this brilliant little sketch in the manner of a
lightning artist at a music-hall. It seemed dashed in with all the
effervescent charm of an improvisation, but behind the improvisation,
just as in the case of the music-hall artist, there had been much quiet
study in the composition of its neat phrasing. But it came out fresh as
the milky-green of the beech foliage above him.
“Ah, but you have left out Robin and Mrs. Lockwater,” said Lady Grote.
“Do say something delicious about Robin.”
“Just now they appeared to be enacting the fable of Endymion and the
Moon in reversed rôles,” said Mr. Boyton. “Robin as Endymion was
attempting to wake up the Moon. The Moon appeared gratified but drowsy.”
“That will do; that is charming. Robin is the most awful flirt. He has
always got a moon on hand, which changes with remarkable rapidity. But
we must get back, I am afraid; it is nearly dinner-time. Don’t dress,
Mr. Boyton, unless you feel inclined. There are lots of people going
back to town after dinner who won’t.”
“I am not among them. I shall certainly dress to show that I am staying
here. And you go to town to-morrow?”
“Yes, till Saturday, when some other people are kind enough to come down
here.”
“How kind of them; how remarkably kind!” he said. “It is most
self-sacrificing of them. I shall picture them this time next week,
those unfortunate guests of yours, boring themselves down here, while I
stew in town.”
There was more than a hint conveyed here, and with the utmost good
nature she took it.
“Ah, do come and bore yourself, too,” she said. “Come down on Sunday. I
wish I could ask you to stay, but we are quite full.”
“My dear lady, it is too kind of you. I have warned you before that I am
utterly incapable of refusing any invitation from you.”
“That is charming, then; I shall expect you. Look, we are going to have
a little illumination to-night on the terrace. I think it will look
rather pretty. Or will it be too like a railway station with green
lights and red lights, and a large crowd having dinner in the
refreshment-room, which is the loggia, and then rushing away in
different directions? Basle railway station, you know, where everybody
eats in a great hurry and then disperses to Germany and Switzerland and
France. I rather adore railway stations; there is a sense of movement.”
“There is that very often on the Channel,” said he. “But your
illuminations are charming. They altogether extinguish the rather sad
light which comes at the beginning and end of every day.”
“I know. I dislike the twilight in the evening. It reminds one that
there’s a day gone. It’s like the curtain coming down at the end of a
play. But the morning twilight I love; that is the curtain going up on
the first act. Something is going to happen, and you don’t know what.
In the evening something has happened, and you do know what.”
“In this instance a perfectly charming day has happened,” said he.
“That is nice of you. But nothing quite comes up to what you expect of
it. The evening is the sadder light.”
“I have heard--I do not know with what truth--” said he, “that there are
people so fortunate as to experience very agreeable sensations after
sunset.”
This was thoroughly Boytonian, the sort of thing that made people laugh
at their own thoughts. But on this occasion her own thoughts did not
amuse her. They were too serious.