"Not Elliman" 7
CHAPTER II.
Boswell as Chaperon 21
CHAPTER III.
Negotiations with the Bun Emperor 36
CHAPTER IV.
The Tweed Suit 47
CHAPTER V.
Chloe waits for her Trousers 67
CHAPTER VI.
Fatimah was under the Influence of Haschish 82
CHAPTER VII.
The Bun Emperor and Empress at Home 100
CHAPTER VIII.
Arrival of the Londoners at Ribton Marches 121
CHAPTER IX.
Mrs. Verulam's Idea of Agag 142
CHAPTER X.
Mr. Rodney Screams 159
CHAPTER XI.
Mr. Harrison's Night-Watch 182
CHAPTER XII.
The Consequences of Lady Drake's Supper 203
CHAPTER XIII.
The Six Self-Conscious Gardeners 222
CHAPTER XIV.
The Duchess in Aspic 233
CHAPTER XV.
Cup Day 247
CHAPTER XVI.
Cup Night 267
CHAPTER XVII.
The True Life 301
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Innocent Lady 321
THE LONDONERS.
CHAPTER I.
"NOT ELLIMAN."
Mrs. Verulam came into her drawing-room slowly and rather wearily.
It was a sultry afternoon in May—indeed, the papers were quite in a
ferment about the exceptional heat-wave that was passing over London;
and a premature old General, anxious apparently to be up to time,
had just died of tropical apoplexy in Park Lane. Possibly it was the
weather that had painted the pallor on Mrs. Verulam's exceedingly
pretty face. Beneath her mist of yellow hair her dark-grey eyes
looked out pathetically, with the sort of pathos that means nothing
in particular—the grace of an indefinite sorrow. She was clad in a
pale-pink tea-gown, elaborately embroidered in dull green and gold,
and she was followed by her maid, the faithful Marriner, whose hands
were full of bright-coloured cushions. The windows of the drawing-room,
which faced Park Lane, and commanded a distant view of the Parade on
Sunday mornings, stood open, and striped awnings defied the sunbeams
above them. London hummed gently in the heat; and an Admiral in the
next house but one might almost be heard ordering his valet, with many
terrible expressions of the sea, to get out his ducks, and be quick
about it.
"Oh, Marriner!" said Mrs. Verulam, in the voice which all self-respecting
men worshipped and compared with Sarah Bernhardt's—"oh, Marriner, how
terribly hot it is!"
"The heat is severe, ma'am, for the season of the year," replied
Marriner.
Mrs. Verulam sat down on an immense sofa near the window, and Marriner
proceeded to bank her up with cushions. She glanced into a tiny
hand-mirror which hung by a silver chain at her side.
"I am as pale as a Pierrot," she murmured.
"I beg pardon, ma'am."
"Pierrot, Marriner, is the legendary emblem of—but it is too hot for
history."
Marriner, who was ever athirst for information, looked disappointed.
She had been on the eve of improving her mind, but the heat precluded
the sweet processes of further education, so the poor soul was
downcast. She bit her lip, secretly imitating a well-known actor whom
she worshipped, and wondered why life is so full of misery. Mrs.
Verulam lay back on the cushions and glanced wearily around. Her eyes
fell upon an oval table that stood near by. Various notes and cards lay
on it, and an immense bouquet of dull-red roses.
"What is all that?" she asked, with a fatigued gesture towards the
table.
Marriner wheeled it forward till it stood beside the sofa, then she
lifted the bouquet and turned it in her hands.
"From Mr. Hyacinth Rodney, ma'am," she said.
A thin smile curved Mrs. Verulam's lips. She took the flowers, glanced
at their dusky beauty, touched their velvet petals with her fingers,
then laid them down carelessly.
"They are remarkably fine specimens, ma'am," said Marriner. "I often
think——" she checked herself.
"Yes, Marriner; what do you think?"
"That we are like the flowers, ma'am: we fade and die so soon."
"Dear me, Marriner, what original thoughts you have!"
"I can't help them coming, ma'am. They seem to take me like a storm,
ma'am."
"Oh! more cards: General and Mrs. Le Mesurier, Lord Simeon, the Prince
and Princess of Galilee—what curious names people are born with!—Mr.
Marchington. Why will so many people call?"
"I think they wish to see you, ma'am."
"I know. But that's just it, Marriner; that is the problem."
"I like problems, ma'am."
"Then resolve me this one. Why do people with immortal souls spend
their lives in leaving tiny oblongs of pasteboard on other people with
immortal souls whom they scarcely know and don't care a straw about?
Why do they do it, Marriner?"
"Might I speak, ma'am?"
"I ask you to."
"I don't feel convinced that their souls are immortal, ma'am. I have my
doubts, ma'am."
"Then you are in the fashion. But that makes it all the more strange.
If we have only one life, Marriner, why should we waste it in leaving
cards?"
"Very true, ma'am."
A certain excitement had crept into Mrs. Verulam's grey eyes. She
raised herself on her cushions dramatically.
"Marriner, we are fools!" she cried; "that is why we do it. That is why
we do a thousand things that bore us—a thousand things that bore other
people. Give me all those notes."
Marriner collected the envelopes which lay upon the table and handed
them respectfully to her mistress. Mrs. Verulam tore them open one by
one.
"'To have the honour to meet the Prince and Princess of——' 'Lady
Emily Crane at home; conjuring and acrobats. Eleven o'clock.' 'Mr.
Pettingham at home; the Unattached Club. Views of the Holy Land and a
lecture. Supper, midnight.' 'Lady Clondart at home. Dancing. Eleven
o'clock.' 'Mrs. Vigors at home. Sartorius will exhibit his performing
panthers. Ten o'clock.' 'Sir Algernon Smith at home. The Grafton
Galleries. Madame Melba will sing. Eleven o'clock.' 'Mrs.——' Oh! I
can't open any more. Heavens! are we human, Marriner? Are we thinking,
sentient beings that we live this life of absurdity? Acrobats,
conjurors, the Holy Land, panthers, Melba. Thus do we deliberately
complicate our existence, already so complicated, whether we will or
no. Ah, it is intolerable! The season is a disease. London is a vast
lunatic asylum."
"Oh, ma'am!"
"And we, who call ourselves the smart world, are the incurable
patients. Give me something to read. Let me try to forget where I am
and what I am."
She lay back trembling. Marriner handed to her the _World_. She opened
it, and her eyes fell upon these words: "I really think that Mrs.
Verulam is the smartest woman in town. Her mother, Lady Sophia Tree,
is famous for her knowledge of the art of dress, but Mrs. Verulam
surpasses even Lady Sophia in her understanding of what to wear and how
to wear it. I met her driving in the Park on Friday in an exquisite
creation of cinnamon canvas with touches of blue, that suited her
dark-grey eyes and her exquisite golden-brown hair to——"
"Marriner, why do you give me this to read?"
"I thought you had not seen it, ma'am."
Mrs. Verulam threw the paper down.
"Leave me, Marriner," she said in a low voice.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Wait. Is Mrs. Van Adam's room quite ready for her?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Take Mr. Rodney's roses, unfasten them, and put them in vases about
the room."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Now spray me, Marriner."
Marriner took up a silver bottle, pressed a minute bladder, and
scattered a shower of tiny scented drops over the pretty face as pale
as a Pierrot; then, carrying the burden of dull-red roses, she withdrew
from the room as softly as a cat.
Mrs. Verulam lay back on the coloured cushions, and closed her eyes
so tightly that her forehead was wrinkled in a frown. The Admiral who
lived in the next house but one was just setting bravely forth in his
ducks, on which the sun shone approvingly. At the doors of many houses
stood carriages, and many pretty women were stepping into them dressed
for dining, concerts, or drums. The Row was fairly full of crawlers,
whose dull eyes—glazed with much staring—glanced eternally around in
search of food for gossip. Flowers flamed along the Park railings from
the Corner to the Marble Arch, and a few unfashionable people, who were
fond of plants, examined the odorous pageant in botanical attitudes
that seemed strangely out of place in London. And the concert of the
town continued. Its music came faintly to the ears of Mrs. Verulam, as
it had come now for so many seasons. For she was twenty-nine, and had
not missed a London summer since she was eighteen, except that one,
eight years ago, which followed the sudden death of a husband with whom
she had never been really in love.
Lying there alone, Mrs. Verulam said to herself that she was utterly
sick of this concert, which each succeeding year persistently encored.
She heard the distant wheels, and thought of the parties to which
they were rolling. She heard the very remote music of a band; and
that reminded her of the quantities of cotillons she had led, and of
the innumerable faces of men that she had wiped out of mirrors with
her lace handkerchief. How curiously they flashed and faded on the
calm surface of the imperturbable glass, their eyes full of gay or of
languid enquiry, their mouths gleaming in set society smiles!
Was it a property of cotillon mirrors, she wondered, to make all men
look alike, neat, vacuous, self-satisfied? Half unconsciously she
fluttered her tiny handkerchief as if she passed it across an invisible
mirror. And now the surface was clean and clear, empty of masks for a
moment. Then there was borne on it a big and bearded countenance. It
seemed too large almost to be called a face. Hair flourished upon that
countenance as prickles upon the porcupine. Large and ox-like eyes of
a reddish-brown hue stared heavily out beneath brows that seemed like
thatched eaves. Mrs. Verulam, in fancy, gazed upon this apparition in
the mirror and laid her handkerchief aside. She would not wipe the
red-brown eyes, the thick lips, the intrusive hair away. And then,
suddenly, she laughed to herself, thinking of the dancing sequel to her
deed of the cotillon, and of what it would be like in reality.
"Poor fellow!" she thought. "He would die in a valse. That is why I
will not, dare not, wipe him out of the mirror from which I long to
eliminate for ever the other faces."
And she thought of a far-off cabbage-garden somewhere on the outskirts
of Berkshire, where life was surely peaceful, contemplative, and more
worthy than in London. Fruits ripened there. Pears hung upon the tree
and cherries slept in the sun. And the bearded face was often bent
wrathfully above the hapless snail or erring maggot. At least, so Mrs.
Verulam supposed. For she had never yet visited this sweet Eden of
vegetables and manly labours. Some day, perhaps, she would go there.
Some day! Some day! She opened her eyes and glanced up. They fell upon
a pet of hers, a ruddy squirrel with a bushy tail, which scrambled in a
revolving cage such as squirrels are supposed to love. Persistently the
squirrel scrambled and the golden cage went round. Mrs. Verulam watched
it, and her mind sprang to the obvious comparison. She saw London, the
cage, herself the squirrel turning in it and longing to be free. And
how she pitied the squirrel! What woman has not bowels of mercy for
herself? She had revolved through so many seasons. Would she revolve
through many more? Suddenly an expression of stern resolve came into
the pretty Pierrot face clouded by bright hair. Mrs. Verulam thrilled
with a great determination. Her manner was almost Napoleonic as she
sat upright and clasped her hands together in a gesture of negation.
She swept the cards on the table into a heap. She flung the notes
of invitation aside. She sprang up and went over to the squirrel. He
peered at her with his bright and beady little eyes.
"Tommy," she said, "listen to me. Do you know that you are like me?
Do you know that I, too, am in a cage—that I, too, am turning and
turning in a prison that is monotonous as a circus, in which everyone
and everything must go round and round and round? I am so tired of it,
Tommy; so tired of my cage. And yet, do you know, half the world is
trying to get into it—and can't! Isn't that absurd? To try to get into
society! Oh, Tommy——"
"Mrs. Van Adam!" said the footman at the door.
Mrs. Verulam turned as a tall, slim, boyish-looking creature in a red
gown and a red-and-black hat came upon her with a sweet rush and took
her in strong arms of affection.
"Dearest Daisy!"
"Darling Chloe!"
The footman looked pleased beneath his powder. Perhaps it was his
agreeable smile which drew Mrs. Verulam's attention to him.
"Francis, say 'not at home' this afternoon," she murmured, with a
gesture of dismissal.
"Yes, ma'am."
And Francis took his smile below-stairs, leaving the two friends alone.
They stood for a moment by the squirrel's cage, watching each other
with kind eyes that were yet alight with sparks of criticism. For
all sweet women are critics, just as all sweet babies are like their
fathers. The laws of nature are so strangely immutable. Then Mrs. Van
Adam said, in a low contralto voice that was almost manly:
"I believe you are sweeter here than you were in Paris. How do you
manage it? America would love you."
"I am not a Duke."
"That's true, but you would come right next."
"And you! Oh, Chloe, in that hat! But why is your hair cut short?"
Mrs. Van Adam laughed, and took off the scarlet and black hat.
"It was so hot on our plantation in Florida that I wanted to have as
little about me as possible," she said.
"It makes you look just like a boy!"
"I'll grow it again here."
"Have you brought a maid?"
"No. I want to engage a London woman."
"Come and sit down. It is so strange for us to be together again. How
many years is it since we were schoolgirls in Paris, getting education
instead of gowns? And now——"
"You're a little widow, and the darling of London!"
"And you——By the way, how is Mr. Van Adam?"
"I am told he is quite well."
Mrs. Verulam raised her eyebrows.
"You are told, Chloe!" she said. "You are told!"
But Mrs. Van Adam was looking about the room with eager dark eyes.
"Your house is delicious!" she exclaimed. "I shall love to be here.
Florida is lonely, and New York is—well, it has no aristocracy. And a
capital without an aristocracy is like a town man without a silk hat.
The toilet is incomplete. It was cool of me to cable you that I was
coming. But you don't mind?"
"I am delighted. I have been wanting you to come for so long."
"And the season is just beginning?"
The weariness that had died in Mrs. Verulam's eyes sprang up in them
again.
"Yes," she said; "it is just beginning."
Mrs. Van Adam made an ecstatic gesture. There was in her manner
something of the vivacity of a colt: a frolicsome readiness for bodily
movement, a quickness of limb that goes with gaiety, and a sweeping
appreciation of the luxury of joy. Her eyes danced and brimmed over
with light, and expectation of pleasure turned her appearance almost to
that of a child who sees a vision of sugar-plums.
"That's lucky!" she cried. "Daisy, you don't know how I feel about your
society; I have never been in it, but I have heard of it ever since I
was a girl in Paris. You told me a little then."
"I knew very little then."
"Well, you told me just all you knew, and it sounded perfect."
"Chloe, when I was in Paris I was a little fool." But Mrs. Van Adam did
not seem to hear the remark; she was bent upon speaking, and she went
on: "Since then I've heard the travellers' tales of the Holy Land."
"The Holy Land!"
"London, dear. Some of our travellers abuse the old town, it's true;
but they want to go back to it when April comes round, all the same.
I think it gets into their blood, as the East gets into the blood of
lovers of the picturesque; anyhow, it's got into mine. Daisy, you think
I'm pretty still, don't you?"
"Pretty—yes; lovely with that short hair."
"And I'm immensely rich, of course; and I'm an American. Give me London
to play with."
"But, my dear Chloe——"
"Yes. Now do. You can give it me. I know that. Our papers are full of
your triumphs. You are the pet of society."
"Nonsense, Chloe!"
"But you are; you go everywhere."
"Yes; that is why I am so tired—that is why——"
"Let me go with you. Oh, Daisy, if you only knew how I long to get into
London society!"
"Oh, Chloe, if you only knew how I long to get out of it!"
Mrs. Van Adam looked quite petrified by this exclamation. She drew
her black brows together, screwed up her eyes, and scrutinised Mrs.
Verulam with a merciless curiosity, such as a child displays before a
strange and ineffable monster. Her scrutiny was silent, exhaustive, and
apparently conclusive, since she closed it with the remark:
"You little joker, you haven't altered a bit since Paris!" Then,
without giving Mrs. Verulam time to assert the truth of her announced
feeling, Chloe turned to the table that stood beside the sofa: "Cards!"
she said. "What a heap! All yesterday's?"
"Or to-day's."
"And notes—invitations?"
Mrs. Verulam nodded.
"May I look at them?"
"If you like. They're stupid things."
"Stupid! They beat diamonds." She took one up with reverent fingers.
"'To have the honour to meet the Prince and Princess of——'"
Mrs. Van Adam read the words aloud in a voice that shook with emotion.
Her eyes glowed behind a veil of moisture as they gazed upon the
sacred pasteboard. It seemed for a moment as if she would bend her
pretty head and touch it with her pretty lips; but she was a woman of
strong character, and she refrained. What that silent struggle cost her
the world will never know. After a period of profound silence she laid
the card down gently, as one lays down a blessed relic. Then she sprang
upon Mrs. Verulam and passionately embraced her.
"Oh, you darling!" she cried.
Before Mrs. Verulam could either acquiesce or protest Mrs. Van Adam
had fallen upon the other invitations, as the drowning man falls upon
the straw. She rifled the big envelopes of their contents. She tore
Lady Emily Crane from her modest concealment, brought Sir Algernon
Smith into the sunlight in the twinkling of an eye, laid Lady Clondart
upon the table like a Patience, and put Mrs. Vigors on end against a
flower-vase. The acrobats, the conjuror, the Holy Land, Madame Melba,
the panthers of Sartorius—she faced them all, and drew a deep breath
that was like a sob. Heaven opened out before her, and she lay back
against a cushion prostrated and overwhelmed. In great moments such
as these the human creature feels its smallness, and hears the mighty
inexorable pulse beating in the huge and mysterious heart of life.
These two women were pale and silent while you could have counted a
hundred, the one laid low by ennui, occasioned by the same cause that
laid the other low by ecstasy. Thus do even the closest friends differ.
At last Mrs. Van Adam lifted herself up, and spoke in a low voice as of
an Anglican in Westminster Abbey:
"Take me with you, Daisy—oh, do—do take me with you!"
"Where?"
"To Lady Emily Crane's, to Mr. Pettingham's, to Lady Clondart's, Mrs.
Vigors', Sir Algernon Smith's, and—oh, Daisy!—to have the honour to
meet the—you know, I can't say it. Let me see the panthers, and the
Holy Land, and the Prince and Princess."
"They are not in the least good-looking."
"The panthers, Daisy?"
"No; the royalties. Those I mean—they are foreign and plain."
"That doesn't matter. It is so unnecessary for them to take the trouble
to be handsome; for us it's quite—quite different."
Mrs. Verulam smiled; but the smile flitted, and the bored expression
returned.
"If I did take you, Chloe, you would find it all terribly dull,
especially Mr. Pettingham's."
"Doesn't he know good people—not religious, you know, but good?"
"Oh yes—everybody in London; but his parties are dreadful. You sit in
the pitch dark while he describes to you how he discovered Venice or
Vienna, and shows you the Lido or Lowndes Square, upside down as often
as not. His coloured slides are really agonising."
"But his guests?"
"Oh! they're all right, of course, so far as any—any smart people are
all right."
Mrs. Van Adam was about to utter a fervent protest, but Mrs. Verulam
displayed sudden energy. She sat straight up, planted her little feet
firmly on a tiny satin footstool, clasped her soft hands, and said:
"No; hear me, Chloe. You don't understand things. It is my duty to
tell you what this London society is. It is a cage, like the cage of
my squirrel Tommy, and those who are in it are captives—yes, yes,
wretched captives—for I speak of us, of the women. The men are not
so bound. They can escape from a ball directly after supper without
being thought greedy; they can leave invitations unanswered, and be
considered well-bred; they can forget a dinner-party, and retain
respect; they can commit a thousand outrages, and yet remain gentlemen.
How it is so nobody knows, but everybody knows that it is so; but
we—we women! What is London society to us?"
"Heaven."
"Purgatory. We have to look pretty when we should like to rest and be
quietly plain; we have to talk when we have nothing to say to men who
talk and have nothing to say to us; we have to take exercise—in the
way of smiling—that would knock up an athlete; we have to be made love
to——"
"Charming! Exquisite!"
"When we long to be left alone with our neuralgia, and to listen to
music when all our nervous system is quivering for silence. We have to
flirt through 'Tristan' and laugh through 'Lohengrin.' We have to eat
when we are not hungry, watch polo when we are longing for sleep, go to
Ranelagh instead of to bed, and stand like sheep in a pen for hours at
a stretch."
"Yes, but the other sheep!"
"All baa in the same way and on the same note; all jump over the same
imaginary fence, because one has jumped over a real one; are all
branded with the same mark, washed in the same pool and shorn with the
same scissors."
"Mercy, darling! Are you a farmer?"
A tender smile dawned in Mrs. Verulam's eyes.
"No," she murmured softly. "It was James Bush who taught me all about
sheep."
"James Bush!"
"Yes. If you want to stop a ewe from coughing——"
"Daisy!"
Mrs. Verulam flushed a lovely rose colour.
"His knowledge is wonderful," she cooed. "He cured a calf which had the
staggers with a preparation of his own—not Elliman."
"Who is he?"
"Some day I'll tell you; but it was not Elliman, and it was more
effective."
And she fell into a beautiful reverie—one of those strange and
mysterious trains of thought so apt to be suggested by an embrocation.