There are two diametrically opposed points of view from which London
life is regarded by those who know of it only by hearsay; that from
which life in the metropolis is contemplated with somewhat awestruck and
dubious eyes as necessarily involving a continuous vortex of society and
dissipation; and that which recognises no so-called “society life”
except during the eight or ten weeks of high pressure known as the
season. Both these points of view are essentially false. In no place is
it possible to lead a more completely hermit-like life than in London;
in no place is it possible to lead a simpler and more hard-working life.
On the other hand, that feverish access of stir and movement which makes
the months of May and June stand out and focus, so to speak, the
attention of onlookers, is only an acceleration and accentuation of the
life which is lived in certain strata of the London world for eight or
nine months in the year. A large proportion of the intellectual work of
the world is done in London; to be in society is a great assistance to
the intellectual worker of to-day on his road to material prosperity;
consequently a large section of “society” is of necessity in London from
October to July; and, since people must have some occupation, even out
of the season, social life, in a somewhat lower key, indeed, than the
pitch of the season, but on the same artificial foundations, goes on
undisturbed, gathering about it, as any institution will do, a crowd of
that unattached host of idlers, male and female, whose movements are
dictated solely by their own pleasure--or their own weariness.
It was the March of one of the last of the eighties. A wild March wind
was taking the most radical liberties with the aristocratic
neighbourhood of Grosvenor Place, racing and tearing and shrieking down
the chimneys with a total absence of the respect due to wealth. If it
could have got in at one in particular of the many drawing-room windows
at which it rushed so vigorously, it might have swept round the room and
out again with a whoop of amusement. For the room contained some twelve
ladies of varying ages and demeanours, and, with perhaps one or two
exceptions, each lady was talking at the top of her speed--which, in
some cases, was very considerable--and of her voice--which as a rule was
penetrating. Every speaker was apparently addressing the same elderly
and placid lady, who sat comfortably back in an arm-chair, and made no
attempt to listen to any one. Perhaps she recognised the futility of
such a course.
The elderly and placid lady was the mistress of the very handsomely and
fashionably furnished drawing-room and of the house to which it
belonged. Her dress bore traces--so near to vanishing point that their
actual presence had something a little ludicrous about it--of the last
lingering stage of widow’s mourning. Her name was Pomeroy, Mrs. Robert
Pomeroy, and she was presiding over the ladies’ committee for a charity
bazaar.
Fashionable charities and their frequent concomitant, the fashionable
bazaars which have superseded the fashionable private theatricals of
some years ago, are generally and perhaps uncharitably supposed by a
certain class of cynical unfashionables to have their motive power in a
feminine love of excitement and desire for conspicuousness. Perhaps
there is another aspect under which they may present themselves; namely,
as a proof that not even a long course of society life can destroy the
heaven-sent instinct for work, even though the circumstances under which
it struggles may render it so mere a travesty of the real thing. From
this point of view, and when the promoter of a charitable folly is a
middle-aged woman, who puts into the business an almost painfully
earnest enthusiasm which might have been so useful if she had only known
more of any life outside her own narrow round, the situation is not
without its pathos. But when, as in the present instance, a
long-established, self-reliant, and venerable philanthropic institution
is suddenly “discovered,” taken up, and patronised by such a woman as
the secretary and treasurer of the present committee; a woman who would
have been empty-headed and vociferous in any sphere, and who had been
moulded by circumstances into a pronounced specimen of a certain type of
fashionable woman, dashing, loud, essentially unsympathetic; the
position, in the incongruities and discrepancies involved, becomes
wholly humorous.
Mrs. Ralph Halse, in virtue of her office as secretary and treasurer,
was sitting at Mrs. Pomeroy’s right hand; her conception as to the
duties of her office seemed to be limited to a sense that it behoved her
never for a single instant to leave off addressing the chair, and this
duty she fulfilled with a conscientious energy worthy of the highest
praise. She had “discovered” the well-known and well-to-do institution
before alluded to about a month earlier.
“Such a capital time of year, you know, when one has nothing to do and
can attend to things thoroughly!” she had explained to her friends. She
had determined that “something must be done,” as she had rather vaguely
phrased it, and she had applied herself exuberantly and forthwith to
the organisation of a bazaar. The season was Lent; philanthropy was the
fashion; Mrs. Halse’s scheme became the pet hobby of the moment, and the
ladies’ committee was selected exclusively from among women well known
in society.
The committee was tremendously in earnest; nobody could listen to it and
doubt that fact for a moment. At the same time a listener would have
found some difficulty in determining what was the particular point which
had evoked such enthusiasm, because, as has been said, the members were
all talking at once. Their eloquence was checked at last, not, as might
have been the case with a cold-blooded male committee, by a few short
and pithy words from the gently smiling president, but by the appearance
of five o’clock tea. The torrent of declamatory enthusiasm thereupon
subsided, quenched in the individual consciousness that took possession
of each lady that she was “dying for her tea,” and had “really been
working like a slave.” The committee broke up with charming informality
into low-toned duets and trios. Even Mrs. Ralph Halse ceased to address
the chair, though she could not cease to express her views on the vital
point which had roused the committee to a state bordering on frenzy; she
turned to her nearest neighbour. Mrs. Halse was a tall woman,
good-looking in a well-developed, highly coloured style, and appearing
younger than her thirty-eight years. She was dressed from head to foot
in grey, and the delicate sobriety of her attire was oddly out of
keeping with her florid personality. As a matter of fact, the hobby
which had preceded the present all-absorbing idea of the bazaar in her
mind--Mrs. Halse was a woman of hobbies--had been ritualism of an
advanced type; perhaps some of the fervour with which her latest
interest had been embraced was due to a certain sense of flatness in its
predecessor; but be that as it may, her present very fashionable attire
represented her idea of Lenten mourning.
“I don’t see myself how there can be two opinions on the subject,” she
said. Mrs. Ralph Halse very seldom did see how there could be two
opinions on a subject on which her own views were decided. “Fancy dress
is a distinct feature, and of course there must be more effect and more
variety when each woman is dressed as suits her best, than when there is
any attempt at uniform. You agree with me, Lady Bracondale, I’m sure?”
The woman she addressed was of the pronounced elderly aristocratic type,
tall and thin, aquiline-nosed and sallow of complexion. She seemed to be
altogether superior to enthusiasm of any kind, and her manner was of
that unreal kind of dignity and chilling suavity, in which nothing is
genuine but its slight touch of condescension.
“Fancy dress is a pretty sight,” she said. “But it is perhaps a drawback
that of course all the stall-holders cannot be expected to wear it.” The
words were spoken with an emphasis which plainly conveyed the speaker’s
sense that no such abrogation of dignity could by any possibility be
expected of herself. “What is your opinion, Mrs. Pomeroy?” Lady
Bracondale added, turning to the chairwoman of the committee.
Mrs. Pomeroy’s attention was not claimed for the moment otherwise than
by her serene enjoyment of her cup of tea, which she was sipping with
the air of a woman who has done, and is conscious of having done, a hard
afternoon’s work. Perhaps it is somewhat fatiguing to be talked to by
twelve ladies all at once. Lady Bracondale’s question was one which Mrs.
Pomeroy rarely answered, however, even in her secret heart, so she only
smiled now and shook her head thoughtfully.
“Miscellaneous fancy dress gives so much scope for individual taste,
don’t you think?” said Mrs. Halse.
“Of course it does, my dear Mrs. Halse. Every one can wear what they
like, and that is very nice,” answered Mrs. Pomeroy comfortably.
“But, on the other hand, a quiet uniform can be worn by any one,” said
Lady Bracondale with explanatory condescension.
“By any one, of course. So important,” assented the chairwoman with
bland cheerfulness. Then, as Mrs. Halse’s lips parted to give vent to a
flood of eloquence, she continued placidly, in her gentle, contented
voice: “Mrs. Romayne is not here yet. I wonder what she will say!”
“I met her at the French Embassy last night,” said Mrs. Halse, with a
slightly aggressive inflection in her voice, “and she told me she meant
to come if she could make time. Apparently she has not been able to!”
“Mrs. Romayne?” repeated Lady Bracondale interrogatively. “I don’t think
I’ve met her? Really, one feels quite out of the world.”
There was a fine affectation of sincerity about the words which would,
however, hardly have deceived the most unsophisticated hearer as to the
speaker’s position in society, or her own appreciation of it. Lady
Bracondale was distinctly a person to be known by anybody wishing to
make good a claim to be considered in society, and she was loftily
conscious of the fact. She had only just returned to town from
Bracondale, where she had been spending the last two months.
“Romayne?” she repeated. “Mrs. Romayne! Ah, yes! To be sure! The name
is familiar to me. I thought it was. There was a little woman, years
ago, whom we met on the Continent. Her husband--dear me, now, what was
it? Ah, yes! Her husband failed or--no, of course! I recollect! He was a
swindler of some sort. Of course, one never met her again!”
“This Mrs. Romayne is the same, Ralph says,” said Mrs. Halse, sipping
her tea. “At least, her husband was William Romayne, who was the moving
spirit in a big bank swindle--and a lot of other things, I
believe--years ago. She turned up about two months ago, and took a house
in Chelsea. Lots of money, apparently. She has a grown-up son--he would
be grown-up, of course--who is going to the bar.”
“But, dear me!” said Lady Bracondale with freezing stateliness, “does
she propose to go into society? It was a most scandalous affair, my dear
Mrs. Pomeroy, as far as I remember. A connection of Lord Bracondale’s
lost some money, I recollect; and I think the man--Romayne, I mean, of
course--poisoned himself or something. We were at Nice when it happened.
He committed suicide there, and it was most unpleasant! She can’t
expect one to know her!”
Eighteen years had passed since the same woman had expressed herself as
eager to make the acquaintance of “the man,” and the haze which had
wrapped itself in her mind about the tragedy which had frustrated her
desire in that direction, was not the only outcome for her of the
passing of those years. Lady Bracondale had been Lady Cloughton eighteen
years ago, the wife of the eldest son of the Earl of Bracondale; poor,
and with a somewhat perfunctorily yielded position. She and her husband
had been, moreover, a cheery, easy-tempered pair, living chiefly on the
Continent, and getting a good deal of pleasure out of life. His father’s
death had given to Lord Cloughton the family title and the family lands;
and with his accession to wealth, importance, and responsibilities, his
wife’s whole personality had gradually seemed to become transformed. Her
satisfaction in her new dignities took the form of living rigidly up to
what she considered their obligations. Laxity, frivolity of any kind,
seemed to her to abrogate from the importance of her position. She
ranged herself on the side of strict decorum and respectability, and
became more precise than the precisians. Her husband at the same time
developed talents latent in his obscurity, and became a prominent
politician; and the ultra-correct and exclusive Lady Bracondale was now
in truth a power in society.
Consequently, the tone in which she disposed of the intruder, who had
ventured unauthorised to obtain recognition during her absence, was
crushing and conclusive. But Mrs. Pomeroy’s individuality was of too
soft a consistency to allow of her being crushed; and she replied
placidly, and with unconscious practicality.
“People do know her, dear Lady Bracondale,” she said. “She had some
friends among really nice people to begin with, and every one has called
on her. I really don’t know how it has happened, but it is years and
years ago, you know, and she really is a delightful little woman. Quite
wrapped up in her boy!”
Almost before the words were well uttered, before Lady Bracondale could
translate into speech the aristocratic disapproval written stiffly on
her face, the door was flung open, and the footman announced “Mrs.
Romayne!”