The big pink and white dining-room at the Carlton was full to
suffocation of people, mixed odours of dinner, the blare of the band
just outside, and a babel of voices. In the hall theatre-goers were
having their coffee and cigarettes after dinner, while others were
still waiting, their patience fortified by bitters, for their parties
to assemble. The day had been very hot, and, as is the manner of days
in London when June is coming to an end, the hours for most people here
assembled had been pretty fully occupied, but with a courage worthy of
the cause they seemed to behave as if nothing of a fatiguing nature
had occurred since breakfast. The band played loud because it would
otherwise have been inaudible above the din of conversation, and people
talked loud because otherwise nobody could have heard what anybody else
said. To-night everybody had a good deal to say, for a case of the kind
that always attracts a good deal of attention had just been given that
lengthy and head-lined publicity which is always considered in England
to be inseparable from the true and indifferent administration of
justice, and the vultures of London life found the banquet extremely to
their taste. So they ate their dinner with a sense of special gaiety,
pecked ravenously at the aforesaid affair, and all talked loudly
together. But nobody talked so loud as Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer.
It was said of her, indeed, that, staying for a week-end not long ago
with some friend in the country, rain had been expected because one day
after lunch a peacock was heard screaming so loud, but investigation
showed that it was only Mrs. Palmer, at a considerable distance away
on the terrace, laughing. Like the peacock, it is true, she had been
making _la pluie et le beau temps_ in London this year, so the mistake
was accountable. At present, she was entertaining two young men at an
ante-opera dinner. A casual observer might have had the impression
that she was clothed lightly but exclusively in diamonds. She talked,
not fast, but without pause. She was in fact what may be called a
long-distance talker: in an hour she would get through much more than
most people.
'Yes, London is just too lovely,' she was saying; 'and how I shall tear
myself away on Monday is more than I can imagine. I shall cry my eyes
out all the way to Liverpool. Mr. Brancepeth, you naughty man, you were
thinking to yourself that you would pick them up and carry them home
with you to remind you of me. I should advise you not to say so, or I
shall get Lord Keynes to call you out. I always tell everyone that he
takes as much care of me as if he were my father. Yes, Lord Keynes,
you are what I call faithful. I say to everyone, Lord Keynes is _the_
most faithful friend I ever had. Don't you think you are faithful,
now? Well, as I was saying when Mr. Brancepeth interrupted me with his
wicked inquiries, I shall cry my eyes out. Indeed, if it wasn't that
Lord Keynes had faithfully promised to come over in the fall, I think I
should get a divorce from Lewis S. and remain here right along.'
'On what grounds?' asked Bertie Keynes.
'Why, on the grounds of his incompatibility of residence. Just now I
feel as if the sight of Fifth Avenue would make me feel so homesick for
London that I guess I should rupture something. When I am homesick I
feel just like that, and Lewis S. he notices it at once, and sends to
Tiffany's for the most expensive diamond they've got. That helps some,
because a new diamond is one of the solemnest things I know. It just
sits there and winks at me, and I just sit there and wink at it. We
know a thing or two, a big diamond and I. But I conjecture it will have
to be a big one to make me feel better this time, for just now London
seems to me the only compatible residence. I guess I'll make Lewis buy
it.'
Mrs. Palmer's tact had been one of the standing dishes of the season,
and it appeared that there was plenty of it still in stock. It was
distributed by her with strict impartiality to anyone present, and had
a firm flavour.
Bertie Keynes laughed, and drew from his pocket a small printed card.
'I don't know if you have seen this,' he said. '"Admit bearer to see
the world. Signed, Lewis S. Palmer."' And he handed it to her.
Mrs. Palmer opened her mouth very wide, and screamed so loud that for
a radius of three tables round all conversation ceased for a moment.
The scream began on about the note selected by express trains when they
dash at full speed through a station, rose an octave or two with an
upward swoop like a steam siren, came slowly down in a chromatic scale,
broken off for a moment as she made a hissing intake of her breath, and
repeated itself. This year it had been one of the recognised cries of
London.'
'Why, if that isn't the cutest thing in the world,' she screamed. 'I
never saw anything so cunning. Why, I never! Admit bearer to see the
world! How can I get one for Lewis? It would just tickle him to death.'
'Pray take this,' said Bertie. 'I brought it on purpose for you.'
'Well, if that isn't too nice of you! I shall just hand that to Lewis
without a word the moment I set eyes on him. I guess that'll make him
want to buy the world in earnest. Why, he'll go crazy about buying it
now that it has been suggested. Well, I'm sure, Lord Keynes, it's just
too nice of you to give me that. I shall laugh myself sick over it. I
always tell everyone that you are the kindest man I ever saw. Gracious,
it's half after nine! We must go at once. I'll be down with you in a
moment, but I must give this to my maid to be packed in my jewel-case.'
Mrs. Palmer looked at it again as she rose, gave another shrill scream,
and vanished, leaving her two guests alone.
Charlie Brancepeth moved his chair a little sideways to the table as he
sat down again, crossed his legs, and took a cigarette from his case.
'If you had asked her a hundred pounds for it, she would have given it
you, Bertie,' he remarked.
Bertie Keynes raised his eyebrows a shade.
'A hundred pounds is always welcome, Charlie,' he said, without a
shadow or hint of comment in his voice. In fact, the neutrality of his
tone was too marked to be in the least degree natural.
Charlie did not reply for a moment, but blew thoughtfully on the
lighted end of his cigarette.
'Why this sudden--this sudden suppression of the mercantile spirit?' he
asked.
Bertie laughed.
'Don't trouble to be more offensive than is necessary to your
reasonable comfort,' he remarked with some finish.
'I am not; I should have been in considerable pain if I hadn't said
that. But why this suppression?'
Bertie delayed answering long enough to upset the salt with his elbow,
and look reproachfully at the waiter for having done so.
'There isn't any suppression,' he said at length. 'The mercantile
spirit is going strong. Stronger than ever. Damn!'
'Is it the salt you asked a blessing on?' said Charlie.
'No; the non-suppression.'
'Then you really are going to America in the autumn?' asked he. 'I beg
its pardon, the fall.'
'Yes. Fall is just as good a word as autumn, by the way.'
'Oh, quite. Over there they think it better, and they have quite as
good a right to judge as we. If they called it the pump-handle it
wouldn't make any difference.'
'Not the slightest. Yes, I am going.'
Charlie smiled.
'Oh, I suddenly understand about the mercantile spirit,' he said. 'It
was stupid of me not to have guessed at once.'
'It was rather. Charlie, I should like to talk to you about it. The
governor has been making some uncommonly sensible remarks to me on the
subject.'
'He would. Your father has an immense quantity of dry common-sense.
Yes, come round after the opera, and we'll talk it out lengthways.
Here's Mrs. Palmer. I hope Pagani will sing extremely loud to-night,
otherwise we shan't hear a note.'
Two electric broughams were waiting at the Pall Mall entrance as Mrs.
Palmer rustled out between rows of liveried men, whose sole office
appeared to be to look reverential as she passed, as if to have just
seen her was the Mecca of their aspirations. Then, after a momentary
hesitation between the two young men, Bertie followed her dazzling
opera-cloak into the first brougham, and, amid loud and voluble regrets
on her part that there was not room for three, and the exaction of
a solemn promise that Charlie would not quarrel with his friend for
having monopolized her, they started. Charlie gave a little sigh,
whether of disappointment or not is debatable, and followed them alone
in the second brougham.
The motor went swiftly and noiselessly up Haymarket, and into the
roaring whirlpool of the Circus. It was a fine warm evening, and over
pavement and roadway the season of the streets, which lasts not for a
few months only, after the manner of the enfeebled upper class, but all
the year round, was in full swing. Hansom cabs, newsboys shouting the
latest details of all the dirty linen which had been washed that week,
omnibuses nodding ten feet high above the road, and life-guardsmen
nodding six, women plain and coloured, men in dress-clothes hurrying
late to the theatres, shabby skulkers in shadow, obscure persons of
prey, glittering glass signs about the music-halls, flower-sellers
round the fountain, swinging-doors of restaurants swallowing in and
vomiting out all sorts and conditions of men, winking sky--signs,
policemen controlling the traffic--all contributed their essential but
infinitesimal quota to the huge hodge-podge of life, bent as the great
majority of life always is on the seizure of the present vivid moment,
the only thing which is certainly existent. For the past is already to
everyone but of the texture of a dream; the future is a dream also, but
lying in impenetrable shadow. But the moment is real.
To Charlie it appeared to-night that the festival of the pavements was
certainly gayer than the festival of the Carlton. His own world schemed
more, it might be, and substituted innuendo for a bolder and more
direct manner of talk, but it really had less capacity for enjoyment.
Ten weeks of London broke its wind somewhat, and it retired into the
country to graze, to digest, to recoup. But here on the pavements a
lustier spirit reigned, the spirit of the people, pressing upwards and
upwards like buried bulbs striving towards the light through the good,
moist earth, whereas, to continue the metaphor that was in his mind,
the folk among whom he moved, whose doings he continually observed
with an absorbed but kindly cynicism, were like plants tended in a
greenhouse, and potted out when the weather became assured.
And what if the whole of England was becoming every year more like a
tended greenhouse plant, compared to the blind thrust of forces from
the earth in other countries? For all the old landmarks, as the great
wheel of human life whirled down the road of the centuries, seemed to
be passing out of sight; the world was racing westwards, where America
sat high on the seas, grown like some portentous mushroom in a single
night. There, at the present moment, the inexorable, relentless logic
of nature was working out its everlasting proposition that the one
force in the material world was wealth. England had had her turn, even
as Rome had had her turn, and even as the hordes of barbarians had
swept over the countries that had been hers till they reached and took
the capital itself, even so--well, had he not himself dined with Mrs.
Palmer that evening? It was not in his nature to hate anything, so it
cannot be said that he hated her screaming, her insensate conversation,
her lack of all that is summed up in the words breeding and culture,
but he saw these loud defects, and knew of their existence. On the
other hand, he saw and knew also of her intense good-nature, her true
kindliness of heart, and believed in the integrity of her life; so,
if it was fair to consider her presence in London typically as of the
nature of a barbarian invasion, it must be confessed that England had
fallen into the hands of very kindly foes. They did not even actively
resent culture, they were simply not aware of it, and cut it when they
met. In any case they were irresistible, for the power that moved them
was wealth more gigantic than any which heretofore had furthered the
arts of war and peace, and that wealth was grasped by men who only
yesterday had toiled with their hands in factories and workshops. Like
stars reeling upwards from below the horizon, they swarmed into the
sky, and looked down, not cruelly, but merely calmly, into the world
which they owned.
Of such was Mrs. Palmer's husband; he had been a railway porter, now
he was railways and steamships and anything else of which he chose to
say 'This is mine.' Occasionally men like these watered the English
greenhouse plants, and an heiress propped up the unstable fortunes of
some five-hundred-years-old English name. But such gift of refreshment
was but a spoonful out of the great wells; also, in a manner of
speaking, having thus watered the plants, they picked them.
His motor got caught in a block at the entrance to Leicester Square,
and he arrived at the Opera House some few minutes after the others
had got there. A commanding white label with Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer's
name printed on it was on the door of the omnibus box on the grand
tier, and he found her, with her resplendent back firmly turned
towards the stage, discoursing in shrill whispers to Bertie Keynes,
and sighing more than audibly for the end of the act. It was the last
representation for the year of 'Tristan und Isolde,' and the house
was crowded. Royalty was there: a galaxy of tiaras sparkled in the
boxes, and a galaxy of stars sang together on the stage. For London had
suddenly conceived the almost incredible delusion that it was musical,
and flocked to the opera with all the fervour of a newly-born passion.
It was not, it never had been, and it never would be musical, but this
particular form of the game 'Let's pretend' was in fashion, and the
syndicate rejoiced. Soon London would get tired of the game, and the
syndicate would be sad again.
But the longest act comes to an end at last, and even as the curtain
fell, Mrs. Palmer began screaming again. She screamed when she was
amused because she was amused, and she screamed when she was bored in
order that it might appear that she was not. Just now she was amusing
herself very tolerably, for as soon as the lights were up, the world in
general flocked into her box, supplementing the very desirable company
already assembled there.
'Why, of course I am coming back next year,' she was explaining. 'And
if Lewis doesn't come with me, and take Seaton House for me, so as to
be able to have more than one person to dinner at a time, I guess I'll
have a word or two to say to him which he won't forget; and if you,
Mrs. Massington, don't come over to us in the fall with Lord Keynes,
I shall cry my eyes out; and if that monster, Mr. Brancepeth, is as
impudent again as he was at dinner, saying that he would pick them up
and take them home to remind him of me, I'll ask him to leave my box,
and call him back the moment afterwards, because I can't help forgiving
him.'
There was a laugh at this brilliant effort of imagination, and Mrs.
Massington leaned back in her chair towards Charlie, while Mrs. Palmer
continued her voluble remarks.
'You are getting quite polished, Charlie,' she said. 'I should not have
suspected you of so much gallantry.'
'I hope you never suspect me of anything,' he said.
'Oh, I do--of lots of things. Chiefly of a disapproving attitude. You
are always disapproving. Now, you probably disapprove of my going to
America.'
'You have not gone yet,' he said.
'No, but I shall. Mrs. Palmer has asked me to stay with them, and I am
going. And Bertie is really going too.'
'So he told me to-night.'
'Who suggested it? His father?'
'Yes. As usual, he has shown his immensely good sense.'
Mrs. Massington laughed.
'You are extremely old-fashioned,' she said. 'I wonder at your dining
with Mrs. Palmer at all, and coming to her box.'
'I often wonder at it myself,' said he. 'Never mind that. I haven't
seen you for an age. What have you been doing with yourself?'
'I haven't been doing anything with myself. It is other people who
have been doing all sorts of things with me. I have been taken by the
scruff of the neck and dragged--literally dragged--from place to place.
All this week there's been the Serington case, you see. I was in the
court for three mornings, getting up at unheard-of hours to be there.
Really it was very amusing. Topsie in the witness-box was the funniest
thing you can possibly imagine. He jumped every time anybody asked him
a question. They seem to have had the most extraordinary manage, and
the servants appear to have spent their entire time in looking through
keyholes. I wonder how the house-work got done at all. Charlie, you
don't appear in the least amused.'
He looked at her a moment gravely.
'Am I really so awfully old-fashioned?' he asked.
'Yes, you old darling, I think you are. Are you shocked at my calling
you an old darling? It's quite true, you know.'
'Delighted to hear it. But am I old-fashioned, then?'
'Certainly. Antique, out of date, obsolete. Of course, that sort of
thing, all the Serington affair, is extremely shocking, and they are
done for, quite done for; nobody will ever speak to them again--at
least, except abroad. But because it is shocking, I don't see why I
should pretend not to be amused at the really ridiculous figure Topsie
cut in the witness-box. It would argue a very imperfect sense of humour
if I was not amused, and great hypocrisy if I pretended not to be. I
was amused, I roared; I was afraid they would turn me out.'
He laughed.
'Somehow, whatever you do, I can't disapprove,' he said; 'though the
notion of all Topsie's friends sitting there and looking at him, and
talking it over afterwards, makes me feel ill. But you----'
'Dear Charlie, it is too nice of you. But break those rose-coloured
spectacles through which you so kindly observe me. It is no use. I have
told you before it was no use, and I don't like telling you again.'
'Why?' he asked.
'Oh, that is so like a man, and especially an Englishman. You know why.
Because it hurts you.'
'You dislike hurting me? That is something,' said he.
'But that is all,' she said.
The orchestra had taken their places, and a silence began to spread
over the theatre as the lights were lowered. Then suddenly he leaned
towards her so that he could smell the faint, warm fragrance of her
presence.
'You mean that?' he asked.
She nodded her head in reply, and the curtain rose.