Frances Ewing was a shady name thereafter, to those "in the know".
Pennycuick blood and pride notwithstanding, she seemed to lose her own
sustaining self-respect when she lost the respect of the man she
loved--when he showed her with such barbarous and uncompromising
candour the essential difference between a mistress and a wife. Of
course, she "got over" that grievous affair, which, for a time, broke
whatever heart she had to break. Her freedom and her money, her youth
and her beauty, were still hers, and she made the most of them; and
that most was a great deal. In her cosmopolitan sets she was a popular
and distinguished figure. From one fashionably rowdy Continental resort
to another she carried her rich jewels and trappings, and her personal
magnetism, and sat down for the season to a campaign of social
stratagem and sentimental intrigue--to the indulgence of her unbridled
appetite for excitement and the admiration of men. And ever at the end,
when it was time to move on to another BIJOU apartment in another
place, there was a fresh scalp at her girdle, and nothing, as it were,
to show for it, until at last her vanity was tempted with a title, and
she married an Italian count, who, if all tales were true, paid the
debt that his sex owed her with heavy interest. But those tales did not
reach the ears of the sisters at home. To them--with the object of
suitably impressing them--she wrote an occasional note, of which half
the words were titles of nobility; and the humbler relatives accepted
the fact of her unapproachable elevation above them. The Breens made
easy jokes upon the subject; Mr Goldsworthy's jealousy of her was
overcome by his pride in the connection. "We had a letter from my
sister-in-law, the Countess, the other day," he would amiably remark,
and proceed to repeat and amplify the fashionable intelligence
contained therein, instead of taking away her character as he had been
used to do. Deborah was the only sister with whom she can be said to
have corresponded, and Deborah had a shrewd suspicion that all was not
gold that glittered in Francie's lot. Deborah had the best means of
knowing, being herself a world-traveller, and what is called a society
woman, as well known in the resorts of such as Frances herself. But
although they seemed to run so closely, and so much upon the same
lines, there was as wide a gap of social difference and non-intimacy
between them as between any two of their family. And Deb was not one to
think evil of her own flesh and blood, if it was possible to think good.
She, too, might have filled her letters to Australia with titles of
nobility--nobility of a firmer standing than the Countess and her
friends could boast of--had she been inclined to do so. A baronial
hall, dating from the Conquest--a ducal castle, not to speak of a Royal
Presence Chamber--was nothing to Deborah Pennycuick after a while.
To see her on a crowded London staircase, laughing with a prince or a
prime minister, was a common object of the season for a number of
years; while varnishing days and first nights would have lacked charm
for the society reporter who could not place her fine figure and her
French gowns in his pictures of these scenes. Goodwood and Cowes were
familiar with her striking face and her expert interest in horses and
yachts; Highland shooting-lodges, English hunting-fields, claimed her
for their own. Southern Europe, the Nile, Bayreuth--in short, wherever
social life was bright, comfortable and select, there she turned up
promiscuous, as the spirit moved her, to be welcomed open-armed as a
matter of course. Men, young and old, continued to pay her homage,
which was not just the sort of homage they paid to Frances; proposals
of marriage were, or might have been if not nipped in the bud, almost
as plentiful as invitations to country houses in the autumn. And she
relished it all with singular enjoyment--until she began to feel the
approach of that winter and evening of life which has so sharp a chill
for those who have loved the sun.
Claud Dalzell was likewise a denizen of the great world that was hers
and not Francie's, and, close corporation as it is, they were never far
off each other's beat, seldom in ignorance of each other's whereabouts.
At the same time, they also did not touch. It was known throughout the
great world, which is so small, that there was a deadly feud between
them; and tactful hostesses took pains not to bring them into
juxtaposition. In public places, when meetings occurred by accident,
only the most frigid bows were interchanged.
For, in quite early times, when the Australian heiress, as she was
improperly styled, was taking London more or less by storm, she chanced
to overhear a brief colloquy not intended for her ears.
"Who is that glorious woman that came in with the duchess? I don't see
her just now, but she had a red frock on, with black lace over it--dark
hair and diamond stars--not half as bright and fine as her eyes, by
Jove!"
"It must be Miss Pennycuick--an Australian lady. She is with the
duchess's party."
"Oh, is that Miss Pennycuick? Well, now I can believe what I've heard
of her being so charming. She carries it in her face."
"She WAS charming--until she came into her money. That has quite spoilt
her."
It was Claud Dalzell who said it, and Deb heard him say it. She moved
off out of the press that had brought her within reach of his cold
voice--not to be mistaken by her for any other voice--and she vowed
through clenched teeth that never again would she come within that
distance of him, if she could help it.
The years as they passed only strengthened this determination. Each
proud inclination of the head, each ceremonious lift of the hat, added
bitterness to their mutual resentment--to his feeling that she was
spoiled by her money, and to her feeling that he wilfully misjudged
her. The breach was widened by their unconcealed flirtations--a
description mentally applied to the most ordinary man-and-woman
acquaintanceships on either side, but not inappropriate in all cases.
Claud ever loved the company of handsome women who appreciated him; Deb
naturally inclined to nice men in preference to the nicest women; and
each liked to show the other that he or she was still of high
importance to somebody. Rumours of impending marriage were continually
being wafted to his ears or hers, but nothing came of them. He was
confirmed in luxurious bachelorhood; she was aware of many
fortune-hunters, and could not bring herself to value any of her
disinterested suitors at the price of her freedom. So the one-time
lovers drifted more and more apart, until somehow they lost sight of
each other altogether; and meanwhile the years made them old without
their knowing it.
She was unreasonably upset on one occasion by the offer of a specific
for grey hair from a fashionable London hair-dresser. It was absolutely
permanent, harmless and undetectable, he said. "But I am not grey," she
indignantly informed him. Whereupon she saw his keen professional eye
wander about her brow as he murmured something about the faint
beginnings that might as well be checked. At home she studied the
matter carefully in a strong light, and called Rosalie, her maid, to
aid her. The little Frenchwoman assured her that a microscope was
needed to detect a white thread in that beautiful mass of dark
nut-brown. With a microscope, no doubt, as many as half a dozen might
be discerned dimly, just where it waved back from mademoiselle's face.
That same afternoon she and Rosalie left town for one of their
country-house visits. It was a weepy autumn day, and she was not as
fresh as usual--the hair-dresser, combined with some troublesome
shopping, had tired her--and the disquieting suspicion laid hold of her
that she was more easily fatigued than she used to be. While reading
her novel in the train, she counted her years, and compared herself
with the women she knew whose ages were recorded in the Peerage, and
who could therefore be proved to be as old as herself. Some of them
were wrinkled hags. Carelessness or ill-health, doubtless, she
reflected; and neither charge could be laid at her door. Heigh-ho! That
horrid man!
It was dark night when they reached the little station belonging to the
mansion that was their goal. A dozen other guests and their servants
and baggage crowded the platform, and half-a-dozen carriages and
luggage-brakes the yard behind; and Deb was at once in charge of a tall
footman, Rosalie struggling through the press with jewel-case and
dressing-bag, chattering French to one of her familiars in the rear.
Distracted stationmaster and porters uncovered to the stately woman as
she passed. It was all a matter of course to her these days.
She was too late for the big tea-party; the men had gone to the
smoking-room, the women to their own firesides. After a brief but
affectionate interview with her titled hostess, Deb was soon at hers,
slippered and dressing-gowned, sipping the jaded woman's stimulant,
warming the damp and dismalness out of her, assuring herself
confidently that she was not an old woman, and had no intention of
becoming one.
Certainly, when Rosalie had dressed her, she was entitled to an easy
mind. The best of everything tonight, in vindication of her still
unimpaired beauty and potency. Shimmering brocade of her favourite red,
and lace like fairy work; and then that magnificent satin-white breast
and massive throat, and the stately head crowned with the famous five
stars, whose flashing made the eye wink, and which yet were dimmed by
the light of her dark eyes. She surveyed herself with full content when
the last touch had been given her, and her slow sweep a-down corridors
and grand staircase was a triumphal march. She knew that her entrance
into the crowd downstairs could no more fail of its customary effect
than could the appearance of the sun next morning--or, one should
rather say, the announcement of dinner to the tired and hungry shooting
men.
She was met at the foot of the grand staircase by her host, and
immediately surrounded. In the close press of friends she did not
notice the strangers; time was too short and they were too many. A lord
of her acquaintance, who still hoped to make her his lady, took her
into dinner, and called upon all her powers of wit and repartee to meet
his conversational tactics during the meal. It was an exhilarating
encounter, and of sufficient interest to keep her "eyes in the boat".
Moreover, the table was immense, and the chief of the strangers sitting
on her side of it, a long way off.
After dinner there was little comedietta played on the boards of the
toy theatre belonging to the house. Many of the ladies were in their
places before the men, still craving repose after their hard day's
work, could hoist themselves from their chairs in the dining-room. Deb,
having helped to coach one of the amateur performers, was early in her
seat in front. Some of her admirers did manage to squeeze in beside and
behind her from time to time, but the particular stranger haughtily
held aloof.
Then, when the play was over, there was an impromptu dance, for the
theatre was an ANNEXE to the ball-room. It was the young folk who began
it, but older ladies joined in, and all the men but the hardened
sportsmen, who saw a chance to sneak to their snuggery and gun-talk
before the time. The really old women, obviously past their dancing
days, sat around, and looked on and gossiped to one another. And for a
time Deb sat with them.
She was certainly tired--for her--and the fact struck her that she had
not danced for a long time. She had shirked balls, having only too many
entertainments to choose from. She thought it likely that she would be
stiff and heavy on her feet from want of practice--a horrible idea to
her, who had once danced like a feather in the wind. A good stone had
been added to her weight since she had last waltzed with satisfaction
to herself; that also was not a pleasing thought. So when her dinner
lord essayed to entice her, she shook her head. A dozen other men, and
the cream of them too--there was comfort in that--followed his example,
and made her charming compliments when she said laughingly that she was
"too old for these frivolities".
"Too old--gracious heavens!" they apostrophised space. It was
heart-warming to hear them.
But they went off easily, and were soon dancing with the young
girls--sylphs as airy and agile as she had once been. And by degrees
she drew apart from the old ladies and their talk, which she hated to
seem, even to herself, to belong to, and presently found herself in the
extraordinary position of sitting alone. She leaned back in her chair,
and with eyes half shut, looked at the whirling couples, and dreamed of
the days--the dances--the youth--that were no more.
She saw, not this splendid saloon, but a shabby small room in an old
bush house--the walls not panelled with paintings by R.A.s and starred
with clusters of electric lights, but with wreaths of homely evergreens
and smelly kerosene lamps. And amid the happy throng that jostled for
room to dance there, a girl and a young man, newly betrothed,
anticipating an immortal paradise in each other's arms.
And she looked up, and saw Claud Dalzell watching her.
He was horribly aged--illness, it seemed--and had grown quite
white--that splendid lover with whom she had danced, as no girl here
knew how to dance, in the golden prime of everything! Their eyes met,
and there must have been in both pairs something that neither of them
had seen before. He crossed to her side at once, and she did not freeze
him when he got there.
"How do you do? I have been wondering if you were going to recognise
me."
"How do you do? I didn't know you were here. I never saw you until this
moment."
"I have been standing there for ten minutes."
"I did not notice. I was thinking--" "You were--deeply. I was trying to
guess what you were thinking of."
"I wonder, did you?"
"I wonder. Was it, by any chance"--he dropped his voice--"Five Creeks?"
She was quite startled and discomposed by this extraordinary
divination; having no time to decide how she would take it, she filled
the embarrassed moment with a laugh.
"Goodness! I'd no idea that my face was such a tell-tale. I believe I
was. That funny old room, with ridges in the floor, and the ceiling
nearly on your head--how DID we manage to dance in it?"
"Well, we did manage somehow, didn't we?"
They gazed at the figures wheeling past them, blankly unresponsive to
casual stares and smiles. They seemed to hear the rotten flood-gates,
shut so long ago, creak on their rusty hinges.
"Heard anything of the Urquharts lately?"
"Yes. Alice was married the other day--to a widower with fourteen
children. She has not been very happy at home, I fear, with Harold's
wife. Harold has the place now, you know. Jim gave it up to him when he
married."
"When who married?"
"Harold."
"What's Jim doing?"
"He is my manager at Redford."
Mr Dalzell smiled darkly. "He likes that, I suppose?"
"I don't know whether he likes it or not, I'm sure, but I do. I know
that everything's right when he is there."
"Married?" "Lawks, no! The most confirmed old bachelor on the face of
the earth."
They fell silent again, still gazing into the room. Deb lay back and
fanned herself; Claud leaned forward and nursed his knee. He ought now
to have asked news of her sisters, but he avoided mentioning any of
them.
"Been back lately, Deb?"
"Not for years, I am ashamed to say."
"Anybody living at Redford?"
"Miss Keene and a few servants only. Too bad, isn't it? Oh, I must go
soon and see the old place. But this European life--somehow, the longer
you live it the less you feel you can live any other."
"I used to feel that. But now--one gets awfully tired of things--"
"Oh, I don't!"
"But then you keep so horribly young, don't you know."
He turned and looked at her. She flushed up like a girl.
"Thank you. That's a very pleasing compliment, although I know you
cannot mean it."
"I'd like not to mean it. I'd like to have found you as old as I am
myself."
"How cruel of you! Not that you are such a Methuselah as you would try
to make out--"
"There are not five years between us," he broke in sharply.
"I know."
Back went memory in a flash to a succession of childish birthdays,
their love-tokens and festive celebrations. His was in November, and
his "party" was usually a picnic. Hers was in May, and was "kept" in
the house, with big fires and a tea-table crowned with a three-tiered
iced cake, and blind-man's-buff and turn-the-trencher in the evening.
She recalled wild contests with an imperious little boy, who could
never conquer her except by stooping to it; and the self-conscious
silliness of their behaviour to each other when they grew from children
into boy and girl.
"Not much fun in birthdays now, Deb." He seemed to comment on her
thoughts.
"Oh, well!" she sighed vaguely.
And at that instant the music stopped. Someone gave the signal to
retire from the ball-room, bedwards. They were parted by the crowd that
gathered about them when the dancing ceased, and he did not find her
again even to say good-night.