It was mid-June, but no Londoner of any intelligence could possibly have
guessed it, because, instead of the temperature being absolutely Arctic,
it was extremely warm--a condition of things which in England we are not
accustomed to associate with the midsummer months. Middlesex, we must
suppose, had somehow come into conjunction with the Dog-star, who had
bent his beneficent rays onto the county, and given birth to a whole
week-long litter of delicious dog-days. It was really hot; there was
really a sun, a big, blazing, golden sun, instead of the lemon-coloured
plate which in general shines so very feebly and remotely through the
fog and dark mists of Thames-side, and this was not only delightful in
itself, but it actually made the shade a delightful thing to get into.
The tops of omnibuses were thick with folk, and the Londoner of even the
parks and palaces left the black silk tube, with which he is accustomed
to roast and destroy his few remaining hairs, at home, and wore a straw
hat instead, even when he went out, as he usually did, to lunch--and
didn't care. Indeed, there was no reason why he should, since only the
obviously insane wore top-hats in such weather, and insanity was surely
a more serious defect to have on the head than straw. A thin blue haze
hung over distances. Piccadilly, a hundred yards away, had a bloom upon
it like the dust on a ripe plum, and horses (those intelligent animals)
had followed the lead of their masters, and wore straw hats too, with
rims coquettishly raised at the sides to allow plenty of ear-play.
Sarsaparilla was on tap out of large yellow barrels, and the
irresponsible happiness which only fine weather or a consciousness of
virtue so pronounced as to be priggish can give, flooded the town like
the sunshine itself. It may still be a question whether it is happiness
that makes people good, or virtue that makes people happy, but there can
be no doubt at all that beautiful weather makes us all somewhat kinder
and more charitably disposed than we are wont to be in March, and also
immensely happy, so that the Zadkiel of spiritual almanacs will probably
be right in prophesying the coincidence of the millennium with real
midsummer weather.
* * * * *
The haze of heat which made a plum of Piccadilly, which the progressive
London County Council, after their affectionate visit to the broad
boulevards of Paris, had, at enormous expense, widened by at least six
inches, dealt still more magically, having more suitable material to
work upon, with the Green Park, as seen from the windows of Thurso
House, and with Thurso House as seen from the Green Park. For it was a
great square Italian palace, which looked as if it had been taken
straight from the Grand Canal at Venice, and its stately white walls of
Portland stone, with its long rows of tall windows, wore an air of
extraordinary distinction among its squat or gawky neighbours. The
entrance to it, faced by a deep covered porch, supported on
Roman-Corinthian pillars, was in Arlington Street, while towards the
Park it was faced by a broad stone terrace, from which two curved
staircases went down into the small formal Italian garden, screened from
the Park itself by a hedge of tall lilacs. Thus, though it stood in the
very centre of the beating heart of London, it was admirably quiet, and
the bustle and hum of the streets came muffled to it, not causing
disturbance and distraction, but rather stimulating to activity by its
persistent though gentle reminder that the world was very busy indeed.
The dining-room was at the back of the house, and opened onto the broad
terrace that ran the whole length of the building, and to-day the row of
its eight huge windows was thrown wide, so that the lace curtains that
prevented the Park lounger from looking in, but allowed the diner to
look out, swayed and bulged and were withdrawn in the hot summer breeze
that came like breaking waves against them, while the bourdon note of
the busy town came in like the hum of great bees burrowing into golden
flowers. Listening, you could divide the noise up into its component
parts. The sound of human voices was there, and the tread of feet, the
clip-clop of single horses, the tattoo of the hoofs of pairs, and the
throb and rattle of machine-driven vehicles; but the ear receiving it
without poised attention knew only that many busy lives were active, and
many wheels rolling.
The room itself was parquetted with oak and walnut, and the floor, as
befitted the heat and the season, was left bare, except for some
half-dozen of silk Persian rugs that made shimmering islands on the sea
of its shining surface. The wall which faced the Park was, indeed,
rather window than wall, and was unadorned but for the brocaded curtains
which were looped back from the windows; but the other three walls
glowed with the presentments of bygone Raynhams. The first Lord Thurso
was there, and his son, the first Earl, a portrait in peer's robes by
Reynolds, who had also painted the superb picture of his wife, and the
great family group of them, with their two sons and a daughter, which
hung over the Italian chimney-piece. The second Earl was there, too, the
eldest boy in the family group, grown to man's estate, and painted by
Gainsborough. The picture of his wife was a Romney, with the red
jewelled shadows of that master, while Lawrence was the artist for the
next generation. Then, after a gap, bridged over in part by the elder
Richmond, came the present Thurso and his wife, two brilliant and
startling canvases, claiming kinship by right of their exquisite art
with the earlier masters.
In other respects--for nothing could spoil these glorious decorations or
the more smouldering brilliance of the painted ceiling--the room did not
at this moment appear at the level of its best possibilities, for the
floor was "star-scattered" with a multitude of small round tables in
preparation for the supper of the ball that was to take place that
night; while at the end, in front of the chimney-piece, was a long,
narrow table, laid on one side only, for the very elect. Though
numerous, they were to be very elect indeed, and whole constellations of
stars and yards of garters would not find a place there to-night, but
shine at the small round tables. In any case, however, so Catherine
Thurso had arranged, everybody was going to have proper things to eat
and drink, which should be presented to her guests' notice in decent
fashion. There was to be no buffet-supper for the mere rank and file,
where, as at the refreshment-room of a railway-station, her friends
would scramble for sandwiches and pale yellow drinks, with mint and
anise and cummin floating about in them, among footmen who jogged their
elbows with plates of strawberries, while the elect, Olympian-wise,
refreshed themselves behind closed doors. To-night, in fact, Thurso
House was to be reopened with a due regard for its stateliness and the
huge hospitality that it ought to exercise after a period of ten lean
years, so to speak, in which the late lord had lived alone here, with
half the rooms closed, a secret and eccentric life. He had not even been
wicked and held infamous revel, which would have been picturesque and
full of colour; but he had only been morose, and shut himself up;
miserly, and had not entertained anybody; gouty, and devoted to port. He
had died just a year ago, and to-night the house was going to be
launched again, after its period of dry-dock. Lady Thurso would almost
have liked to rechristen it too. It was associated in her mind and in
the mind of everybody else with such a very disagreeable old gentleman.
* * * * *
Lady Thurso, during these ten lean years, in which she and her husband
had "pigged it," as she expressed it, in a poky little house in
Grosvenor Square, owing to the tightness of the purse-strings, had laid
very solid foundations for the position she meant to occupy when she
should be installed here. She fully intended to be magnificent, and to
fill the place of mistress of this house in a manner worthy of it. But
no one had a greater contempt than she for the modern hostess, who makes
use of her time and money and position only to give enormous
caravanserai entertainments, and to spend the rest of her days in going
to similar functions provided by her friends. Such methods were futile:
they never led to anything worth doing, while those who thought that by
lavish entertainment they could get, socially speaking, anywhere that
was worth getting to, made an even greater error. She had seen during
these last ten years the incessant invasion of London by those whose
sole invasive power was money and the willingness to spend it to any
extent in order to be considered what is called "smart." And she
entirely disagreed with those ignorant and old-fashioned moralists who
shook their heads and lifted up their voices in lamentations over the
capitulation of London to the almighty dollar. London--all London that
was worth anything, that is to say--had not, with all due deference to
the loud crowings from Farm Street, capitulated in the very least to the
almighty dollar, and those--there were many of them--who imagined that
they were making a great splash in the world, and were becoming of
social importance, merely because they were rich and willing to spend
their money on bands and prima-donnas and ortolans, made a mistake
almost pathetic in its ineptitude. Such folk never got anywhere really.
They never became _intime_ with the society they coveted, however many
weird parties they gave, where one met the latest African explorer, or
looked at magic-lantern slides of the bacillus of cholera, or turned out
all the lights and observed the antics of radium, or listened (this was
rather popular this year, for everybody was bent on improving his mind)
to short lectures on the ideals of England or the remoteness of the
stars. The poor dears thought they were laying the foundation of what
they considered "smartness," whereas they were only turning their houses
into free restaurants, where the world, with the merest commonsense,
went to be fed, if it had nothing better to do. There were, of course,
others who had some further capacity than that of mere spending--people
who were witty, agreeable, and with the power to charm. Certainly, their
wealth helped such of them as desired, for some inexplicable reason, to
have the details of their parties in the _Morning Post_; but it was not
their wealth that gave them success, but their wit. As if anybody of
sense cared whether the latest sensation of the music-halls came and did
conjuring tricks or not, or whether they ate cold beef or picked and
pecked through a two-hour dinner! What made going out to dinner pleasant
was the intercourse with pleasant people, not the screeching of an
operatic tenor or performing dogs. Of course, many people would go
anywhere in order to be fed, if the food was decent; but then they
"wiped their mouths and went their journey," leaving the poor
self-deceived hostess to think that she was going hand over hand up the
social ladder.
Catherine Thurso, being half American by birth, was a compatriot of many
of these, and her short, perfectly modelled nose went instinctively into
the air when she thought of them. In London, she was sure, you could not
become of any importance merely by spending money, though many people
thought you could, and, indeed, thought they had. In New York, it is
true, such a thing was not only possible, but easy, for there, so it
seemed to her, the standard of social success was the preposterous
character of your extravagance. But those who thought that the same
recipe was good in London were wanting in the sense of moral geography.
Wealth in London brought to your house shoals of the Hon. Mrs.
Not-quite-in-it, second-rate pianists, and the crowd of everybody else
who wanted to get on. Or if you flew a little higher in the way of
intelligence, you could get harmless little connoisseurs who were full
of second-rate information about the world in general and their own
branch of art, who picked up mouldy Correggios and doubtful
Stradivariuses. The cream of the second-rate could be skimmed by the
wealthy, but unless they were something more, they got no higher than
that. Your wealth could give you that and publicity, and the fatal error
these pathetic climbers fell into lay in thinking that publicity meant
celebrity, and that the fact that you had "been seen in the Park,
looking charming," meant anything at all. Her "ten lean years" had
certainly not been spent in these futile strivings.
At this moment she was sitting with Jim Raynham, her husband's younger
brother, and Ruby Majendie--who, she hoped, would soon persuade Jim to
marry her, for the sake of the happiness of them both--having lunch at
one of those little round tables in the dining-room, in order to direct
the decoration of the room for the supper this evening. Time, as usual,
was precious with her to-day, and the minutes in which it was necessary
to sit at a table and eat could thus be used. She had just given orders
that all the hydrangeas, pale pink and pale blue, of which a perfect
copse had been made at the far end of the room, should be taken away
again, for really the Italian fireplace was much more decorative.
"Besides, hydrangeas always remind me of Mr. James Turner," she said in
parenthesis.
"And who is he?" asked Jim.
"He isn't he--he's it. It's a little art gentleman, plump, like a
bullfinch, with a little grey moustache. You must know him, because,
when one lunches or dines out, he is invariably there, and he is
invariably the one person whom one can't remember. Hydrangeas remind me
of him, because he looks as if he had been grown in a pot in a
moderately warm greenhouse. He is like a hydrangea beginning to get
stout, just as those dreadful shrubs are. He always opens conversation
by saying that I cut him the other day in Bond Street. I explain that I
didn't see him, which is quite true. I never can see him."
The florist had removed all the hydrangeas except a small group that
screened the centre of the grate. These were the "choicest," and he
waited for further orders.
"No, take them all away," called out Lady Thurso. "All, every one. Isn't
it so, Ruby?"
Ruby put her head on one side and looked.
"Yes, quite right," she said. "I wish you wouldn't always be right.
Nobody else would have thought of having nothing there."
"Because people don't see the value of empty places," said she. "They
want to fill everything up--the walls, the fireplaces, the hours,
everything. Oh, think of the unemployed! How nice it sounds! One works
and subscribes and does all kinds of things for them, but if only they
would be as kind, and work for the employed, so that they might be
unemployed! Fancy having time to do nothing at all! That is the
condition which I envy, though, of course, if it were offered me, like
so many things I envy, I would not accept it, because it would mean
parting with my individuality. But I would really give any sum to be
able to buy a couple of hours this afternoon."
"What for?"
"Why, to be unemployed. I want to sit in a chair and doze if I like. No,
I think that would be waste; but for two hours to feel that I had
nothing whatever to do. Who was it--Queen Elizabeth, I think--who said
she wanted to be a milkmaid? Don't you understand? I understand that
enormously. I would even be a hydrangea, and stand in a pot, or be Mr.
James Turner in his curator's room, with nothing to do until it is
closing time. Instead, I am supposed to belong to the leisured classes,
and never have a moment. No ferns, either," she called to the
florist--"nothing at all."
A footman was markedly waiting at her elbow to get in a word edgeways.
"The carriage is round, my lady," he said.
Lady Thurso hastily finished an egg in aspic, with which she had begun
lunch.
"For me?" she said.
"Yes, my lady. It was ordered for a quarter-past two."
Lady Thurso pressed her fingers against her eyelids for a moment.
"I can't remember," she said. "Go to my room quickly, and bring me a
large blue engagement-book--the one with 'Where am I?' written on it.
And bring me anything--cold mutton or bread and cheese."
She turned to Ruby.
"And I am so hungry!" she cried. "And it is exceedingly likely I shall
have to fly off without any lunch. Oh, if I were only unemployed for two
hours, I should spend one in eating! Besides, I had no breakfast, and is
one egg in aspic sufficient for an active female until tea-time?"
Ruby laughed.
"It wouldn't be for this one," she said. "But why no breakfast? Is that
a new plan?"
"New? No; it's as old as the hills, for that delightful old Professor,
the one like a pink bear at the British Museum, told me the other
day----"
"Is he a hydrangea, too?" asked Jim.
"Not at all. When one goes out to lunch, he is the one person in the
room whom everybody knows. Don't interrupt. He told me that the ancient
Egyptians never had any breakfast, because the word for breakfast is the
same as afternoon, or something of the sort--and think how marvellous
they were! I've been an ancient Egyptian for nearly a fortnight."
"But they never had motor-cars," said Jim. "It may have been that."
"Oh, how flippant! How could we ever get anywhere without them,
considering how frequently we don't, even with them? Ah, now for the
book!"
Catherine turned hurriedly over the pages of "Where am I?" and found
where she was. She breathed a sigh of relief as she closed it again.
"Thank Heaven!" she said, "because otherwise I really shouldn't have
tasted food since yesterday until tea-time. Send the carriage back,
please. It's only the bazaar at St. Ursula's, and I told them I almost
certainly couldn't go. Besides, the Princess is opening it, so I
needn't. I should only have to stand up and curtsey, and agree that the
day is vile."
"It isn't," said Jim.
"I know; but one can't argue. Oh, the carriage must come back in twenty
minutes," she added to the footman.
Jim helped himself largely to the next course.
"Catherine, that is the first time you have ever disappointed me," he
said. "I thought you would always rather go somewhere and do something
than sit down and be comfortable. I thought you never even wanted to be
unemployed."
"I don't really," said she. "I only think I do."
"But, anyhow, you prefer to have lunch than go to St Ursula's."
"Ah, you don't understand! I have got to be at the Industrial Sale at
three, in order to open it myself, and I literally haven't enough
minutes to get down to St Ursula's, and stand and grin, and get back to
Portland Place by three. It couldn't happen. My anxiety was that the
quarter-past two engagement might leave me time, if I had no lunch, to
get to Portland Place at three. It won't. Hurrah!"
Lady Thurso poured herself out a glass of very hot water from a
blanketed jug that stood at her elbow, and drank it in rapid sips. She
never took alcohol in any form, except on those rare occasions when she
was really dead beat, and had to do something energetic the next moment.
But since every fad appealed to her, she, Athenian-wise, in her desire
for some new thing, tried them all. She had just abandoned, in fact, the
plan of drinking nothing whatever at meals, but sipping distilled water
at eleven in the morning and half-past three in the afternoon. It seemed
to suit her quite well, but as she was, and had always been, in perfect
health already, there was nothing particular to be gained by it, whereas
for other reasons the _régime_ was inconvenient, since at those hours
when she ought to be sipping distilled water she was usually very busy,
and either forgot, or, as at a bazaar, was so placed that distilled
water was practically unattainable. So, just for the moment, she drank
hot water at meals, and found it suited her as well as everything else.
"Good gracious, what nonsense people talk," she said, "when they speak
of the idle and luxurious upper classes! Look at us all. From the King
downwards, we are worked to death for the sake of the classes who revile
us. I stopped in the Park the other day to listen to one of those
unwashed orators of the Marble Arch. He read out from a grimy newspaper
that the King had been shooting somewhere, and was to return next day
'in a motor-car,' said the speaker, with unspeakable irony, and there
were groans. Oh, how I longed to speak, too--but I hadn't time--and
remind them that he did a far longer day's work than any two of them put
together, and would come up in a motor-car because otherwise he couldn't
open the new wing of the Ophthalmic Hospital next morning. But that is
just the weak point about Socialism. I am a Socialist until I hear them
talk. Good gracious, how I should welcome an Eight-Hours Bill! It would
be a holiday! Eight hours! Lazy brutes!"
Lady Thurso paused for a moment to eat the slice of cold mutton which
she had ordered. Having been a disciple of Dr. Haig for several months
in the past year, she had veered round, and now ate hardly anything but
meat and pulses. She felt magnificently well.
"Not long ago, too, I saw an article in some Socialistic paper," she
said, "which struck me as exceedingly forcible, and I wrote to the
author, asking him to come and see me at ten one morning, and booked
the engagement when I heard from him. I was interested in what he said;
I wanted to know what he went on. He came on the morning in question,
but at half-past ten, and what was the reason, do you think? Because he
had only just got up! He told me so himself. But I was anxious to do him
justice, and said I supposed he had gone to bed very late the night
before. Not at all; he had been in bed by twelve. And there was I, who
had not gone to bed till four, expecting and waiting for this bedridden
creature! And he had written about the indolence of me! Ah, that week I
had felt strong Socialistic leanings, but he cured me at once. Thurso
was so funny, too. He shuffled--you know Thurso's shuffle of
disapproval--when I told him about it. Why shouldn't I have seen the
man? I was interested, until I saw him, anyhow."
Jim considered this. He was not a person of action, but liked inquiring
into motive. It was this that made Catherine almost despair of getting
him to marry Ruby; he could easily spend so many years in theoretical
study of the advantages and drawbacks of matrimony.
"Is that sufficient?" he asked. "May one do anything that one finds
interesting?"
"Certainly, if it doesn't injure anybody. The first rule of life is to
give other people a good time if you can; the second is not to hurt them
under any pretext; and the third to enjoy yourself in every other way.
That is why I adore what Thurso calls "quackery" of all kinds. I love
discovering the secret of life which solves everything for about ten
minutes. I have--what did the pink bear say?--oh yes: the most
insatiable appetite for novelties. Wasn't it darling of him? It keeps
one busy, and that, after all, is the true elixir of life. I should be
miserable if I hadn't got more to do than I can possibly manage."
"But just now you said you would give anything for a couple of
unemployed hours this afternoon," said Ruby.
"I know, because the flesh was weak, and I was very hungry and
dog-tired. I feel better now--nearly ready to begin again."
Ruby turned her pale Botticelli face towards her.
"How you can go on, I don't know," she said. "You play all the time we
play, and work all the time we rest. You make me feel lazy too, which I
resent."
"Darling, I will make you feel industrious this afternoon," said
Catherine, "because I want you and Jim to stop here, and criticise and
alter and direct till the ballroom and this room and the staircase are
all absolutely perfect. You know what I want done: I want you to see
that it is done. Don't judge by daylight only. Have the blinds and
curtains drawn, and see that it looks right by electric light. I shall
not be able to get home till just before dinner, and then it will be
too late. English decorators are hopeless; they know as much about
decoration as I know about the lunar theory. I wonder they haven't sent
some plush monkeys climbing up into spiders' webs to hang in the
windows."
"They sent hundreds of yellow calceolarias," said Ruby, "which is about
as bad. I sent them all back. And poor Mr. Hopkinson didn't seem to know
what wild-flowers were, when I told him you wanted wild-flowers all up
the staircase."
"He knows now," remarked Lady Thurso.
* * * * *
It was probable that poor Mr. Hopkinson did "know now," for ever since
morning tall flowering grasses, meadow-sweet, cornflowers, cistus,
ox-eye daisies, tendrils of wild-rose, clumps of buttercups, and all the
myriad herbage of rural June, had been poured into the house, and the
staircase, with great boughs of hawthorn and rose overhanging the
lowlier growths, was like an apotheosised lane lying between ribands of
shaded hayfield. Lady Thurso, inheriting the American love of doing
something which has never been done before, a thing which leads to
failure in a dozen cases, and hits the bull's-eye on the lucky
thirteenth, had never been better inspired, and the staircase, a rather
heavy and not very admirable feature in the house, had been gloriously
transformed by the lightness and spring of this feathery decoration. But
poor Mr. Hopkinson's ignorance of what wild-flowers were had been capped
by his ignorance of how wild-flowers grew, and the original order to
decorate the stairs with only wild-flowers had led to his placing the
poor dears in neat and orderly rows, as in a riband bed. Consequently,
he and his assistant florists had, about twelve-thirty that morning, to
demolish and begin all over again, having first, under Lady Thurso's
supervision, "made a salad" of all these fragrant hampers of flowers and
grasses, and then stuck them "properly"--that is to say, absolutely at
random--into the trays of moist clay and troughs of water that lined
each side of the staircase, which would keep them alive and bright-eyed
till morning.
There was still five minutes before the carriage came, and Lady Thurso,
"while the bread was yet in her mouth," hurried out to see if Mr.
Hopkinson had at length grasped the nature of her scheme. It appeared
that he had. The staircase was a country lane, just as she had
visualised it. And, somehow, with the adaptability that was as natural
to her as is the sympathetic change of colour in a chameleon, as she
stood below a clump of flowering hawthorn, she looked, for all her air
of the world and patrician aspect, like some exquisite milkmaid, the
embodiment of Queen Elizabeth's ideal. But the milkmaid had the critical
eye, and she looked very slowly and carefully up and down this vista of
the hayfields.
She examined and re-examined.
"More buttercups in that corner," she said--"all in a clump like
sunlight--and another big bough of hawthorn--two boughs. Not twigs like
that, just buttonholes, but boughs."
She waited, sitting on the top step with Ruby, till this was done; then
eagerly, but carefully, she looked at it again with her eyes half shut.
"I _think_ it will do," she said, "but please have all the curtains
drawn, dear Ruby, and look at it by electric light. I'm not sure there
is enough yellow even yet. I hope it won't give Thurso hay-fever, for he
and I will be planted here till the royal quadrille begins. He and Maud
get here this afternoon."
"And the typhoid?" asked Ruby.
"For the last week there has been no further case," she said, "and
everybody is getting better. No deaths for the last week, either. It
looks as if it is all over. I was quite wrong, it seems, about the need
of Thurso's going there. It seems that he was of the utmost use in
making the people obey doctors' orders. I had not thought of that; it
was stupid of me."
This was completely characteristic of her. If she were wrong, she owned
up at once. It spared one the degradation of arguing against one's
convictions.
"But I hope he will stop in town for the rest of the season," she went
on. "People already think it is odd of him to be in Scotland now; and
though it matters very little what people think, it is much better that
they should not think at all."
"And Maud?" asked Ruby.
"It is from her I had all this news, though I have been
writing--type-writing, I should say--to Thurso. Maud was interesting.
She told me about a Mr. Cochrane, to whom Thurso let the fishing. He is
a Christian Scientist, which sounds silly, but Maud says she saw him
cure a bad case. She writes quite gravely, too, as if she really
believed it, and she is not fanciful. I think I shall study Christian
Science next August."
"Why August?"
"Because I sha'n't have any time in July. Oh yes, and Maud did not know
that the fishing was let--so like Thurso not to tell her--and was caught
by Mr. Cochrane poaching in his river. He wasn't annoyed, it appears,
though it certainly ought to have been annoying. Do you think I shall
never be annoyed any more if I study Christian Science all August?"
"Oh, conceal your want of annoyance, then," said Ruby, "and in any case
don't get the Christian Science smile. It wouldn't suit you, and it is
particularly fatiguing for others. Alice Yardly has it. That is why I
can't look at her any more."
Lady Thurso was still not quite satisfied with her staircase, or, at any
rate, she wanted to be sure that she was.
"Still more buttercups," she proclaimed. "A hundred--two hands full of
them."
Then she detached herself again completely, and turned to Ruby.
"Oh, you must be just, Ruby," she said. "Alice was always fatiguing,
whether she smiled or not, and she is not really more fatiguing now than
she used to be. Maud loves her, and so do I, and we both yawn our heads
off when she is with us. It is true that she now seems to smile with a
purpose, but if we didn't know she was a Christian what's-his-name, we
shouldn't notice the change. Her plan is to be helpful now, but she is
just as helpless as ever, so it doesn't matter. Of course, nobody can
really help anybody else. We all have to help ourselves."
"Then, why do you spend your life----" began Ruby.
"In bazaars and industries, you mean. I hardly know. I daresay you think
it is insincere--that I ought to sell the diamond palisade and the ruby
plaster, or induce Thurso to do so. But I am sincere. I want to live a
gorgeous life, and I will. At the same time, I am delighted to work
while you rest, as you said, if my work will make some poor wretches in
Caithness a little less uncomfortable. If I didn't, I should lie awake
at night, thinking about them. That would be uncomfortable for me, too,
so you are quite at liberty to suppose that it is all selfishness--refined
selfishness, if you like, which is the worst sort. Certainly, if I
wasn't a very hard-working woman, which I am, I should have bad dreams
by day, as well as no sleep at night."
Again she paused.
"And I've been talking about myself," she said, "which you will allow is
unusual. And the carriage is here, and I must go. Ruby, you see the idea
of the corner, don't you? It must be sunlight--sunlight of buttercups,
bless them! Oh, to be a milkmaid, now that June is here! But otherwise
don't let them touch the staircase any more. It is so nearly what I
meant it to be that it is safer not to run any risks. It is darling of
you to stop and superintend these stupid people. And please, if they
bring any gardenia or tuberose, make them take it away, like the
calceolarias. Gardenias are so 'powerful.' What a heavenly expression! I
am sure it was invented at Clapham. The same people say 'carriage sweep'
and 'soiled handkerchiefs.' I hate the middle classes!"
* * * * *
Lady Thurso would probably have been much surprised if she had been told
that she was a genius, because she had a dim idea that, in order to be,
or, rather, have been, a genius, it was necessary to live a sordid and
unsuccessful life, and to die prematurely and unnoticed in a garret. But
if the stock definition of genius was at all correct, she had a very
reasonable claim to the title, for her power of taking pains bordered on
the infinite. It made no matter to her on what she was engaged.
Whatever she did, she approached her task with the transcendent aim for
perfection, and whether it was the decoration of her staircase, or the
speech that she had to make at the Industrial Sale, she bestowed on it
the utmost effort of which she was capable. Another gift crowned this,
which, though almost as rare, is not less remunerative; for when her
utmost pains had been bestowed, she could dismiss the subject from her
mind, and not worry about it any more. Thus now, the moment she had left
her door, the staircase decoration ceased to exist for her. She had done
her best, and her connection with it was severed. The speech, too, that
she would have to make in a quarter of an hour was non-existent also,
since this morning she had thought it over till she knew no more to
think, had written it down, and had said it aloud to herself until she
was perfectly satisfied that she knew what she wanted to say, and could
say it.
This being so, she abandoned herself to the joy of looking about her--a
fascinating pursuit, if one looks with intelligence. It was she, in
fact, who was the author of a word that had gone round London--namely,
that by driving for an hour at the right time and through the right
streets you could, without exchanging a word with anybody, know all that
the morning papers had contained of importance, and predict all that
would be in the evening sheets. In the course of such a drive you could
see the leader of what had been the Opposition and was now the
Government stepping into a hansom, with a face elate but anxious, at his
door in Grosvenor Square. The hansom argued a sudden emergency. There
was no luggage, and the probable goal was Buckingham Palace. Who, then,
was the new Prime Minister? Again, in Chesham Place you could see the
Russian Ambassador getting into his motor, with luggage piled on the
top. Clearly, then, he was going out of town, and an amelioration in
Russian affairs might reasonably be argued, since it was impossible
that he should leave if the crisis were as critical as it had been
yesterday. Or, again, the blinds were down where A was very ill, the
blinds were still up where B was yesterday supposed to be critically ill
after an operation. Therefore, A had thought worse of it, and died; B
had thought better of it, and still lived. Then there was a block at
Hyde Park Corner, and the royal liveries flashed by. The new Prime
Minister would only just get to Buckingham Palace first.
But much as she observed, it was probable that, as far as observation
went, she was more the victim than the priest, for in all the little
London world which is called the great there was no one at this moment
quite so important as she. She "mattered"--a thing of rare occurrence in
so republican a place--and she mattered publicly, openly, superbly. In
the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of London life, in which nothing, neither
beauty nor blood nor wit, nor any pre-eminence, carries with it any
certain distinction, she was just now the centre of the whole astounding
mixture of sordidness and brilliance, of intelligence and stupidity.
To-morrow or next year, as she knew quite well, it might be a music-hall
artist, or a foreign king, or a twopenny philosopher, or an infant
prince, or somebody who played tunes on his front teeth, who would
absorb general attention, but just now it was she. She rated "general
attention" at about its proper value, knowing quite well that the
affection of one friend was worth all the general attention of a
century; but she found that it was, as she expressed it, "rather fun."
The movements and conjunction of these stars and planets of London life
are far more inscrutable than the vagaries of the simpler constellations
of the heaven, but just at this moment Catherine Thurso was the central
sun round which all else revolved. There were twenty other people who
had wealth, beauty, and charm in no less degree than she, though in the
matter of beauty forty-nine Parises out of fifty would have awarded the
golden apple to this Juno among women, and the world, for that reason or
another, had chosen her to be their temporary idol. She was the person
who mattered, and this was her hour. And her hour, no less than her own
enjoyment of it, she used, as Thurso had said, magnificently, for it
really seemed as if charity, no less than social entertainment, would
collapse without her support. She made herself a slave to any scheme
that helped the helpless, or encouraged the would-be worker to work, and
yet all the time she lived, and intended to live, gorgeously. So, like
the driver of a pair of horses, she did not suffer the social horse to
be lazy or shirk its work, for she knew (and acted on the knowledge)
that her social distinction brought buyers to her bazaars. She played,
therefore, the brilliant woman of the world for all it was worth, in
order to assist deserving objects, though she enjoyed the _rôle_
enormously for its own sake. Both horses, charitable and social, felt
her indefatigable lash, and she spurred herself on, just as she spurred
on all those who surrounded her, inducing activity in them by the
spectacle of her own glorious vitality.
Anyone as radically efficient as Catherine Thurso undoubtedly was has to
march through life with as few impedimenta as possible, and all
emotional baggage which is not likely to be needed must be firmly left
behind. She had long ago realised this, and had always acted on it, so
that now it was more from force of habit than by any conscious effort
that she eliminated from her mind any emotion on its first appearance if
it was likely to clog or hinder her energies. Worry, sorrow, regret for
all that was past or irremediable, she simply threw away as one throws
the envelopes of opened letters into the wastepaper basket. They were of
no earthly use; they but made an unprofitable litter if they were
allowed to lie about, nor did you want the drawers and compartments in
your brain crammed with rubbish like this. Thus, it was but very seldom
that she let her thoughts dwell on the one great thing that she had
missed all her life. She had never loved. Her marriage with Thurso had,
as the Press most truly announced, "been arranged," and she had fallen
in with this arrangement. Even as a girl she had wanted the sort of
position and opportunity that such a marriage gave her, and she had
made, certainly outwardly, and to a very considerable extent inwardly,
the most splendid success of it. She had done her duty, too, as a wife
in giving him three sons, and had filled her place superbly. But love
had never really come to her. That, by no fault of hers, had apparently
been left out of her emotional equipment, and since she was convinced
that this omission was not her fault, and that it was out of her power
to remedy it, she did not worry about it. But to-day, though she did not
worry, she could not help wondering about a certain time now long past
in her life, since it was conceivable that certain things which as yet
belonged only to time long past would begin to be factors in her life in
the immediate future. So now that the question of the staircase and the
coming speech at the Industrial Sale were off her mind, these things
occupied her somewhat insistently. There was no mystery about it all,
and nothing whatever to fear either in the past or the future; but
certain possibilities interested her.
Count Villars had just arrived in England, having at an extraordinarily
early age--for he could be scarcely forty yet--been appointed Hungarian
Ambassador to the Court of St. James; and there were quite a number of
people resident in that parish who remembered very distinctly how
desperately he had fallen in love with Catherine Thurso twelve years
ago, when she had first come out, and, as her mother expressed it, taken
"the shine" out of the rest of the girls of the year. Then, so the world
still remembered, rather perplexing events had happened in rapid
succession. Her engagement to young Villars had been actually supposed
to have taken place, but hardly had that become news when it was
contradicted, and Villars, then a junior secretary in the Embassy of
which he was now the head, had been transferred elsewhere; while before
the season was over Catherine Etheridge's engagement to her present
husband was formally announced, and was followed before the end of the
year by her marriage. For Mrs. Etheridge had always meant that her
daughter should marry Lord Raynham, as he then was; and if anybody
thought that her plans were going to be interfered with by any volcanic
young Austrian, however brilliant and handsome, without a penny of his
own, and removed by half a dozen lives from the succession to the huge
estates of Villars (those lives certainly made a lot of difference), she
would show him his mistake. There were, in fact, many who thought that
Mrs. Etheridge's plans were going to be interfered with; but their
mistake had been duly demonstrated to them when Catherine Etheridge so
soon after became Catherine Raynham.
* * * * *
Rudolf Villars, in this long interval of twelve years between his abrupt
departure and his return to England, had done everything except marry,
and in all that he did Fortune had declared herself to be his parent.
His really brilliant gifts had reaped their reward before he was too old
to care about success, relations neither near nor dear had died, and he
was now next in succession to the estates of Villars--with only a
decrepit old great-uncle between him and them--and Ambassador to the
English Court. To the world at large this situation, which just now was
being rather largely discussed, had elements of interest. It was known
that Catherine Thurso and her husband were not romantically attached to
each other; it was conjectured that, since Rudolf Villars had remained
single, he was still romantically attached to her, and it was impossible
to help wondering whether at last she would show signs of being attached
to anybody. To the world she was, in spite of her beauty, her charm, her
brilliance, a somewhat irritating enigma. All the glory of her belonged
to nobody. She did not care for her husband, which was a pity, but what
made it worse was that she did not care for anybody else. And so many
men had been wildly devoted to her, and of them all not one had met with
a single particle of success, or, to do her justice, of encouragement,
for she had nothing in common with the flirt. She was not in the least
shocked, either, at their protestations. If she had been, her attitude
would, at any rate, have been a moral and an intelligible one. But she
merely laughed at them, and told them not to be absurd. If they
persisted, she yawned. She forgot all about it, too, a week afterwards,
even if she had been made to yawn very much, asked them to the house as
usual, and was specially friendly.
* * * * *
Catherine Thurso, as will have been gathered, did her duty with
exemplary fullness in the state of life to which her mother, in the
main, had called her. As soon as she married she grasped the idea of
life that her position entailed, if she was to fill it adequately and
with any credit to herself; welcomed the prospect almost with rapture;
and, with all the splendid energies of her mind and body, lived up to a
really high ideal of it. Her time, her talents, and her money were
always at the service of any scheme which she believed to be one that
merited support, and she brought to her task not the sense of duty only,
but a most warm-hearted kindliness. An unsupported sense of duty alone
is a barren road to tread, but her genuine kindliness, her real interest
in those who were in need, made it break out for her into flowers. She
truly cared for the causes at which she so slaved; she wanted everybody
to enjoy himself. But this warmth, this amiability, which pervaded her
nature was both the strongest and the highest motive she knew. She did
everything warmly, but nothing passionately, because it seemed as if
passion had been left out of her nature. Yet sometimes, as on this
afternoon, when the factors for years long past were coming up above the
horizon again, she wondered whether that was quite strictly the case. It
was years, certainly, since any hint or suggestion of it had come near
her, but she remembered now that unquiet and perplexity, half bliss,
half unhappiness, which she had known in those few weeks, and which had
culminated in her half promise (it had not been more than that) to marry
Rudolf Villars. Whatever that feeling was, it had been a bud only,
something unopened, and had never expanded into a flower, for swift
maternal hands had, without any figure of speech, nipped it off. She had
been called a sentimental schoolgirl with such extraordinary assurance
and acidity that she had felt that it must be the case.
But to-day, when she knew that this evening the man who had roused in
her the sentimentality at any rate of a schoolgirl would, after this
long lapse of years, come to her house again, she wondered (though this
was useless emotional baggage) if she would feel anything that would
show her that he had once been different to all others. She had not seen
him since. Probably he was rather bald, rather stout, rather of the
diplomatist type, which seemed to her often to be slightly tinged with
pomposity. Very likely, when his name was announced, she would see a
total stranger, shake hands with a stranger. She almost hoped that this
would prove to be so.
Yes; she did not want to feel again anything which resembled the memory
of that bewildering unrest, which, considering how long ago it all was,
was so strangely vivid still. Her life was very full, she enjoyed it
enormously; she was happy, she was nearly content, and she did not, as
far as she knew herself, wish to risk agitation and upheaval in order to
experience a new emotion. She had seen love, at the most, like distant
lightning winking on the horizon; she did not want the thunderstorm to
come any nearer. She wished it would go away.
* * * * *
Yet, yet ... even now, in the midsummer and zenith of her life, she
sometimes asked herself, "Is this all?" And then, if she allowed herself
to think further, it seemed to her a sorry comedy never to feel more
acutely than she felt, never to be more absorbed, more eager, than this.
Frankly, she did not believe in God, in any huge central force that was
utterly good; and, that being denied her, she felt sometimes that it
would have been something to believe in the devil. But she had never
seen any reason to believe in him either. She had never been tempted to
be wicked, as those moralists would say who believed in the devil. She
was a woman healthy both in mind and body, with countless opportunities
for doing good, of which she availed herself nobly, not because she
believed in God, but because she was of a most kindly nature; and she
was not what is called wicked, because she did not care sufficiently.
Morality, perhaps it would be right to say, had no existence for her,
and she was absolutely moral in thought and action because she had no
real temptation to be otherwise. To her, as a married woman, it seemed
also rather bad form to have a lover; it was not dignified. You had to
play a mean part. But she realised that if only she had ever really
cared for any of those men who certainly had "cared" for her, no moral
code would have stood in her way for a moment. Simply she did not want,
and she wondered whether the failure to want was strength or weakness.
* * * * *
The Industrial Sale went off with the success that always attended any
scheme that she took up, and an hour after she had opened it most of the
stalls were nearly empty, though the prices charged and paid for the
objects sold were of the most fancy order. She herself had sold
stockings, nothing but stockings, and all male London, it appeared, had
been in dire want of stockings. They had been frightfully expensive, but
the sense of her own cheapness in charging so much was counteracted by
the knowledge of the good cause. Irish peasants had made them, and she
willingly lent her place and position in order that Irish peasants might
reap the benefits of what was adventitiously hers. She was sorry for
people who had to live like that; she willingly gave her time, her
energy, even her sense of "cheapness," to help them.
But even before her stall was empty she had seen somebody in the crowd
whom, though she had not seen him for so long, she recognised
instantaneously. He was neither bald nor stout, nor did he look
pompous. He was as she remembered him. And, again, though it had not
come any nearer yet, the distant lightning flickered on the horizon.
Apparently, though he had only arrived in England two or three days ago,
he had still more than two or three friends here, and for half an hour
after she had seen him first he was occupied with hand-shakes and
recognitions. Then, after her stall, which had been so besieged by
purchasers, was bare, he passed and caught her eye.
"Ah, Lady Thurso," he said, in that accurate foreign accent which she
found now that she remembered so well, "a thousand greetings! I tried to
get near your stall, but it was impossible. And I never waste time over
the impossible. But now you have nothing that I can buy, so I, as a
purchaser, am impossible too."
"Yes, I have sold everything," she said. "You are too late."
She, who was generally so apt of speech, so quick to take up a point, or
drop it for another, felt suddenly tongue-tied. She could think of
nothing more to say, though, indeed, as she thought impatiently to
herself, it was his turn. She had spoken last. For, as she stood there
looking at him, finding him so utterly unchanged, in one moment twelve
years had been softly sponged off her life, and some thrill, some
nameless bitter-sweet agitation, flickered through her. She was no
stranger to that feeling; she had felt it before. But for the moment,
infinitesimal in duration, it tied her tongue. It was like some tune
that we have heard in childhood, and suddenly hear again, so that we
must pause and say to ourselves, "What is that?"
Then she partly recovered herself. If he would not speak, she must.
"Being late is almost a crime in a diplomatist," she said. "You should
always be a little earlier than other people."
Then she pulled herself together, determining on her attitude towards
him, and smiled.
"And your Excellency is going to honour my little dance this evening,
are you not?" she said.
A faint smile answered hers, quivering for a moment on his clean-shaven
mouth and being reflected in his dark eyes. "Your Excellency" was a
delicious phrase, considering the last phrase before to-day that he had
heard from that mouth. She--a woman's privilege--had made a map, so to
speak, of their future relations, colouring its boundaries as suited
her. It amused him to pretend that he recognised the validity of them.
"I have already accepted your ladyship's very kind invitation," he
said.