The next morning Clementina put off a sitter, a thing which she had
never done before, and, letting work go hang, made an unprecedented
irruption into Russell Square.
“It’s about this dinner of yours,” she said as soon as Quixtus appeared.
“I telephoned you yesterday that I was coming.”
“And I said, my dear Clementina, that I was more than delighted.”
“It was the morose wart-hog inside me that made me decline,” she said
frankly. “But there’s a woman of sense also inside me that can cut the
throat of the wart-hog when it likes. So here I am, a woman of sense.
Now will you let a woman of sense run this dinner-party for you? Oh—I
know what you may be thinking,” she went on hastily without giving him
time to reply. “I’m not going to suggest liver and bacon and a boiled
potato. I know how things should be done, better than you.”
“I’m afraid I’m inexperienced in entertainments of this kind,” said
Quixtus, with a smile. “Spriggs generally attends to such matters.”
“Spriggs and I will put our heads together,” said Clementina. “I want
you to give rather a wonderful dinner-party. What kind of table
decorations have you?”
Spriggs was summoned. He loaded the dining-room table with family plate
and table-centres and solid cut glass. His pride lay in a mid-Victorian
épergne that at every banquet in the house proudly took the place of
honour with a fat load of grapes and oranges and apples. Clementina set
apart a few articles of silver and condemned the rest including the
épergne as horrors.
“You’ll let me have the pleasure, Ephraim,” she said, “of providing all
the flowers and making out a scheme of decoration. Anything I want I’ll
get myself and make you a present of it. I’m by way of being an artist,
you know, so it will be all right.”
“Could any one doubt it?” said Quixtus. “I am very much indebted to you,
Clementina.”
“A woman comes in useful now and then. I’ve never done a hand’s turn for
you and it’s time I began. You’ll want a hostess, won’t you?”
“Dear me,” said Quixtus, somewhat taken aback. “I suppose I shall. I
never thought of it.”
“I’ll be hostess,” said Clementina. “I’m a kind of aunt to Tommy and
Etta for whom you’re giving the party. I’m a kind of connection of
yours—and you and I are kind of father and mother to Sheila. So it will
be quite correct. Let me have your list of guests and don’t you worry
your head about anything.”
Clementina in her sweeping mood was irresistible. Quixtus, mild man,
could do no more than acquiesce gratefully. It was most gracious of
Clementina to undertake these perplexing arrangements. New sides of her
character exhibited themselves every day. There was only one flaw in the
newly revealed Clementina—her unaccountable disparagement of Mrs.
Fontaine. But even this defect she remedied of her own accord.
“I take back what I said about Mrs. Fontaine,” she said abruptly. “I was
in a wart-hoggy humour. She’s a charming woman, with brilliant social
gifts.”
Quixtus beamed, whereat Clementina felt more wart-hoggy than ever; but
she beamed also, with a mansuetude that would have deceived Mrs.
Fontaine herself.
Clementina, after an intimate interview with a first resentful, then
obfuscated and finally boneless and submissive Spriggs, went her way, a
sparkle of triumph in her eyes. And then began laborious days, during
which she sacrificed many glorious hours of daylight to the arrangements
for the dinner-party. She spent an incredible time in antique shops and
schools of art needlework, and even haunted places near the London docks
hunting for the glass and embroideries and other things she needed. She
ordered rare flowers from florists. She wasted her evenings over a
water-colour design for the table decoration, and over designs for the
menu and name-cards.
“It’s going to be a dinner that people shall remember,” she said to
Etta.
“It’s going to be splendid,” said Etta. “You think of everything,
darling, except the one thing—the most important.”
“What’s that, child?”
“Have you got a dress to wear, darling?”
“Dress?” echoed Clementina, staring at the child. “Why, of course. I’ve
got my black.”
Etta stood aghast. “That old thing you took with you packed anyhow on
the motor trip?”
“Naturally. Isn’t it good enough for you?”
“It’s not for me,” said Etta, growing bold. “I love you in anything.
It’s for the other people. Do go and get yourself a nice frock. There’s
still time. I’ve never liked to tell you before, dear, but the old one
_gapes_ at the back——“—she paused dramatically—“gapes dreadfully.”
“Oh, Lord, let it gape,” cried Clementina impatiently. “Don’t worry me.”
But Etta continued to worry, with partial success. Clementina
obstinately refused to buy new raiment, but consented to call in Miss
Pugsley, the little dressmaker round the corner in the King’s Road, who
fashioned such homely garments as Clementina deigned to wear, and to
hand over the old black dress to her for alterations and repairs. Etta
sighed and spent anxious hours with Miss Pugsley and forced a grumbling
and sarcastic Clementina to stand half clad while the frumpy rag
attained something resembling a fit.
“At any rate there are no seams burst and it _does_ hook together,” said
Etta, dismally surveying the horror at the final fitting.
“Humph!” said Clementina, contemplating herself wryly in the mirror. “I
suppose I look like a lady. Now I hope you’re satisfied.”
Meanwhile such painting as she did in the intervals of her daily
excursions abroad, progressed exceedingly. Tommy coming into the studio
one evening caught sight of the picture of the lady in the grey dress
standing on its easel.
“Stunning!” he cried. “Stunning! You can almost hear the stuff rustle.
How the dickens do you get your texture? You’re a holy mystery. By Jove,
you are! All this”—he ran his thumb parallel with a fold in the
drapery—“all this is a miracle.” He turned and faced her with
worshipping eyes in which the tears were ready to spring. “By God,
you’re great!”
The artist was thrilled by the homage; the woman laughed inwardly. She
had dashed at the task triumphantly and as if by magic the thing had
come out right. She was living, these days, intensely. There was no
miracle that she could not work.
A morning or two afterwards she issued a ukase to Tommy and Etta that
they were to accompany her on an automobile excursion. Tommy to whom she
had constituted herself taskmistress, boyishly glad of the holiday, flew
down Romney Place, and found a great luxurious hired motor standing at
her door. Presently Etta arrived, and then Clementina and Sheila and the
young lovers started. Where were they going? Clementina explained. As
she could not keep Sheila in London during August, she had decided on
taking a furnished cottage in the country. Estate agents had highly
recommended one at Moleham-on-Thames. She was going down to have a look
at it, and wanted their advice. The motor ploughed through the squalor
of Brentford and then sped along the Bath Road, through Colnbrook and
Slough and Maidenhead and through the glorious greenery in which Henley
is embowered, and on and on by winding shady roads, with here and there
a flashing glimpse of river, by fields lush in golden pasture, up and
down the gentle hills, through riverside villages where sleeping gaiety
brings a smile to the eyes, between the high hedges of Oxfordshire
lanes, through the cool verdant mystery of beech woods, until it entered
through a great gateway and proceeded up a long avenue of elms and
stopped before a slumbering red-brick manor-house.
“This the cottage?” asked Tommy.
“Do you think it’s a waterfall?” asked Clementina.
They alighted. A caretaker took the order-to-view given by the estate
agents and conducted the party over the place. The more Tommy saw the
more amazed did he grow. There was a park; a garden; a pergola of roses;
a couple of tennis courts; a lawn reaching to the river. The house,
richly furnished throughout, contained rooms innumerable; four or five
sitting-rooms, large dining-room, billiard room, countless bedrooms, a
magnificent studio; in the grounds another studio.
“I’ll take it,” said Clementina.
“But, my dear,” gasped Tommy, “have you considered? I don’t want to be
impertinent—but the rent of this place must be a thousand pounds a
minute.”
She drew him apart from Etta and Sheila.
“My dear boy,” she said. “For no reason that I can see, I’ve lived all
my life on tuppence a year. It’s only quite lately that I’ve realised
that I’m a very rich woman and can do anything more or less I please.
I’m going to take this place for August and September and hire a
motor-car, and you and Etta are going to stay with me, and you can each
bring as many idiot boys and girls as you choose, and I shall paint and
you can paint and Sheila can run about the garden, and we’re all going
to enjoy ourselves.”
Tommy thrust his hands into the pockets of his grey flannels and
declared she was a wonder. Whereupon they proceeded to Moleham and after
lunch at “The Black Boy,” motored back to Chelsea.
These were days filled with a myriad activities. The dinner-party
engaged her curious attention. She sent back proofs of the menu and name
cards time after time to the firm of art printers before she was
satisfied. Then she took them to Quixtus. He was delighted.
“But, my dear Clementina, why are you taking all this ridiculous
trouble?”
She laughed in her gruff way, and summoned Spriggs to another dark and
awful interview.
A day or two before the dinner, Mrs. Fontaine who, although she had
suggested the idea, did not view a dinner-party as a world-shaking
phenomenon, bethought her of the matter. A pretty little note had
summoned Quixtus to tea. They were alone.
“I have been wondering, my dear Dr. Quixtus,” she said, sweetly, her
soft eyes on his, as soon as she had heard of the acceptances of the
people in whom she was interested—“I have been wondering whether we are
good enough friends for me to be audacious.”
He smiled an assurance.
“If I brought you a few flowers for the table would you accept them? And
if you did, would you let me come and arrange them for you? It would be
such a pleasure. Even the best trained servants can’t give the little
touch that a woman can.”
Quixtus blushed. It was difficult to be ungracious to the flower of
womanhood; yet the flower of womanhood had come too late in the day with
her gracious proposal. He explained, wishing to soften the necessary
refusal, that he had already called in the help of his artistic friends,
Miss Clementina Wing and Tommy Burgrave.
“Why didn’t you send for me? Didn’t you think of me?”
“I did not venture,” said he.
“I have been deluding myself with the fancy that we were friends.” She
sighed and looked at him with feminine significance. “Nothing venture
nothing win.”
But Quixtus, simple soul, was too genuinely distressed by obvious
happenings to follow the insidious scent. With great wisdom Clementina
had shown him her water-colour design, and he knew that Mrs. Fontaine,
with all her daintiness, could not compete with the faultless taste and
poetic imagination of a great artist. He wondered why so finely
sensitive a nature as the flower of womanhood did not divine this. Her
insistence jarred on him ever so little. And yet he shrank from wounding
susceptibilities.
“I never thought you would be interested in such trivial domestic
matters,” said he.
“It is the little things that count.”
For the first time in his intercourse with her, he felt uncomfortable.
Here was the lady maintaining her reproach of neglect. If she took so
much interest in this wretched dinner-party, why had she not offered her
services at once? Unwittingly he contrasted her inaction with
Clementina’s irresistible energy. In answer to her remark he said,
smiling:
“I’m not so sure about that, although it’s often asserted. We lawyers
have an axiom: _De minimis non curat lex_.”
“Pity a poor woman. What on earth does that mean?”
He translated.
“The law is one thing and human sentiment another.”
With all her rough contradiction and violent assertion, Clementina never
pinned him down to a fine point of sentimental argument. There was a
spaciousness about Clementina wherein he could breathe freely. This
close atmosphere began to grow distasteful. There was a slight pause,
which Mrs. Fontaine filled in by handing him his second cup of tea.
“Miss Clementina Wing,” said he, dashing for the open, “is so intimately
associated not only with the object of our little entertainment, but
also with myself in other matters, that I could do no less than consult
her.”
Lena Fontaine bent forward, sugar-tongs in hand, ready to drop a lump
into his cup—a charmingly intimate pose.
“Of course, I understand, dear Dr. Quixtus. And is she really coming to
the dinner?”
“Why not?”
“She’s so—so unconventional. I thought she never went into society.”
“She is honouring me by making an exception in my case,” replied
Quixtus, a little stiffly.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” she said sweetly; but in her heart she
bitterly resented Clementina’s interference. She would get even with the
fishfag for this.
On the morning of the dinner-party Clementina sent for Tommy. He found
her, as usual, at work. She laid down her brush and handed him the
water-colour design.
“I’m too busy to-day to fool about with this silly nonsense. I can’t
spare any more time for it. You can carry out the scheme quite as well
as I can. You’ll find everything there. Do you mind?”
Tommy did not mind. In fact, he was delighted at the task. The artist in
him loved to deal with things of beauty and exquisite colours.
“Shall I give an eye to the wines?”
“Everything’s quite settled. I saw to it yesterday. Now clear out. I’m
busy. And look here,” she cried, as he was mounting the staircase, “I’m
not going to have you or Etta fooling round the place to-day. I’m going
to paint till the very last minute.”
She resumed her painting. A short while afterwards, a note and parcel
came from Etta. From the parcel she drew a long pair of black gloves.
She threw them to the maid, Eliza.
“What shall I do with them, ma’am?”
“Wear ’em at your funeral,” said Clementina.
* * * * *
A few minutes before eight Quixtus stood in the great drawing-room
waiting to receive his guests. On the stroke came Admiral Concannon,
scrupulously punctual, and Etta followed by Tommy, who, having given the
last touches to the table, waylaid her on the stairs. Then came Lady
Louisa Malling and Lena Fontaine demure in pale heliotrope. After them
Lord and Lady Radfield, he, tall and distinguished, with white moustache
and imperial, she, much younger than he, dumpy, expensively dressed,
wearing a false air of vivacity. Then came in quick succession General
and Lady Barnes, Griffiths (Quixtus’s colleague in the Anthropological
Society), and his wife, John Powersfoot (the Royal Academician), Mr. and
Mrs. Wilmour-Jackson, physically polished, vacant, opulent, friends of
Mrs. Fontaine. Gradually the party assembled and the hum of talk filled
the room. During an interval Quixtus turned to Tommy. What had become of
Clementina, who had promised to play hostess? Tommy could give no
information. All he knew about her was that he had stopped at her door
and offered a lift in his cab, and Eliza had come down with a verbal
message to the effect that he was to go away and that Miss Wing was not
coming in his cab. Tommy opined that Clementina was in one of her
crotchety humours. Possibly she would not turn up at all. Etta took
Tommy aside.
“I’m sure that old black frock has split down the back and Eliza is
mending it with black thread.”
Only the Quinns and Clementina to arrive; and at ten minutes past the
Quinns, Sir Edward, Member of Parliament, and Lady, genial, flustered
folk with many apologies for lateness. The hands of the clock on the
mantelpiece marked the quarter. Still no Clementina. Quixtus grew
uneasy. What could have happened? Lena Fontaine turned from him and
whispered to Lord Radfield.
“She has forgotten to put on her boots and is driving back for them.”
Then Spriggs appeared at the door and announced:
“Miss Clementina Wing.”
And Clementina sailed into the room.
For the first and only time in his life did Quixtus lose his courtliness
of manner. For a perceptible instant he stood stock still and stared
open-mouthed. It was a Clementina that he had never seen before; a
Clementina that no one had ever seen before. It was Clementina in a
hundred-guinea gown, gold silk gleaming through ambergris net,
Clementina exquisitely corseted and revealing a beautifully curved and
rounded figure; Clementina with a smooth, clear olive skin, with her
fine black hair coiled by a miracle of the hairdresser’s art,
majestically on her head, and set off with a great diamond comb;
Clementina wearing diamonds at her throat; Clementina perfectly gloved;
Clementina carrying an ostrich feather fan; Clementina erect, proud,
smiling, her strong face illuminated by her fine eyes a-glitter with
suppressed excitement; Clementina a very great lady and almost a
beautiful woman. Those who knew her stared like Quixtus; those who did
not looked at her appreciatively.
She sailed across the room, hand outstretched to Quixtus.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, and so sorry I could not run in to-day. I’ve
been up to my ears in work. I hope Tommy has been a satisfactory
lieutenant.”
“He has most faithfully carried out your instructions,” said Quixtus,
recovering his balance.
Clementina smiled on Mrs. Fontaine. “How d’ye do. How charming to meet
you again. But you’re looking pale to-night, my dear, quite fagged out,
I hope nothing’s the matter.”
She turned round quickly leaving Lena Fontaine speechless with amazement
and indignation, and shook hands with the astonished Admiral. Was this
regal-looking woman the same paint-daubed rabbit-skinner of the studio?
He murmured vague nothings.
“Well, my dears?”
Tommy and Etta thus greeted stood paralysed before her like village
children at a school feast when they are addressed by the awe-inspiring
squire’s lady.
“Pinch me. Pinch me hard,” Tommy whispered, when Clementina had turned
to meet Lord Radfield whom Quixtus was presenting.
“I believe I have the pleasure of taking you down to dinner,” said Lord
Radfield.
“I’m a sort of brevet hostess in this house,” said Clementina. “A bad
one, I’m afraid, seeing how late I am.”
Spriggs announced dinner. Quixtus led the way with Lady Radfield,
Clementina on Lord Radfield’s arm closed the procession. The company
took their places in the great dining-room. Quixtus at the end of the
table by the door sat between Lady Radfield and Lady Louisa. Clementina
at the foot between Lord Radfield and General Barnes. Lena Fontaine had
her place as near Clementina as possible, between Lord Radfield and
Griffiths, a dry splenetic man who had taken her in. Clementina had thus
arranged the table-plan.
The scheme of decoration was too striking in its beauty not to arouse
immediate and universal comment. It was half barbaric. Rich Chinese gold
embroideries on the damask; black and gold lacquer urns, a great
black-and-gold lacquer tray. Black irises, with golden tongues, in
gold-dust Venetian glass; tawny orchids flaring profusely among the
black and gold. Here and there shining though greenery the glow of
golden fruit, and, insistent down the long table, the cool sheen of
ambergris grapes. Glass and silver and damask; black and gold and
ambergris; audacious, startling; then appealing to the eye as perfect in
its harmony.
Quixtus and Tommy each proclaimed the author. All eyes were directed to
Clementina. Attention was diverted to the name-and menu-cards. Lord
Radfield put his name-card into his pocket.
“It is not every day in the week that one takes away a precious work of
art from a London dinner-party.”
Clementina enjoyed a little triumph, the flush of which mounted to her
dark face. With the flush, and in the setting she had prepared for
herself, she looked radiant. Her late entrance had produced a dramatic
effect; the immediate concentration of every one on her work, added to
the commonplace of her reputation, had at once established her as the
central figure in the room; and she sat as hostess at the foot of the
table a symphony in ambergris, gold and black. Woman, in the use of
woman’s weapons, has evolved no laws of fence.
“One might almost have said she did it on purpose,” murmured the
ingenuous Tommy.
“Did what?” asked Etta.
“Why used the table as a personal decoration. Don’t you see how it all
leads up to her—leads up, by Jove, to her eyes and the diamonds in her
hair. And, I say, doesn’t it wipe out Mrs. Fontaine?”
Tommy was right. Lena Fontaine’s pale colouring, her white face and
chestnut hair faded into nothingness against the riot of colour. The
pale heliotrope of her dress was killed. She was insignificant to the
eye. Conscious of this eclipse, hating herself for having put on
heliotrope and yet wondering which of her usual half-tone costumes she
could have worn, she paid her tribute to the designer with acid
politeness. She wished she had not come. Clementina as fishfag and
Clementina as Princess were two totally different people. She could deal
with the one. How could she deal with the other? The irony in
Clementina’s glance made her quiver with fury; her heart still burned
hot with the indignation of the first greeting. She felt herself to be
in the midst of hostile influences. Griffiths, a man of unimaginative
fact, plunged headlong into a discourse on comparative statistics of
accidents to railway servants. She listened absently, angry with Quixtus
for pairing her with so dreary a fellow. Griffiths, irritated by her
non-intelligence, transferred the lecture to his other neighbour as soon
as an opportunity occurred. Lena Fontaine awaited her chance with Lord
Radfield. But Clementina held him amused and interested, and soon drew
General Barnes into the talk. With the slough of her old outer trappings
Clementina had cast off the slough of her abrupt and unconventional
speech. She was a woman of acute intellect, wide reading and wide
observation. She had ideas and wit and she had come out this evening
flamingly determined to use all her powers. Her success sent her pulses
throbbing. Here were two men, at the outset of her experiment, hanging
on her words, paying indubitable homage, not to the woman of brains, not
to the well-known painter, but to the essential woman herself. The talk
quickly became subtle, personal, a quick interchange of hinted
sentiment, that makes for charm. When Lord Radfield at last turned to
Lena Fontaine, she could offer him nothing but commonplaces; Goodwood, a
scandal or so, the fortunes of a bridge club. Clementina adroitly
brought them both quickly into her circle, and Lena Fontaine had the
chagrin to see the politely bored old face suddenly lit up with
reawakened interest. For a moment or two Lena Fontaine flashed into the
talk, determined to offer battle; but after a while she felt dominated,
cowed, with no fight left in her. The other woman ruled triumphant.
Tommy could not keep his eyes off Clementina, and neglected Etta and his
left-hand neighbour shamefully. An unprecedented rosiness of fingernails
caught his keen vision. In awe-stricken tones he whispered to Etta:
“Manicured!”
“Go on with your dinner,” said Etta, “and don’t stare, Tommy. It’s
rude.”
“She should have given us warning,” groaned Tommy. “We’re too young to
stand it.”
The exquisitely cooked and served meal proceeded. The French chef whom
Clementina had engaged and to whom she had given full scope for his art
had felt like an architect unrestricted by site or expense who can put
into concrete form the dreams of a lifetime. John Powersfoot, the
sculptor, sitting next to Lady Louisa, cried out to his host:
“This is not a dinner you’re giving us, Quixtus, it’s a poem.”
Lady Louisa ate on, too much absorbed in flavours for articulate
thought.
Quixtus smiled. “I’m not responsible. The mistress of the feast is
facing me at the other end.”
Powersfoot, who knew the Clementina of everyday life, threw up his hands
in a Latin gesture which he had learned at the Beaux-Arts and of which
he was proud.
“The most remarkable woman of the century.”
“I think you’re right,” said Quixtus.
He looked down the table and caught her eye and exchanged smiles. Now
that he could adjust his mind to the concept of Clementina transfigured,
he felt conscious of a breathless admiration. He grew absurdly impatient
of the social conventions which pinned him in his seat leagues of
lacquer and orchids away from her. Idiotic envy of the two men whom she
was fascinating by her talk entered his heart. She was laughing, showing
her white strong teeth, as only once before she had shown her teeth to
him. He longed to escape from the vivaciously inane Lady Radfield and
join the group at the other end of the table. Now and then his eye
rested on Lena Fontaine; but she had almost faded out of sight.
At the end of the dinner he held the door open for the ladies to pass
out. Clementina, immediately preceded by Etta, whispered a needless
recommendation not to linger. The door closed. Etta put her arm round
Clementina’s waist.
“Oh, darling, you look too magnificent for words. But why didn’t you
tell me? Why did you make a fool of me about the old black dress?”
Clementina disengaged the girl’s arm gently.
“My child,” she said. “If I have the extra pressure of a feather on me,
I’ll yell. I’m suffering the tortures of the damned.”
“Oh, poor darling.”
“It’s worth it, though,” said Clementina.
When the men came upstairs, she again enjoyed a triumph. Men and women
crowded round her and ministered instinctively to her talk. All the
pent-up emotions, longings, laughter of years found torrential
utterance. Powersfoot, standing over her was amazed to discover how
shapely were her bare arms and how full and graceful her neck and
shoulders.
Quixtus talked for a few moments with the spotless flower of womanhood.
In the stiff formality of the drawing-room she regained her
individuality. With a resumption of her air of possession she patted a
vacant seat on the couch beside her and invited him to sit down. He
obeyed.
“I thought you were going to neglect me altogether,” she said.
He protested courteously. They sparred a little. Then Wilmour-Jackson,
polished and opulent, eye-glass in eye, crossed over to the couch and
Quixtus, rising with an eagerness that made Lena Fontaine bite her lip,
yielded him the seat and joined the charmed circle around Clementina. A
little thrill of pleasure passed through him as she glanced a welcome.
He gazed at her, fascinated. Something magnetic, feminine, he was too
confused to know what, emanated from her and held him bound. Never in
all the years of his knowledge of her had she appealed to him in this
extraordinary manner. Why had the perfect neck and arms, the graceful
figure been hidden under shapeless garments? Why had the magnificence of
her hair never been revealed? Why had grim frown and tightened lips
locked within the features the laughter that now played about them? Once
he had seen her face illuminated—at the hotel in Marseilles—but then
it was with generous and noble feeling and he had forgotten the
disfiguring attire. But now she had the stateliness of a queen, and men
hung around her, irresistibly attracted. . . .
At last Lady Radfield disentangled her lord and departed. Others
followed her example. The party broke up, with the curious suddenness of
London. In a brief interval between adieux, Quixtus and Clementina found
themselves alone together.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you pleased?”
“Pleased? What a word! I’m dumfounded. I’ve been blind and my eyes are
open. I never knew you before.”
“Because I have a decent gown on? I couldn’t do less.”
“Because,” said he, “I never knew what a beautiful woman you were.”
The blood flew to her dark cheeks. She touched his arm, and looked at
him.
“Do you really think I look nice?”
His reply was cut short by the Quinns coming up to take leave, but she
read it on his face. The room thinned. Lena Fontaine came up.
“It’s getting late. I must rescue Louisa and go. Your dinner-party was
quite a success, Dr. Quixtus.”
“So glad you think so,” said Clementina. “Especially now that I hear you
were originally responsible for it. It was most kind of you to think of
our dear young people. But don’t go yet. Lady Louisa is quite happy with
Mr. Griffiths. He is feeding her with facts. Let us sit down for a
minute or two and chat comfortably.”
She moved to a sofa near by and motioned Mrs. Fontaine to a seat. The
latter had to yield. Quixtus drew up a chair.
“I’ve done a desperate thing,” said Clementina. “I’ve taken the old
Manor House at Moleham-on-Thames, for August and September. It’s as big
as a hotel and unless I fill it with people, I shall be lost in it. Now
every one who wants to paint can have a studio—I myself am going to
paint every morning—and any one who wants to write can have a library.
Sheila has picked out _the_ library for you, Ephraim—takes it for
granted that you’re coming. I hope you will. You’ll break her heart if
you don’t—and there’ll be a room for Mr. Huckaby too. There’ll be Etta
and Tommy, of course—and the Admiral has promised to put in a week or
two—and so on. And if you’ll only come and stay August with me, my dear
Mrs. Fontaine, my cup of happiness, unlike my house, will be full.”
Lena Fontaine gasped for an outraged moment. Then a swift, fierce
temptation assailed her to take the enemy at her word and fight the
battle; but, glancing at her, she saw the irony and banter and deadly
purpose behind the glittering eyes, and her courage failed her. She was
dominated again by the intense personality, frightened by her sudden and
unexpected power. To stay under the woman’s roof was an impossibility.
“I’m sorry I can’t accept such a charming invitation,” she said with a
smile of the lips, “for I’ve made an engagement with some friends to go
to Dinard.”
“Oh—you’re going to Dinard too?” cried Clementina.
“What do you mean by ‘too’?” asked the other shortly.
“I heard a rumour that Dr. Quixtus was going there. It seemed so silly
that I paid no attention to it. Are you really going Ephraim?”
It was a trap deliberately laid. It was a defiance, a challenge. From
the corner of the sofa she stretched out her bare arm at full length and
laid her hand on his shoulder. The other woman looked white and pinched;
her eyes lost their allurement, and regarded him almost with enmity.
“You promised.”
The words were snapped out before she could realise their significance.
The instant after she could have thrust hat-pins into herself in
punishment for folly. The manhood in Quixtus leapt at the lash. He knew
then, with a startling clarity of assurance, that nothing in the world
would induce him to strut about casinos with her in Dinard. He smiled
courteously.
“Pardon me, dear Mrs. Fontaine. I made no promise. You must remember my
little—my little trope of the daw and the peacocks.”
Clementina satisfied, withdrew her hand.
“Of course, dear Ephraim, if you would prefer to go to Dinard with Mrs.
Fontaine——”
Lena Fontaine rose. “Dr. Quixtus is obviously free to do what he
chooses. I wish you would kindly leave me out of it.”
Clementina rose too, and held out her hand.
“I will, my dear Mrs. Fontaine,” she said sweetly. “If I can. Good-bye.
It has been so delightful to have had you.”
Her exit with Lady Louisa was confused with that of other stragglers.
The Admiral, Etta and Tommy remained. They all went down to Quixtus’s
study, the little back room of the adventure of the drunken housekeeper
now cheery with decanters and syphons and cigarettes, and chatted
intimately till the Admiral reminded Etta that the horses—such fat
horses, murmured Etta—had been standing for nearly an hour. Tommy
accompanied father and daughter to the carriage. Quixtus and Clementina
were left alone.
“Can I tell Sheila to-morrow that you’re coming down to Moleham?”
“I think you can,” said Quixtus. “I think you can quite safely.”
“I’m sorry Mrs. Fontaine wasn’t able to join us.”
“Now why?” he asked, vaguely conscious of outstretched claw and flying
fur.
“Because she has such brilliant social gifts,” replied Clementina.
There was a span of silence. Clementina inhaled a puff of the Turkish
cigarette she had lit and then threw it into the grate.
“For God’s sake, my dear man, look in that drawer and give me some
tobacco I can smoke. I smuggled it in yesterday.”
Quixtus gave her the yellow package and papers and she rolled a
cigarette of Maryland and smoked contentedly. Tommy came in.
“Will you and these infants lunch with me to-morrow at the Carlton?”
“With pleasure,” said Quixtus.
“Do you know,” she said, “I’ve never been inside the place? It will be
quite an adventure.”
A few moments later Tommy and herself were speeding westward in a
taxi-cab. The boy spoke little. All his darling conceptions of
Clementina had been upheaved, dynamited, tossed into the air and lay
around him in amorphous fragments. Nor was she conversationally
inclined. Tommy now was a tiny little speck in her horizon. Yet when the
motor drew up at her house in Romney Place and he opened the gate for
her, something significant happened.
He put out his hand. “Good-night, Clementina.”
She laughed. “Where are your manners, Tommy? Aren’t you going to kiss
me?”
He hesitated, just the fraction of a second, and then kissed her. She
ran up to her room exultant; not because she had been kissed; far from
it. But because he had hesitated. Between Clementina fishfag and
Clementina princess was a mighty gulf. She knew it. She exulted. She
went to bed, but could not sleep. She had a headache; such a headache; a
glorious headache; a thunder and lightning of a headache!