Dora West was trimming her hat. It was a straw hat that had cost a
shilling or two when it came into her deft hands, and the trimming would
only prove to have cost a shilling or two when it became attached to the
hat, and leaving the deft hands was put onto her extremely pretty head.
But by that time the hat would certainly have become a very pretty hat.
This she was explaining with great volubility to her friend.
“You are rich, darling May,” she said, “and in consequence your attitude
toward hats is a little opulent and vulgar. I can put the feathers and
the flags and the birds’ eggs in exactly the same place as Biondinetti,
or whoever it is who sells you hats.”
“No, not exactly,” said Mary, with the quietness that real conviction
brings. She was quite certain about that point, and so did not care to
shout over it. It is only when people are not certain about what they
say, that they drown their want of conviction in arguments. Conviction
always swims.
Dora had several pins in her mouth, and so did not reply at once. In
itself the pin-reason was excellent, and more excellent was the fact
that she did not wish to reply, knowing the quiet truth of Mary’s
conviction, especially since she could not settle the exact angle at
which a very large white feather should be put. It pierced the hat, once
inward once outward, that was Biondinetti all over, but where in
heaven’s name ought it to start from? So she only made a little
impatient noise with her lips, and even that was difficult, since there
was a danger of causing a pin to be sucked into her mouth. But she made
it successfully. She poised the feather a moment, focussing its
appearance against the hat. The effect produced by the impatient noise
was sufficient to ensure her against any immediate reply. Then suddenly
the inspiration came, and with a pair of tiny scissors she cut a strand
or two in the straw and stuck the quill feather through the holes.
“There,” she said, “and you pay Biondinetti two guineas for doing that.
I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. Austell wrote to me last week and
said the swans were moulting, and I telegraphed--that cost sixpence and
a little thought, instead of two guineas--to tell him to send me big
wing feathers. He’s a dreadful ass; we all know that, but he had the
sense to see I wanted feathers, and to catch a swan and pluck----”
“What a disgusting butcher,” said May. “I don’t mean butcher, I mean
vivisectionist.”
“And how do you think you get your feathers, darling?” asked Dora.
“I don’t know; I never ask. The hat comes from the shop.”
“Then don’t ask now, because I will tell you. Your horrid shop has birds
killed, and then plucks them. It does; you can’t deny it. Whereas with
me the swan was just moulting, and Austell assisted Nature, which we all
do. He caught its head in a landing-net and it tried to peck, he
says----”
Dora West stopped suddenly in the middle of these surprising remarks,
and held out the hat at arm’s length in order to observe the effect of
the feather. She had one of those enchanting faces that are
overwhelmingly pretty for no particular reason. You could, if you chose,
argue her prettiness away, by maintaining with justification that no
single feature on it had warrantable claims. They were all passable, it
is true, but it was not clear how it came about that the sum of them was
so delicious. Her eyes were gray, and had nothing striking to recommend
them, her nose turned up at the tip far too markedly to be able to claim
beauty, and the mouth was quite certainly too large. Yet even allowing
for the charm of her extreme youth and the vigour and vividness of her
vitality, there was no accounting for the supreme prettiness that was
there. So the sensible thing was to stop arguing and look at it again,
and more sensible yet, to say something that should make her laugh. For
her laugh was the most enchanting thing of all; then every feature
laughed, there was no telling where it began or where it ended. May
before now had declared that from quite a distance off, when Dora’s back
was turned, she had in a ballroom seen she was amused because the back
of her neck and her shoulders were laughing so much. “Oh, Nature wants a
lot of assistance,” she went on. “She is perfectly hopeless if you leave
her to herself. Look at the flowers even, which are quite the nicest
thing she does. Roses, for instance; all she could think of in the way
of roses was the ordinary wild dog rose. I don’t say it is bad, but how
paltry, if you have had simply millions of years to invent roses in.
Then man comes along, who is the only really unnatural being, and in
quite a few years invents all the heavenly roses which we see now. Of
course Nature did it, in a sense, but she did it with his assistance.”
“But why do you call man unnatural?” asked May.
“Why? Because he saw at once how stupid Nature was, and had to invent
all the things that make life tolerable. He lit fires, and built houses,
and made laws, and motor-cars, and shops, and--and boats and button
hooks. Motor-cars, too; all that Nature could think of in the way of
locomotion was horses.”
The feathers were inserted in absolutely the right place, and Dora
breathed a heavy sigh of satisfaction, laid the hat down on the end of
the sofa, hovered over the tea table for a moment, and selected an
enormous bun.
“And Nature gives us brains,” she continued, with her mouth full, “and
the moment we begin to use them, as I have been doing over that hat,
which _is_ Biondinetti, she decrees that we shall be so hungry that we
have to stop and eat instead. The same with talking: she gives us a
tongue to talk with and after quite a few minutes, talking makes us
hungry too, and we have to use our tongue to help us to swallow. Did you
know you swallowed with your tongue, darling? I never did till
yesterday. I thought I swallowed with my throat, but apparently the
tongue helps. That’s why we can’t talk with our mouths full as I am
doing.”
May Thurston looked at the hat on the end of the sofa for a while, and
then transferred her gaze to her friend.
“I don’t think I agree with you,” she said. “At least I allow that many
people don’t know what being natural means, but I think all the nicest
people are natural. You, for instance, and me and Mrs. Osborne last
night at her dance. Never before have I seen a hostess really enjoying
herself at her own ball. She stood at the top of the stairs and beamed,
she danced and beamed----”
“And never before have you seen a person like Mrs. Osborne dance,”
remarked Dora.
“Well, not often. Anyhow, she enjoyed herself tremendously and was
perfectly natural.”
Dora shook her head.
“It won’t do, darling,” she said. “I allow that Mrs. Osborne beamed all
the time and enjoyed herself enormously. But why? Because everybody was
there. Was she ever so much pleased at Sheffield, do you suppose, or
wherever it was they came from? I am sure she was not. But last night
she was pleased because every duchess and marchioness who counts at all
was there, as well as heaps that don’t count at all. She’s a snob:
probably the finest ever seen, and by what process of reasoning you
arrive at the fact that a snob is natural is beyond me. I agree that
heaps of nice people are snobs, but snobbishness is in itself the most
artificial quality of an artificial age. Snobs are the crowning and
passionate protest against Nature----”
“Oh well,” said May in deprecation of this rather lengthy harangue, “I
didn’t mean to rouse you, Dora.”
“I daresay not, and in that case you have done so without meaning. But
really, when you say that Mrs. Osborne is natural I am bound to protest.
You might as well say that your mother is.”
“Oh no, I mightn’t,” said May quite calmly. “It would be simply silly to
call mother natural. She only does things because they are ‘the thing.’
She spends her whole life in doing ‘the thing.’ And yet I don’t
know--oh, Dora, what very odd people women are when they grow up! Shall
you and I be as odd, do you think? I love mother, and so do you, and we
both of us love yours, don’t we? but they are very, very odd people.”
Dora gave a little shriek of laughter.
“Oh don’t,” she said. “I want to talk about snobs a little more.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve often told me that mother was one,” remarked May.
“Yes, the darling; she is, isn’t she? She is the most delicious sort of
snob. A month ago she wouldn’t know the Osbornes, and merely said, ‘I
have no doubt they are very honest people,’ with her nose at the same
angle toward earth as is the Matterhorn; while a week ago she was
clamouring for an invitation to the dance last night. In the interval it
had become ‘the thing’ to know the Osbornes. My mother saw it was going
to be ‘the thing’ to know them long ago, and called at Park Lane almost
before they had washed the white blobs of paint off the windows, or hung
up those shields of heraldic glass on the stairs----”
“Oh, no, is there heraldic glass on the stairs?” asked May, in a
slightly awe-struck tone. “I never saw it.”
Dora, as her friend often declared, really did not always play fair.
There had quite distinctly been the satirical note in her own allusion
to the heraldic glass, but as soon as May reflected that in the
appreciative reverence of her reply, Dora was down upon her at once.
“And why shouldn’t they have heraldic glass as much as your people or
mine?” she asked smartly. “They’ve got exactly as many grandfathers and
grandmothers as we have, and there’s not the slightest reason to doubt
that Mrs. Osborne was a Miss Parkins, and Mr. Parkins’s heir, who, I
expect, was far more respectable than my mother’s father, who drank
himself to death, though mother always calls it cerebral hæmorrhage. Oh,
May, we are all snobs, and I’m not sure the worst snobbishness of all
isn’t shown by those who say they came over with William the Conqueror
or were descended from Edward the Fourth. Probably the Osbornes didn’t
come over with William the Conqueror but were here long before, only
they don’t happen to know who they were.”
“I know, that is just it,” said May, calmly. “They don’t know who they
were, and yet they put up their coats of arms.”
Dora looked at her friend in contempt.
“I suppose you think you have scored over that,” she said.
“Not in the least. I am only pointing out perfectly obvious things.”
“Then why do it?” said Dora. “What I am pointing out are not perfectly
obvious things. At least they appear not to be to you. The whole affair
is a game, stars and garters and ancestors, and coats of arms is all a
game. Oh, I don’t say that it isn’t great fun. But it is absurd to take
it seriously. What can it matter to you or me whether great-grandpapa
was a peer or a bootblack? It only amuses us to think that he was a
peer. And if it amuses Mrs. Osborne to think that Mr. Parkins had a coat
of arms at all, why shouldn’t she put it up in the hall window? And
since, as I said, she was the only child, of course she quarters with
the Osborne arms. It’s one of the rules. I believe you are jealous of
them, because they are richer than your horrid family.”
Nothing ever roused May except a practical assault upon her personal
comfort, and Dora seldom attempted to rouse her. It was invariably
hopeless and the present attempt only added another to the list of her
failures.
“I think that is partly true,” said May. “I don’t see why common people
should have the best of everything. They only have to invent a button or
a razor, and all that life offers is theirs. I think it’s deplorable,
but it doesn’t make me angry any more than a wet day makes me angry,
unless I am absolutely caught in the rain with a new hat. As to coats of
arms and things, I think it is rather pleasant to know that one’s
grandfather was a gentleman.”
Dora waved her arms wildly.
“But he probably wasn’t!” she screamed. “Mine wasn’t, he was the wicked
one, you know, and did awful things. Much worse than Mrs. Osborne’s
probably ever dreamed of. Mrs. Osborne’s great-grandfather would
certainly have cut mine, if he had had the chance----”
“He wouldn’t have had the chance,” remarked May. “And also Mrs. Osborne
herself would cut nobody, who would--would lend lustre to her house. Oh,
Dora, let’s stop. It isn’t any good. You are a democrat, and a radical
and a socialist, and really it doesn’t matter. Besides I haven’t seen
you for--oh, well, nearly twenty-four hours. What has happened?”
Dora got up.
“I don’t think I can stop,” she said. “Because I want to know what you
really think about certain things. Two heads are better than one, you
know, even when mine is one of them. Oh, by the way, Austell has let
Grote to the Osbornes. They have taken it for seven years from the end
of July. It was mother’s doing I think. I--oh, May, you may call me a
radical and a socialist and anything else you choose, but I can’t quite
see Mrs. Osborne there. She’ll fill it with plush. I know she will.
After all, I expect mother is right. I suppose it is better to pay some
of your debts, and have other people putting plush monkeys into your
house than go on as Austell has been doing. I expect I should be just
the same if he was my son instead of my brother. It doesn’t seem to
matter much what one’s brother does, as long as he doesn’t wear his hair
long, or cheat at cards. But I daresay it’s different if he’s your son.”
Dora gave a great sigh, and was silent. In spite of that series of
statements which had led May Thurston, quite reasonably, to call her a
radical and a socialist, there was some feeling within her, rather more
intimate, rather more herself, that made her dislike the idea of the
Osbornes living in Grote, which had always been her home. The Austell
finances, especially for the past two or three years, had been
precarious, and though her mother had a jointure that would enable her
and Dora to live quite comfortably in her house in Eaton Place, and at
the little bungalow at Deal, it had been necessary before now to let
the house in Eaton Place during the months of the season, and live at
Deal, and to let the bungalow at Deal (it was of the more spacious sort)
during August and September, and encamp, so to speak, in a corner of
Grote. For Jim Austell, her brother, it could not be denied, was not a
person who could possibly be described as dependable. His mother had
made the most prolonged attempt to describe him as such, but without
success, and she had at length seen the futility of clinging to Grote, a
huge Jacobean mansion with an enormous park. In the latter, being of
sandy soil, a public golf links had been started, which brought in £192
a year, while neighbouring farmers grazed their beasts on other
portions. The total receipts, however, about paid for the flower beds
and the trimming of the exquisite bank of rhododendrons that grew round
the lake, and after a year or so of trial, the scheme had been
pronounced financially unsound, and for the last six months the place
had been in search of a tenant. Austell had hoped that his well-known
skill at bridge and his knowledge of horses might save him from the
extremity of letting it. In this he had been disappointed; they had but
contributed to the speed at which it was necessary to do so.
All this, which was part of the habitual environment of Dora’s mind,
part of the data under which she lived, passed through it or was
presented to it, like a familiar picture, in the space of the sigh that
concluded her last speech. It was no longer any use thinking about these
things; Grote had been let to the Osbornes, the bungalow at Deal had
also been let for August, and till September she and her mother were
going to “live in their boxes.” After all, they had done that, as
everybody else had, often before, and for much longer periods than one
month, but it was the first time that they had been compelled to live in
their boxes with no house (except Eaton Place in August) to flee unto.
And, at this moment the change struck Dora. For week after week before
now, she had stayed with friends, knowing (though not thinking of it)
that all the time there was home behind it all. True, now that Grote had
been let, it would have been possible to live in the bungalow at Deal,
but the latter had been let while the former was still uncertain, and
Dora suddenly felt a sense of homelessness that was not quite
comfortable. In two weeks from now they went to the Thurstons, then
there were three more visits, then, no doubt, if they chose, many more
visits, but there was nothing behind; there was no home. Meantime, the
Osbornes grabbed homes wherever they chose, they built a palace in Park
Lane, they took Grote from her own impecunious family, and as Mrs.
Osborne had told her mother last night, Mr. O. had a fancy for a bit of
stalking for self and friends in the autumn, and had taken a little box
up in Sutherland. She, however, was going to settle down at Grote at the
end of the season, and did not intend to go North. There had been
badinage over this, it appeared, between her and Mr. O.; and he
threatened her with an action for divorce on the grounds of desertion.
And Dora felt much less socialistic and far more inclined to agree with
May on the iniquity of common people having all they wanted simply
because they invented a button. If only she could invent a button.
Dora, as has already been seen, was apt to be slightly discursive. She
had one of those effervescent minds to which every topic as it comes on
the board instantly suggests another, and in half a dozen sentences she
was apt to speak of half a dozen totally different things, each in turn
being swiftly abandoned for some fresh and more absorbing topic which
each opened up. She had begun a moment before with telling May that she
wanted her advice, and before that was asked or offered, before indeed,
the subject on which it was desired was so much as mentioned, she had
darted away afresh, poising, dragon-fly fashion, in the direction of
Grote, and the letting of it to the Osbornes. The Osbornes indeed had
been the connecting link, and now she went straight back _via_ the
Osbornes to the point from which she had started.
“Yes, I want your advice May,” she repeated, “or I think I do. It’s
quite serious, at least it’s beginning to be quite serious, and there
are so many dreadfully funny things connected with it. Yes, Mr. Osborne
has asked leave to call upon mother this afternoon at six, and it’s
half-past five now. Oh, dear, oh, dear! I suppose he found out in a book
that that sort of thing was done a hundred years ago, and he wishes to
be correct. The Osbornes are absolutely correct if you think of it.
Every one went in to supper in the right order last night, which never
happens at any other house I have ever been to, and where does he get
those extraordinary good looks from? Oh, I don’t mean Mr. Osborne. How
can you be so silly--but him. Yes, I’m telling it all very clearly,
aren’t I, so I hope you understand. Perhaps Mrs. Osborne was a beauty
once, you can’t tell.”
That May perfectly understood this extraordinary farrago of
observations said less for her powers of perspicacity than might have
been supposed, for Dora was not alluding to any new thing, but to a
subject that had often before been mentioned between them. And Dora went
on, still discursively but intelligibly.
“It’s coming to the crisis, you see,” she said. “Mr. Osborne’s call on
mother is of a formal nature. He is going to ask permission for Claude
to pay his addresses to me. He will use those very words, unless mother
says ‘yes’ before he gets so far. And then I shall have to make up my
mind. At least I’m not sure that I shall; I believe it’s made up
already. And yet I can’t be sure. May, I feel just like a silly
sentimental girl in an impossible _feuilleton_. He thrills me, isn’t it
awful? But he does. Thrills! I don’t believe any boy was ever so
good-looking. And then suddenly in the middle of my thrill, it all stops
with a jerk, just because he says that somebody is a very ‘handsome
lady.’ Why shouldn’t he say ‘handsome lady’? He said he thought mother
was such a handsome lady, and I nearly groaned out loud. And then I
looked at him again or something, and I didn’t care what he said. And
he’s nice too. I know he’s nice, and he’s got excellent manners, and
always gets up when a lady, handsome or not, comes into the room,
instead of lounging in his chair as Austell does and all other young men
nowadays except a few like Claude who aren’t exactly our sort. And he’s
kind and he’s good. Am I in love with him? For heaven’s sake, tell me.”
Dora paused a moment and then took a cigarette from a box that stood on
the mantelpiece, and lit it. She never smoked cigarettes; she only lit
them, and the mere fact that she lit one was indicative of extreme
absorption in something else.
“You’re engaged, May,” she said, “so you ought to know. Else what is the
use of your being engaged. What do you feel when that angel Harry comes
into the room?”
May could answer that quite easily.
“Oh, I feel as if it was me coming into the room,” she said. “I feel as
if I am not in the room, since you put it like that, unless he is.”
The conversation had been flippant enough up till this moment, though,
as a matter of fact, Dora, being inconsequential by nature, often gave
the note of flippancy, when she was in earnest. Both of the girls, in
any case, were quite serious now. And out of the depth of her twenty
years’ wisdom, May proceeded to draw a bucket full for Dora, who was
only nineteen.
“Oh, I expect you are in love,” she said. “At least I expect you are
feeling as if you were. I understand perfectly about the thrill, though
it sounds so dreadfully _Family Herald_ when it is said. But one does
thrill. I believe that thrill is a pretty good guide. I don’t usually
thrill, in fact I never had thrilled till I saw Harry. But I always
thrill at him. I suppose all girls feel the same when they fall in love.
I suppose people on bank holidays thrill when they change hats, or eat
winkles. We are all common then. At least you may call it common if you
choose. I don’t see why you should. It’s IT.”
“You haven’t told me about me,” remarked Dora.
May Thurston shifted her position slightly. It was not done with any
idea of manœuvre. She was the least dramatic of girls, and she only
shifted because she felt a little uncomfortable. It was new to her also
to take the lead. Dora usually strode ahead.
“I can’t advise you about things of that sort,” she said. “I’m
old-fashioned, you see----”
“Oh, are you, darling?” murmured Dora. “Nobody would have guessed it.”
“But I am over things like that, old-fashioned and romantic. I think
love in a cottage would be quite ideal, not because a cottage is
ideal--I would much sooner not live in one--but because love is. And,
oh, Dora, I can just advise you not to marry him unless you are in love
with him. I daresay heaps of girls make very nice sensible marriages,
where there’s lots of money, and where they each like the other, but you
do miss such a lot by not falling in love. You miss--you miss it all.”
Dora scrutinized her friend for a moment, her head a little on one side,
with something of the manner of a bright-eyed thrush listening for the
movement of the worm that it hopes to breakfast on.
“But there’s something in your mind, which you are not saying, May,” she
remarked. “I can hear it rustling.”
“Yes. There are just two little things that make me wonder whether you
are in love with him. The first is you said you were sure he was good!
That is no reason at all. You don’t fall in love with a person because
he’s good. You esteem and like him--or it’s possible to conceive doing
so--because he’s good, but you don’t love him for that reason.”
Dora gave a little purr of laughter.
“Oh, May, you are heavenly,” she said. “But surely it’s an advantage if
your _promesso_ is good.”
“Oh, certainly, but nobody in love stops to think about that.”
“I see. Well, what is the second thing that makes you wonder?”
May looked at her with her large, serious blue eyes.
“What you said about being brought up with a jerk in the middle of your
thrill, when he spoke of a handsome lady. As if it mattered! Yet somehow
it does to you, or it would not bring you up with a jerk!”
“And you think it doesn’t matter?” asked Dora.
“Of course not if you love him, and if you don’t, in the name of all
that is sensible, don’t marry him. That sort of marriage is called
sensible, I know. It is really the wildest and most awful risk.”
Dora stared.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Of course I know, simply because I’m in love with Harry. Fancy being
tied to a man for life without that! Gracious, it’s nearly six, and he
was to call for me at home at six.”
“Oh, you can keep him waiting ten minutes,” said Dora. “We’ve only just
begun to talk about the great point.”
May shook her head.
“I could keep him waiting,” she said, “but I couldn’t keep myself. I
must go. Darling, I long to hear more, only you see I can’t stop now.
Come and see me to-morrow morning. I shall be in till lunch time.”
Dora shrugged her shoulders, not in the least naturally but of design.
“I think it’s a pity to fall in love then, if it makes one so selfish,”
she remarked.
“No doubt you are right, darling. Good-bye,” said May.
* * * * *
It was, as May had said, close on six, and in anticipation of Mr.
Osborne’s arrival, Dora removed herself from the little fore-and-aft
drawing room which looked out in front through two windows on to Eaton
Place, and at the back through one on to the little square yard behind
the house, and went upstairs to her bedroom, taking the hat with one
swan feather fixed in it and the other still unplaced, with her. But
even the hat, though in this extraordinarily interesting condition with
regard to its trimming, failed at the moment to make good any footing in
her mind. It was not that hats were less interesting than before
(especially to the maker and wearer) but that during this last month
something else had grown infinitely more interesting than anything else
had ever been; the standard of interest possible in this world which
Dora found so full of enchanting things, had been immeasurably raised.
Life hitherto had been brilliantly full of surface brightnesses, but it
seemed to her now as if life, the sunlike spirit of life, which shone
with so continuous a lustre on her, struck the surface of herself no
longer, but penetrated down into depths that she had not yet dreamed of.
There, in those depths, so it seemed to her, she sat now, while on the
surface, so to speak, there floated all the pleasant and humorous and
friendly things of life. The hat she held in her hand floated there,
dogs swam about there and flowers sparkled, May Thurston was there and
friends innumerable. But as in the exquisite picture of the birth of Eve
by Watts, a big photograph of which hung over her bed, it was as if all
these were but a skin, a rind which even now was peeling off her,
showing beneath the form and the wonder of the woman herself.
She sat in the window seat, and the hot air of the tired afternoon
streamed slowly and gently in, just lifting and letting lie again the
bright brown of her hair. Outside the hundred noises of the busy town
mingled and melted together, and seemed to her to form, even as the
blending of all colours forms the apparently colourless white, a general
hush and absence of noise. Rousing herself for a moment, and consciously
listening, she could detect and name the ingredients of it; there was
the sharp clip of horses’ hoofs, the whirr of motors, the chiding of
swifts, the agitated chirp of sparrows over some doubtful treasure of
the roadway, the tapping of heels on the hot pavement, the cool whisper
of cleansing from a water cart, and the noise of news being cried round
the corner. But all these were blended together and formed not confused
noise but quietness, and from the quietness of her face, and the
immobility of her hands which were usually so active, you might have
guessed that she was tired or bored, and found this hour pass heavily.
But a second glance would have erased so erroneous an impression: there
was a smouldering brightness in her eye, and ever and again a little
trembling at the corners of her mouth which might develop into a smile,
or, equally easily almost, be the precursor of flooded eyes.
For the last month now she had had moods like this, when she dived down
from the froth and effervescence of her surface mind and sat below in
deep and remote waters. It was not that she had lost the power of living
on the surface, for this afternoon with her friend she had been quite
completely there, until toward the end of their talk she had felt that
she was being beckoned down again and knew that when May left her she
would sink into these depths that till lately she had not known existed.
Yet the path that had led to them had been quite natural; all her life
she had above all things loved beauty, whether of waves or birds or
sunsets, or human beings. Thus it was without any sense of a strange or
unusual thing happening to her that she had admired frankly and
naturally the dark merry face of this young man. He had taken her into
dinner once or twice; he had danced with her a half dozen times. And
then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, he belonged to the surface of
things no longer as far as she was concerned. Something smote at her
heart, and the flowers and birds peeled away like rind as from Eve when
she was born, and the woman shone within.
And indeed, there was little in all this to wonder at, for in spite of
crabbed and cynical proverbs about beauty being only skin-deep, it
remains and will remain to those who have eyes themselves, the wand of
the enchanter. No doubt the enchantment can be made without the wand,
but when eyes are keen, and blood is young, how vastly more easily is
the enchantment effected with the aid of that weapon. And Claude to her
thinking, before ever she even wondered if she was falling in love with
him, was certainly not without the wand. He was dark, a potent colour
to her who was so fair; hair nearly black grew low and crisp on the
forehead, and eyebrows quite black met above his brown eyes. Then came
the lean, smooth oval of his face, a mouth rather full-lipped, and a
squarish chin. Often before he spoke, especially if he had, as not
infrequently happened, some rather determined remark to make, he jerked
his head a little back and put out his chin. It was a gesture of
extraordinary decision, and “oh,” said Dora to herself now, as she
thought of it, “I do like a man to know his mind.”
The same signs of knowing his mind were visible, too, in his movements.
He never strayed about a room, or leaned against anything. If he
purposed to stand up, up he stood; if he wished for support he sat down.
But as far as Dora had seen, he seldom wished for support; those rather
long slim limbs and boyish figure appeared remarkably capable of
supporting themselves. He moved quickly and with a certain neatness that
was attractive; once--these tiny details were important in making up her
impression of him--she had seen him strike a match in a windy place to
light his cigarette; one quick stroke had kindled it and his thin brown
fingers made a cavern for it, in which it burned unwaveringly as in a
room. And he could dance, really dance, not slide about in a crowded
ballroom with an avoidance of collision which was really magical, and
without--doubtless these things were all of the surface, but they caused
the whole image to sink down with her into those depths--without having
to mop his face when they stopped, which in general was not before the
music stopped.
Suddenly, from the combined quietness of the noises outside, a sound
detached itself and made itself very clear to her ear. It was a motor
just preparing to start somewhere close below her in the street, and
Dora, feeling instinctively, somehow, that this was significant to her,
got up and leaned out of the window. Her instinct was correct enough; a
big, short, broad man with an extremely shiny top-hat was just stepping
into the big Napier car that stood at her mother’s door. Even as she
looked out the chauffeur nipped into his place again, and in answer to
the footman’s inquiry she heard Mr. Osborne say “‘Ome” quite distinctly.
Then he lifted his shiny hat and carefully wiped the top of his bald
head. Upon which Dora had, no doubt in reaction from her really serious
half hour of thought, a slight fit of the giggles.
But the giggles soon stopped; they were but of the nature of coming to
the surface to breathe, and she was already beginning to sink back
toward the depths again, when there came a tap at her door, and her
mother entered.
Lady Austell was very tall, and one felt at once that there was not the
slightest doubt that she was not a countess; it seemed somehow far too
suitable a thing to have really occurred. But in the endless surprises
of this world, in which everything unconjecturable happens, and everyone
is what he should not be, the ideally fit thing had occurred, and a
countess she was in spite of the obviousness of the fact that she must
be. That she was dowager was no less easy a guess, for though eighteen
years had elapsed since her husband’s death, there was something about
her dress, a little strip of crape insertion in the violet of her gown,
it may be, or the absence of any jewels except an amethyst cross, or at
other times a cap very Dutch and becoming with a ribbon of black in it
that sat loosely on her abundant hair, that suggested, though it did not
notify, widowhood. These insignia, it must be noted, she did not wear
simultaneously, but there was never a day on which one at least of them,
or others like them, was not present. No doubt also her manner gave
confirmation to the impression conveyed by her dress, for it was one
from which all exuberance had departed, though it suggested and reminded
you (like a clear sunset) that a brilliant day had preceded it. Her
voice also was rather faint and regretful, the voice of a widow with an
unsatisfactory son and an unmarried daughter. But those who knew her
best had in their minds the very distinct knowledge that it was
difficult if not impossible to silence that faint voice, or make it say
anything different to what it had already said. Lady Austell, when her
views were in conflict with those of others, never said very much, but
she never changed her tune, nor indeed ceased faintly chanting it, until
the opposition had been borne down by her quiet persistence. As for the
regretfulness of which her gentle accents were full, it may have been
composed of grief for the fact that others, not she, would eventually be
obliged to yield.
It will be seen, therefore, that Theresa Austell was an instance the
more of the undoubted fact that people as well as things are not what
they seem. She seemed, until you knew her quite well, to live
uncomplainingly but regretfully among the memories of dead and happier
years, whereas, when your acquaintance with her ripened, you would find
that she lived with remarkable keenness in the present, and kept a wide
and unwavering eye on a live and happier future. She appeared to be
soft, gentle and helpless; in reality she was remarkably capable of
taking care of herself, and though like ivy she appeared to cling to
others for support, her nature was in truth that of the famous ivy that
grew on the new mansion in Park Lane; it could stand upright with
perfect ease, and was of metallic hardness. Adversity--for she had not
had a very happy life--instead of breaking her, had tempered her to an
exceeding toughness; what had been at the most soft iron was now
reliable steel.
She gave a faint wan smile at Dora as she entered.
“I thought you would be here, dear,” she said. “Your Aunt Adeline has
telephoned to know if we want her motor. We can have it till dinner-time
and it will then take us to her house. I knew you liked a drive, so I
thanked her and said ‘yes.’”
This was merely another way of putting the fact that Lady Austell wanted
a drive and also wanted to talk to Dora. But her method of putting it
sounded better, and was very likely quite true. Dora did like a drive
and since her mother knew it, that might possibly have been the reason
why she accepted Aunt Adeline’s offer. But Lady Austell’s next reason
(though she had already given reason sufficient) was not so probable. “A
drive will do you good, dear,” she said faintly. “You look a little
fagged out and pale.”
Dora had learned not to dispute points with her mother. Though in
general she was so full of discursive volubility, she was always rather
silent with Lady Austell, of whom, in some way that she scarcely
understood herself, she was considerably afraid. But that again was
typical of the effect her mother produced on people; those who knew her
but slightly thought she was the least formidable of women, but the
better she was known the more she was feared. Often Dora argued to
herself about the matter; she knew that she was not afraid of anything
tangible her mother could do to her; she could not beat her or starve
her, or ill-treat her, and it must have been her mother’s nature of
which she was afraid. The feeling was analogous to a child’s fear of the
dark; it fears not what it knows of, but the unknown possibilities that
may lurk therein. It cannot say what they are; if it knew it would
probably cease to fear them.
Dora got up at once.
“Yes, I should like a drive,” she said.
“Then put on your hat, dear.” And Lady Austell’s pale melancholy eyes
fell on the half-trimmed straw.
“Another hat, Dora?” she asked. “I should have thought what you had
would have lasted you till the end of the season!”
And at the words Dora’s pleasure in her new hat fell as dead as Sisera
at Jael’s feet. Nobody could kill pleasure (though quite innocently)
with so unerring an aim as Lady Austell.
“It didn’t cost twopence,” said Dora. “Jim sent me up the feathers from
Grote.”
Lady Austell looked at the straw with an experienced eye.
“It is very cheap for less than twopence,” she remarked. “The only
question is whether it was necessary. Then you will join me down below,
dear? I have a note to write, and we may as well leave it instead of
posting it.”
This was illustrative of the cause that had made Dora say that when
women grew up they were very odd people. Lady Austell would
unfalteringly drive through miles of odious roads to deliver a note
rather than post it, but would on the same day drive to Oxford Street (a
two-shilling fare in a hansom) in order to purchase what she would have
paid sixpence more for round the corner. She was the victim of the habit
of petty economy, in pursuit of which passion--one of the most
fatal--she would become a perfect spendthrift, casting florins and half
crowns right and left in order to save pennies. She took great care of
the pence and the half-crowns presumably took care of themselves, for at
any rate she took no care of them. But when other people’s expenditure
was concerned, she took care of it all.
The note that had to be left (which concerned cessation of subscription
from a library in Leicester Square) caused them to traverse the length
of Piccadilly, and to retrace it, before they could leave the jostling
traffic and turn into the Park, and it so happened that in this traverse
of the streets, the month being mid-July, and the hour the late
afternoon, Lady Austell had been almost incessantly occupied (though by
her own word, she disliked all conventionality) in smiling sadly and
regretfully as was her manner, at all the people she knew, and bowing
(without a smile) to those who appeared to know her. Somehow, her smile,
even when it was most gracious and welcoming, always suggested to the
person on whom it was bestowed that something had gone wrong with his
affairs, and Lady Austell knew and was most sympathetic, so that Mrs.
Osborne (seated in a landau that bobbed prodigiously, owing to the
extreme resilience of the springs that came from her husband’s
workshops) receiving one of these felt certain for a moment that Mr.
O.’s mission that afternoon had not prospered until she remembered that
she had seen Lady Austell smile like that before. Soon after, walking
gaily eastward, came Austell, whom she had thought to be still in the
country, and on whom she bestowed a glance of pained wonder, closely
followed by Claude, looking in spite of the heat of the day extremely
cool and comfortable in a straw-hatted suit. Dora did not see him; she
was at the moment smiling violently at some one who did not see her.
Then the motor checked for a moment at the gates of the Park, slid
forward again into the less populous ways, and Lady Austell, abandoning
the duties of recognition, did her duty by her daughter. As usual she
began a little way off the point so that she could get well into her
stride, so to speak, before you saw that she was going anywhere in
particular. This was a settled policy with her; it insured, in racing
parlance, a flying start instead of a start from rest. During the drive
down Piccadilly she had been arranging her thoughts with her usual
precision; she knew not only what she was going to say, but how she was
going to say it.
She gave a little sigh.
“What sermons there are not only in stones,” she said, “but in streets.
And, do you know, dear, when one drives down Piccadilly like that and
sees all sorts and conditions of men and women jostling each other, what
strikes me is not how different people are, but how alike they are. All
the differences (she was getting into her stride now) which we think of
as so great are really so infinitesimal. Real differences, the things
that matter, do not lie on the surface at all. I think our tendency is
to make far too much out of mere superficialities and to neglect or
discount those traits and qualities which constitute the essential
differences between one man and another. Don’t you think so, dear?”
The ingenious Latin language has certain particles used in asking
questions, one of which, the grammarian tells us, is used if a negative
reply is expected, another if the reply is expected to be affirmative.
Lady Austell, speaking in the less rich language of our day, could not
make use of these, but there was something in her intonation quite as
effective as “nonne.” Dora, without question, found herself saying
“yes.”
“I am so glad you agree with me, dear,” went on her mother, “and I am
sure you will agree with me also in the fact that, this being so, we
should try to judge people, or rather to appreciate them, by the true
and inner standard, not by the more obvious but less essential
characteristics that we see on the surface.”
Lady Austell’s voice sank a little.
“If one may say so without irreverence,” she said, “how God must laugh
at our divisions of classes. We must look like children arranging books
by the colour of their covers instead of by their contents. We class all
sorts of noble and ignoble people together and call them gentlemen,
neglecting the only true classification altogether.”
It was evident now to Dora that her mother had got an excellent start,
and she could see what she had started for. There was no need for reply,
and Lady Austell having favoured a passing friend with a smile that was
positively wintry in its sadness, proceeded.
“Such a good instance of what I am saying occurred to-day, dear,” she
said. “Mr. Osborne called on me at six, as I think I told you he was
going to do, and for the first time perhaps I fully saw what true
delicacy and feeling he has, and how immensely these outweigh any of
those things which we hastily might call faults of manner or breeding.
It is the same with her, kind excellent woman that she is. What a
priceless thing to inherit all that kindness and sweetness of nature.”
Lady Austell was flying along now; the race, so to speak, was clearly a
sprint. Dora merely waited for her to breast the tape. She proceeded to
do so.
“He came on a subject that very closely concerns you, dear,” she said,
“and like a true gentleman he asked my permission before allowing any
step to be taken. Can you guess, dear?”
Dora, as has been said, stood considerably in awe of her mother, but
occasionally a discourse of this kind, which she felt to be entirely
insincere, roused in her an impulse of the liveliest impatience, which
gave sharpness to her tongue.
“Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “The truly delicate Mr. Osborne asked if Mr.
Claude might pay his addresses to me. I expect he used just those words.
I hope you allowed him to, mother.”
Lady Austell’s manner was always admirable. She appeared not to notice
the sharpness of the speech at all. She laid her neatly gloved hand on
Dora’s.
“Ah, my dearest,” she said.
She looked at her with her sad blue eyes, eyes that always looked tender
and patient, even when she was disputing a fare with a cabman. “I am
sure you will be very happy dear,” she said after a pause. “He is the
most excellent young man, everyone speaks well of him. And, my dear, how
good-looking. A perfect--I forget the name.”
Dora had a momentary tendency to giggle at the anticlimax of this. But
she checked it, and again her impatience rose to the surface.
“Adonis?” she suggested. “But are not good looks one of those
superficial things which we rate too high?”
Lady Austell smiled.
“Ah, you mischievous child,” she said. “You make fun of all I say. I
will send a note to Mr. Osborne to-night, for I told him I should have
to speak to you first. You will make him very happy, Dora, and you will
make somebody else happier. Shall we turn?”