Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a
woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty. She cultivated a
jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and
good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting
to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had once
aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a
puffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient
moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the
occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it.
She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a
dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the
habit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on her
mother's side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined
herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle of
disconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing,
which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and other
accommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow.
"I felt I simply had to come to-day," she chuckled at Yeovil; "I was just
dying to see the returned traveller. Of course, I know perfectly well
that neither of you want me, when you haven't seen each other for so long
and must have heaps and heaps to say to one another, but I thought I
would risk the odium of being the third person on an occasion when two
are company and three are a nuisance. Wasn't it brave of me?"
She spoke in full knowledge of the fact that the luncheon party would not
in any case have been restricted to Yeovil and his wife, having seen
Ronnie arrive in the hall as she was being shown upstairs.
"Ronnie Storre is coming, I believe," said Cicely, "so you're not
breaking into a tete-a-tete."
"Ronnie, oh I don't count him," said Joan gaily; "he's just a boy who
looks nice and eats asparagus. I hear he's getting to play the piano
really well. Such a pity. He will grow fat; musicians always do, and it
will ruin him. I speak feelingly because I'm gravitating towards
plumpness myself. The Divine Architect turns us out fearfully and
wonderfully built, and the result is charming to the eye, and then He
adds another chin and two or three extra inches round the waist, and the
effect is ruined. Fortunately you can always find another Ronnie when
this one grows fat and uninteresting; the supply of boys who look nice
and eat asparagus is unlimited. Hullo, Mr. Storre, we were all talking
about you."
"Nothing very damaging, I hope?" said Ronnie, who had just entered the
room.
"No, we were merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life,
your chin must remain single. When one's chin begins to lead a double
life one's own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed. You
needn't tell me that you haven't any hankerings after depravity; people
with your coloured eyes and hair are always depraved."
"Let me introduce you to my husband, Ronnie," said Cicely, "and then
let's go and begin lunch."
"You two must almost feel as if you were honeymooning again," said Joan
as they sat down; "you must have quite forgotten each other's tastes and
peculiarities since you last met. Old Emily Fronding was talking about
you yesterday, when I mentioned that Murrey was expected home; 'curious
sort of marriage tie,' she said, in that stupid staring way of hers,
'when husband and wife spend most of their time in different continents.
I don't call it marriage at all.' 'Nonsense,' I said, 'it's the best way
of doing things. The Yeovils will be a united and devoted couple long
after heaps of their married contemporaries have trundled through the
Divorce Court.' I forgot at the moment that her youngest girl had
divorced her husband last year, and that her second girl is rumoured to
be contemplating a similar step. One can't remember everything."
Joan Mardle was remarkable for being able to remember the smallest
details in the family lives of two or three hundred acquaintances.
From personal matters she went with a bound to the political small talk
of the moment.
"The Official Declaration as to the House of Lords is out at last," she
said; "I bought a paper just before coming here, but I left it in the
Tube. All existing titles are to lapse if three successive holders,
including the present ones, fail to take the oath of allegiance."
"Have any taken it up to the present?" asked Yeovil.
"Only about nineteen, so far, and none of them representing very leading
families; of course others will come in gradually, as the change of
Dynasty becomes more and more an accepted fact, and of course there will
be lots of new creations to fill up the gaps. I hear for certain that
Pitherby is to get a title of some sort, in recognition of his literary
labours. He has written a short history of the House of Hohenzollern,
for use in schools you know, and he's bringing out a popular Life of
Frederick the Great--at least he hopes it will be popular."
"I didn't know that writing was much in his line," said Yeovil, "beyond
the occasional editing of a company prospectus."
"I understand his historical researches have given every satisfaction in
exalted quarters," said Joan; "something may be lacking in the style,
perhaps, but the august approval can make good that defect with the style
of Baron. Pitherby has such a kind heart; 'kind hearts are more than
coronets,' we all know, but the two go quite well together. And the dear
man is not content with his services to literature, he's blossoming forth
as a liberal patron of the arts. He's taken quite a lot of tickets for
dear Gorla's debut; half the second row of the dress-circle."
"Do you mean Gorla Mustelford?" asked Yeovil, catching at the name; "what
on earth is she having a debut about?"
"What?" cried Joan, in loud-voiced amazement; "haven't you heard? Hasn't
Cicely told you? How funny that you shouldn't have heard. Why, it's
going to be one of the events of the season. Everybody's talking about
it. She's going to do suggestion dancing at the Caravansery Theatre."
"Good Heavens, what is suggestion dancing?" asked Yeovil.
"Oh, something quite new," explained Joan; "at any rate the name is quite
new and Gorla is new as far as the public are concerned, and that is
enough to establish the novelty of the thing. Among other things she
does a dance suggesting the life of a fern; I saw one of the rehearsals,
and to me it would have equally well suggested the life of John Wesley.
However, that is probably the fault of my imagination--I've either got
too much or too little. Anyhow it is an understood thing that she is to
take London by storm."
"When I last saw Gorla Mustelford," observed Yeovil, "she was a rather
serious flapper who thought the world was in urgent need of regeneration
and was not certain whether she would regenerate it or take up miniature
painting. I forget which she attempted ultimately."
"She is quite serious about her art," put in Cicely; "she's studied a
good deal abroad and worked hard at mastering the technique of her
profession. She's not a mere amateur with a hankering after the
footlights. I fancy she will do well."
"But what do her people say about it?" asked Yeovil.
"Oh, they're simply furious about it," answered Joan; "the idea of a
daughter of the house of Mustelford prancing and twisting about the stage
for Prussian officers and Hamburg Jews to gaze at is a dreadful cup of
humiliation for them. It's unfortunate, of course, that they should feel
so acutely about it, but still one can understand their point of view."
"I don't see what other point of view they could possibly take," said
Yeovil sharply; "if Gorla thinks that the necessities of art, or her own
inclinations, demand that she should dance in public, why can't she do it
in Paris or even Vienna? Anywhere would be better, one would think, than
in London under present conditions."
He had given Joan the indication that she was looking for as to his
attitude towards the fait accompli. Without asking a question she had
discovered that husband and wife were divided on the fundamental issue
that underlay all others at the present moment. Cicely was weaving
social schemes for the future, Yeovil had come home in a frame of mind
that threatened the destruction of those schemes, or at any rate a
serious hindrance to their execution. The situation presented itself to
Joan's mind with an alluring piquancy.
"You are giving a grand supper-party for Gorla on the night of her debut,
aren't you?" she asked Cicely; "several people spoke to me about it, so I
suppose it must be true."
Tony Luton and young Storre had taken care to spread the news of the
projected supper function, in order to ensure against a change of plans
on Cicely's part.
"Gorla is a great friend of mine," said Cicely, trying to talk as if the
conversation had taken a perfectly indifferent turn; "also I think she
deserves a little encouragement after the hard work she has been through.
I thought it would be doing her a kindness to arrange a supper party for
her on her first night."
There was a moment's silence. Yeovil said nothing, and Joan understood
the value of being occasionally tongue-tied.
"The whole question is," continued Cicely, as the silence became
oppressive, "whether one is to mope and hold aloof from the national
life, or take our share in it; the life has got to go on whether we
participate in it or not. It seems to me to be more patriotic to come
down into the dust of the marketplace than to withdraw oneself behind
walls or beyond the seas."
"Of course the industrial life of the country has to go on," said Yeovil;
"no one could criticise Gorla if she interested herself in organising
cottage industries or anything of that sort, in which she would be
helping her own people. That one could understand, but I don't think a
cosmopolitan concern like the music-hall business calls for personal
sacrifices from young women of good family at a moment like the present."
"It is just at a moment like the present that the people want something
to interest them and take them out of themselves," said Cicely
argumentatively; "what has happened, has happened, and we can't undo it
or escape the consequences. What we can do, or attempt to do, is to make
things less dreary, and make people less unhappy."
"In a word, more contented," said Yeovil; "if I were a German statesman,
that is the end I would labour for and encourage others to labour for, to
make the people forget that they were discontented. All this work of
regalvanising the social side of London life may be summed up in the
phrase 'travailler pour le roi de Prusse.'"
"I don't think there is any use in discussing the matter further," said
Cicely.
"I can see that grand supper-party not coming off," said Joan
provocatively.
Ronnie looked anxiously at Cicely.
"You can see it coming on, if you're gifted with prophetic vision of a
reliable kind," said Cicely; "of course as Murrey doesn't take kindly to
the idea of Gorla's enterprise I won't have the party here. I'll give it
at a restaurant, that's all. I can see Murrey's point of view, and
sympathise with it, but I'm not going to throw Gorla over."
There was another pause of uncomfortably protracted duration.
"I say, this is a top-hole omelette," said Ronnie.
It was his only contribution to the conversation, but it was a valuable
one.