FRANCESCA prided herself on being able to see things from other people’s
points of view, which meant, as it usually does, that she could see her
own point of view from various aspects. As regards Comus, whose doings
and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughts at the present moment, she
had mapped out in her mind so clearly what his outlook in life ought to
be, that she was peculiarly unfitted to understand the drift of his
feelings or the impulses that governed them. Fate had endowed her with a
son; in limiting the endowment to a solitary offspring Fate had certainly
shown a moderation which Francesca was perfectly willing to acknowledge
and be thankful for; but then, as she pointed out to a certain complacent
friend of hers who cheerfully sustained an endowment of half-a-dozen male
offsprings and a girl or two, her one child was Comus. Moderation in
numbers was more than counterbalanced in his case by extravagance in
characteristics.
Francesca mentally compared her son with hundreds of other young men whom
she saw around her, steadily, and no doubt happily, engaged in the
process of transforming themselves from nice boys into useful citizens.
Most of them had occupations, or were industriously engaged in qualifying
for such; in their leisure moments they smoked reasonably-priced
cigarettes, went to the cheaper seats at music-halls, watched an
occasional cricket match at Lord’s with apparent interest, saw most of
the world’s spectacular events through the medium of the cinematograph,
and were wont to exchange at parting seemingly superfluous injunctions to
“be good.” The whole of Bond Street and many of the tributary
thoroughfares of Piccadilly might have been swept off the face of modern
London without in any way interfering with the supply of their daily
wants. They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but as sons they would
have been eminently restful. With a growing sense of irritation
Francesca compared these deserving young men with her own intractable
offspring, and wondered why Fate should have singled her out to be the
parent of such a vexatious variant from a comfortable and desirable type.
As far as remunerative achievement was concerned, Comus copied the
insouciance of the field lily with a dangerous fidelity. Like his mother
he looked round with wistful irritation at the example afforded by
contemporary youth, but he concentrated his attention exclusively on the
richer circles of his acquaintance, young men who bought cars and polo
ponies as unconcernedly as he might purchase a carnation for his
buttonhole, and went for trips to Cairo or the Tigris valley with less
difficulty and finance-stretching than he encountered in contriving a
week-end at Brighton.
Gaiety and good-looks had carried Comus successfully and, on the whole,
pleasantly, through schooldays and a recurring succession of holidays;
the same desirable assets were still at his service to advance him along
his road, but it was a disconcerting experience to find that they could
not be relied on to go all distances at all times. In an animal world,
and a fiercely competitive animal world at that, something more was
needed than the decorative _abandon_ of the field lily, and it was just
that something more which Comus seemed unable or unwilling to provide on
his own account; it was just the lack of that something more which left
him sulking with Fate over the numerous breakdowns and stumbling-blocks
that held him up on what he expected to be a triumphal or, at any rate,
unimpeded progress.
Francesca was, in her own way, fonder of Comus than of anyone else in the
world, and if he had been browning his skin somewhere east of Suez she
would probably have kissed his photograph with genuine fervour every
night before going to bed; the appearance of a cholera scare or rumour of
native rising in the columns of her daily news-sheet would have caused
her a flutter of anxiety, and she would have mentally likened herself to
a Spartan mother sacrificing her best-beloved on the altar of State
necessities. But with the best-beloved installed under her roof,
occupying an unreasonable amount of cubic space, and demanding daily
sacrifices instead of providing the raw material for one, her feelings
were tinged with irritation rather than affection. She might have
forgiven Comus generously for misdeeds of some gravity committed in
another continent, but she could never overlook the fact that out of a
dish of five plovers’ eggs he was certain to take three. The absent may
be always wrong, but they are seldom in a position to be inconsiderate.
Thus a wall of ice had grown up gradually between mother and son, a
barrier across which they could hold converse, but which gave a wintry
chill even to the sparkle of their lightest words. The boy had the gift
of being irresistibly amusing when he chose to exert himself in that
direction, and after a long series of moody or jangling meal-sittings he
would break forth into a torrential flow of small talk, scandal and
malicious anecdote, true or more generally invented, to which Francesca
listened with a relish and appreciation, that was all the more flattering
from being so unwillingly bestowed.
“If you chose your friends from a rather more reputable set you would be
doubtless less amusing, but there would be compensating advantages.”
Francesca snapped the remark out at lunch one day when she had been
betrayed into a broader smile than she considered the circumstances of
her attitude towards Comus warranted.
“I’m going to move in quite decent society to-night,” replied Comus with
a pleased chuckle; “I’m going to meet you and Uncle Henry and heaps of
nice dull God-fearing people at dinner.”
Francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance.
“You don’t mean to say Caroline has asked you to dinner to-night?” she
said; “and of course without telling me. How exceedingly like her!”
Lady Caroline Benaresq had reached that age when you can say and do what
you like in defiance of people’s most sensitive feelings and most
cherished antipathies. Not that she had waited to attain her present age
before pursuing that line of conduct; she came of a family whose
individual members went through life, from the nursery to the grave, with
as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going
through a crowded bathing tent. It was a compensating mercy that they
disagreed rather more among themselves than they did with the outside
world; every known variety and shade of religion and politics had been
pressed into the family service to avoid the possibility of any agreement
on the larger essentials of life, and such unlooked-for happenings as the
Home Rule schism, the Tariff-Reform upheaval and the Suffragette crusade
were thankfully seized on as furnishing occasion for further differences
and sub-divisions. Lady Caroline’s favourite scheme of entertaining was
to bring jarring and antagonistic elements into close contact and play
them remorselessly one against the other. “One gets much better results
under those circumstances” she used to observe, “than by asking people
who wish to meet each other. Few people talk as brilliantly to impress a
friend as they do to depress an enemy.”
She admitted that her theory broke down rather badly if you applied it to
Parliamentary debates. At her own dinner table its success was usually
triumphantly vindicated.
“Who else is to be there?” Francesca asked, with some pardonable
misgiving.
“Courtenay Youghal. He’ll probably sit next to you, so you’d better
think out a lot of annihilating remarks in readiness. And Elaine de
Frey.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of her. Who is she?”
“Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a solemn sort of way,
and almost indecently rich.”
“Marry her” was the advice which sprang to Francesca’s lips, but she
choked it back with a salted almond, having a rare perception of the fact
that words are sometimes given to us to defeat our purposes.
“Caroline has probably marked her down for Toby or one of the
grand-nephews,” she said, carelessly; “a little money would be rather
useful in that quarter, I imagine.”
Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity that she
wanted to see.
An advantageous marriage was so obviously the most sensible course for
him to embark on that she scarcely dared to hope that he would seriously
entertain it; yet there was just a chance that if he got as far as the
flirtation stage with an attractive (and attracted) girl who was also an
heiress, the sheer perversity of his nature might carry him on to more
definite courtship, if only from the desire to thrust other more
genuinely enamoured suitors into the background. It was a forlorn hope;
so forlorn that the idea even crossed her mind of throwing herself on the
mercy of her _bête noire_, Courtenay Youghal, and trying to enlist the
influence which he seemed to possess over Comus for the purpose of
furthering her hurriedly conceived project. Anyhow, the dinner promised
to be more interesting than she had originally anticipated.
Lady Caroline was a professed Socialist in politics, chiefly, it was
believed, because she was thus enabled to disagree with most of the
Liberals and Conservatives, and all the Socialists of the day. She did
not permit her Socialism, however, to penetrate below stairs; her cook
and butler had every encouragement to be Individualists. Francesca, who
was a keen and intelligent food critic, harboured no misgivings as to her
hostess’s kitchen and cellar departments; some of the human side-dishes
at the feast gave her more ground for uneasiness. Courtenay Youghal, for
instance, would probably be brilliantly silent; her brother Henry would
almost certainly be the reverse.
The dinner party was a large one and Francesca arrived late with little
time to take preliminary stock of the guests; a card with the name, “Miss
de Frey,” immediately opposite her own place at the other side of the
table, indicated, however, the whereabouts of the heiress. It was
characteristic of Francesca that she first carefully read the menu from
end to end, and then indulged in an equally careful though less open
scrutiny of the girl who sat opposite her, the girl who was nobody in
particular, but whose income was everything that could be desired. She
was pretty in a restrained nut-brown fashion, and had a look of grave
reflective calm that probably masked a speculative unsettled temperament.
Her pose, if one wished to be critical, was just a little too elaborately
careless. She wore some excellently set rubies with that indefinable air
of having more at home that is so difficult to improvise. Francesca was
distinctly pleased with her survey.
“You seem interested in your _vis-à-vis_,” said Courtenay Youghal.
“I almost think I’ve seen her before,” said Francesca; “her face seems
familiar to me.”
“The narrow gallery at the Louvre; attributed to Leonardo da Vinci,” said
Youghal.
“Of course,” said Francesca, her feelings divided between satisfaction at
capturing an elusive impression and annoyance that Youghal should have
been her helper. A stronger tinge of annoyance possessed her when she
heard the voice of Henry Greech raised in painful prominence at Lady
Caroline’s end of the table.
“I called on the Trudhams yesterday,” he announced; “it was their Silver
Wedding, you know, at least the day before was. Such lots of silver
presents, quite a show. Of course there were a great many duplicates,
but still, very nice to have. I think they were very pleased to get so
many.”
“We must not grudge them their show of presents after their twenty-five
years of married life,” said Lady Caroline, gently; “it is the silver
lining to their cloud.”
A third of the guests present were related to the Trudhams.
“Lady Caroline is beginning well,” murmured Courtenay Youghal.
“I should hardly call twenty-five years of married life a cloud,” said
Henry Greech, lamely.
“Don’t let’s talk about married life,” said a tall handsome woman, who
looked like some modern painter’s conception of the goddess Bellona;
“it’s my misfortune to write eternally about husbands and wives and their
variants. My public expects it of me. I do so envy journalists who can
write about plagues and strikes and Anarchist plots, and other pleasing
things, instead of being tied down to one stale old topic.”
“Who is that woman and what has she written?” Francesca asked Youghal;
she dimly remembered having seen her at one of Serena Golackly’s
gatherings, surrounded by a little Court of admirers.
“I forget her name; she has a villa at San Remo or Mentone, or somewhere
where one does have villas, and plays an extraordinary good game of
bridge. Also she has the reputation, rather rare in your sex, of being a
wonderfully sound judge of wine.”
“But what has she written?”
“Oh, several novels of the thinnish ice order. Her last one, ‘The Woman
who wished it was Wednesday,’ has been banned at all the libraries. I
expect you’ve read it.”
“I don’t see why you should think so,” said Francesca, coldly.
“Only because Comus lent me your copy yesterday,” said Youghal. He threw
back his handsome head and gave her a sidelong glance of quizzical
amusement. He knew that she hated his intimacy with Comus, and he was
secretly rather proud of his influence over the boy, shallow and negative
though he knew it to be. It had been, on his part, an unsought intimacy,
and it would probably fall to pieces the moment he tried seriously to
take up the _rôle_ of mentor. The fact that Comus’s mother openly
disapproved of the friendship gave it perhaps its chief interest in the
young politician’s eyes.
Francesca turned her attention to her brother’s end of the table. Henry
Greech had willingly availed himself of the invitation to leave the
subject of married life, and had launched forthwith into the equally
well-worn theme of current politics. He was not a person who was in much
demand for public meetings, and the House showed no great impatience to
hear his views on the topics of the moment; its impatience, indeed, was
manifested rather in the opposite direction. Hence he was prone to
unburden himself of accumulated political wisdom as occasion presented
itself—sometimes, indeed, to assume an occasion that was hardly visible
to the naked intelligence.
“Our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill struggle, and they know
it,” he chirruped, defiantly; “they’ve become possessed, like the
Gadarene swine, with a whole legion of—”
“Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill,” put in Lady Caroline in a
gently enquiring voice.
Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitude and the
safer kinds of fact.
Francesca did not regard her brother’s views on statecraft either in the
light of gospel or revelation; as Comus once remarked, they more usually
suggested exodus. In the present instance she found distraction in a
renewed scrutiny of the girl opposite her, who seemed to be only
moderately interested in the conversational efforts of the diners on
either side of her. Comus who was looking and talking his best, was
sitting at the further end of the table, and Francesca was quick to
notice in which direction the girl’s glances were continually straying.
Once or twice the eyes of the young people met and a swift flush of
pleasure and a half-smile that spoke of good understanding came to the
heiress’s face. It did not need the gift of the traditional intuition of
her sex to enable Francesca to guess that the girl with the desirable
banking account was already considerably attracted by the lively young
Pagan who had, when he cared to practise it, such an art of winning
admiration. For the first time for many, many months Francesca saw her
son’s prospects in a rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously,
to wonder exactly how much wealth was summed up in the expressive label
“almost indecently rich.” A wife with a really large fortune and a
correspondingly big dower of character and ambition, might, perhaps,
succeed in turning Comus’s latent energies into a groove which would
provide him, if not with a career, at least with an occupation, and the
young serious face opposite looked as if its owner lacked neither
character or ambition. Francesca’s speculations took a more personal
turn. Out of the well-filled coffers with which her imagination was
toying, an inconsiderable sum might eventually be devoted to the leasing,
or even perhaps the purchase of, the house in Blue Street when the
present convenient arrangement should have come to an end, and Francesca
and the Van der Meulen would not be obliged to seek fresh quarters.
A woman’s voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the other side of
Courtenay Youghal, broke in on her bridge-building.
“Tons of money and really very presentable. Just the wife for a rising
young politician. Go in and win her before she’s snapped up by some
fortune hunter.”
Youghal and his instructress in worldly wisdom were looking straight
across the table at the Leonardo da Vinci girl with the grave reflective
eyes and the over-emphasised air of repose. Francesca felt a quick throb
of anger against her match-making neighbour; why, she asked herself, must
some women, with no end or purpose of their own to serve, except the
sheer love of meddling in the affairs of others, plunge their hands into
plots and schemings of this sort, in which the happiness of more than one
person was concerned? And more clearly than ever she realised how
thoroughly she detested Courtenay Youghal. She had disliked him as an
evil influence, setting before her son an example of showy ambition that
he was not in the least likely to follow, and providing him with a model
of extravagant dandyism that he was only too certain to copy. In her
heart she knew that Comus would have embarked just as surely on his
present course of idle self-indulgence if he had never known of the
existence of Youghal, but she chose to regard that young man as her son’s
evil genius, and now he seemed likely to justify more than ever the
character she had fastened on to him. For once in his life Comus
appeared to have an idea of behaving sensibly and making some use of his
opportunities, and almost at the same moment Courtenay Youghal arrived on
the scene as a possible and very dangerous rival. Against the good looks
and fitful powers of fascination that Comus could bring into the field,
the young politician could match half-a-dozen dazzling qualities which
would go far to recommend him in the eyes of a woman of the world, still
more in those of a young girl in search of an ideal. Good-looking in his
own way, if not on such showy lines as Comus, always well turned-out,
witty, self-confident without being bumptious, with a conspicuous
Parliamentary career alongside him, and heaven knew what else in front of
him, Courtenay Youghal certainly was not a rival whose chances could be
held very lightly. Francesca laughed bitterly to herself as she
remembered that a few hours ago she had entertained the idea of begging
for his good offices in helping on Comus’s wooing. One consolation, at
least, she found for herself: if Youghal really meant to step in and try
and cut out his young friend, the latter at any rate had snatched a
useful start. Comus had mentioned Miss de Frey at luncheon that day,
casually and dispassionately; if the subject of the dinner guests had not
come up he would probably not have mentioned her at all. But they were
obviously already very good friends. It was part and parcel of the state
of domestic tension at Blue Street that Francesca should only have come
to know of this highly interesting heiress by an accidental sorting of
guests at a dinner party.
Lady Caroline’s voice broke in on her reflections; it was a gentle
purring voice, that possessed an uncanny quality of being able to make
itself heard down the longest dinner table.
“The dear Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded. He read a list of
box-holders for the opera as the First Lesson the other Sunday, instead
of the families and lots of the tribes of Israel that entered Canaan.
Fortunately no one noticed the mistake.”