ELAINE DE FREY sat at ease—at bodily ease—at any rate—in a low wicker
chair placed under the shade of a group of cedars in the heart of a
stately spacious garden that had almost made up its mind to be a park.
The shallow stone basin of an old fountain, on whose wide ledge a
leaden-moulded otter for ever preyed on a leaden salmon, filled a
conspicuous place in the immediate foreground. Around its rim ran an
inscription in Latin, warning mortal man that time flows as swiftly as
water and exhorting him to make the most of his hours; after which piece
of Jacobean moralising it set itself shamelessly to beguile all who might
pass that way into an abandonment of contemplative repose. On all sides
of it a stretch of smooth turf spread away, broken up here and there by
groups of dwarfish chestnut and mulberry trees, whose leaves and branches
cast a laced pattern of shade beneath them. On one side the lawn sloped
gently down to a small lake, whereon floated a quartette of swans, their
movements suggestive of a certain mournful listlessness, as though a
weary dignity of caste held them back from the joyous bustling life of
the lesser waterfowl. Elaine liked to imagine that they re-embodied the
souls of unhappy boys who had been forced by family interests to become
high ecclesiastical dignitaries and had grown prematurely Right Reverend.
A low stone balustrade fenced part of the shore of the lake, making a
miniature terrace above its level, and here roses grew in a rich
multitude. Other rose bushes, carefully pruned and tended, formed little
oases of colour and perfume amid the restful green of the sward, and in
the distance the eye caught the variegated blaze of a many-hued hedge of
rhododendron. With these favoured exceptions flowers were hard to find
in this well-ordered garden; the misguided tyranny of staring geranium
beds and beflowered archways leading to nowhere, so dear to the suburban
gardener, found no expression here. Magnificent Amherst pheasants, whose
plumage challenged and almost shamed the peacock on his own ground,
stepped to and fro over the emerald turf with the assured self-conscious
pride of reigning sultans. It was a garden where summer seemed a
part-proprietor rather than a hurried visitor.
By the side of Elaine’s chair under the shadow of the cedars a wicker
table was set out with the paraphernalia of afternoon tea. On some
cushions at her feet reclined Courtenay Youghal, smoothly preened and
youthfully elegant, the personification of decorative repose; equally
decorative, but with the showy restlessness of a dragonfly, Comus
disported his flannelled person over a considerable span of the available
foreground.
The intimacy existing between the two young men had suffered no immediate
dislocation from the circumstance that they were tacitly paying court to
the same lady. It was an intimacy founded not in the least on friendship
or community of tastes and ideas, but owed its existence to the fact that
each was amused and interested by the other. Youghal found Comus, for
the time being at any rate, just as amusing and interesting as a rival
for Elaine’s favour as he had been in the _rôle_ of scapegrace
boy-about-Town; Comus for his part did not wish to lose touch with
Youghal, who among other attractions possessed the recommendation of
being under the ban of Comus’s mother. She disapproved, it is true, of a
great many of her son’s friends and associates, but this particular one
was a special and persistent source of irritation to her from the fact
that he figured prominently and more or less successfully in the public
life of the day. There was something peculiarly exasperating in reading
a brilliant and incisive attack on the Government’s rash handling of
public expenditure delivered by a young man who encouraged her son in
every imaginable extravagance. The actual extent of Youghal’s influence
over the boy was of the slightest; Comus was quite capable of deriving
encouragement to rash outlay and frivolous conversation from an anchorite
or an East-end parson if he had been thrown into close companionship with
such an individual. Francesca, however, exercised a mother’s privilege
in assuming her son’s bachelor associates to be industrious in labouring
to achieve his undoing. Therefore the young politician was a source of
unconcealed annoyance to her, and in the same degree as she expressed her
disapproval of him Comus was careful to maintain and parade the intimacy.
Its existence, or rather its continued existence, was one of the things
that faintly puzzled the young lady whose sought-for favour might have
been expected to furnish an occasion for its rapid dissolution.
With two suitors, one of whom at least she found markedly attractive,
courting her at the same moment, Elaine should have had reasonable cause
for being on good terms with the world, and with herself in particular.
Happiness was not, however, at this auspicious moment, her dominant mood.
The grave calm of her face masked as usual a certain degree of grave
perturbation. A succession of well-meaning governesses and a plentiful
supply of moralising aunts on both sides of her family, had impressed on
her young mind the theoretical fact that wealth is a great
responsibility. The consciousness of her responsibility set her
continually wondering, not as to her own fitness to discharge her
“stewardship,” but as to the motives and merits of people with whom she
came in contact. The knowledge that there was so much in the world that
she could buy, invited speculation as to how much there was that was
worth buying. Gradually she had come to regard her mind as a sort of
appeal court before whose secret sittings were examined and judged the
motives and actions, the motives especially, of the world in general. In
her schoolroom days she had sat in conscientious judgment on the motives
that guided or misguided Charles and Cromwell and Monck, Wallenstein and
Savonarola. In her present stage she was equally occupied in examining
the political sincerity of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the
good-faith of a honey-tongued but possibly loyal-hearted waiting-maid,
and the disinterestedness of a whole circle of indulgent and flattering
acquaintances. Even more absorbing, and in her eyes, more urgently
necessary, was the task of dissecting and appraising the characters of
the two young men who were favouring her with their attentions. And
herein lay cause for much thinking and some perturbation. Youghal, for
example, might have baffled a more experienced observer of human nature.
Elaine was too clever to confound his dandyism with foppishness or
self-advertisement. He admired his own toilet effect in a mirror from a
genuine sense of pleasure in a thing good to look upon, just as he would
feel a sensuous appreciation of the sight of a well-bred, well-matched,
well-turned-out pair of horses. Behind his careful political flippancy
and cynicism one might also detect a certain careless sincerity, which
would probably in the long run save him from moderate success, and turn
him into one of the brilliant failures of his day. Beyond this it was
difficult to form an exact appreciation of Courtenay Youghal, and Elaine,
who liked to have her impressions distinctly labelled and pigeon-holed,
was perpetually scrutinising the outer surface of his characteristics and
utterances, like a baffled art critic vainly searching beneath the
varnish and scratches of a doubtfully assigned picture for an
enlightening signature. The young man added to her perplexities by his
deliberate policy of never trying to show himself in a favourable light
even when most anxious to impart a favourable impression. He preferred
that people should hunt for his good qualities, and merely took very good
care that as far as possible they should never draw blank; even in the
matter of selfishness, which was the anchor-sheet of his existence, he
contrived to be noted, and justly noted, for doing remarkably unselfish
things. As a ruler he would have been reasonably popular; as a husband
he would probably be unendurable.
Comus was to a certain extent as great a mystification as Youghal, but
here Elaine was herself responsible for some of the perplexity which
enshrouded his character in her eyes. She had taken more than a passing
fancy for the boy—for the boy as he might be, that was to say—and she was
desperately unwilling to see him and appraise him as he really was. Thus
the mental court of appeal was constantly engaged in examining witnesses
as to character, most of whom signally failed to give any testimony which
would support the favourable judgment which the tribunal was so anxious
to arrive at. A woman with wider experience of the world’s ways and
shortcomings would probably have contented herself with an endeavour to
find out whether her liking for the boy outweighed her dislike of his
characteristics; Elaine took her judgments too seriously to approach the
matter from such a simple and convenient standpoint. The fact that she
was much more than half in love with Comus made it dreadfully important
that she should discover him to have a lovable soul, and Comus, it must
be confessed, did little to help forward the discovery.
“At any rate he is honest,” she would observe to herself, after some
outspoken admission of unprincipled conduct on his part, and then she
would ruefully recall certain episodes in which he had figured, from
which honesty had been conspicuously absent. What she tried to label
honesty in his candour was probably only a cynical defiance of the laws
of right and wrong.
“You look more than usually thoughtful this afternoon,” said Comus to
her, “as if you had invented this summer day and were trying to think out
improvements.”
“If I had the power to create improvements anywhere I think I should
begin with you,” retorted Elaine.
“I’m sure it’s much better to leave me as I am,” protested Comus; “you’re
like a relative of mine up in Argyllshire, who spends his time producing
improved breeds of sheep and pigs and chickens. So patronising and
irritating to the Almighty I should think, to go about putting superior
finishing touches to Creation.”
Elaine frowned, and then laughed, and finally gave a little sigh.
“It’s not easy to talk sense to you,” she said.
“Whatever else you take in hand,” said Youghal, “you must never improve
this garden. It’s what our idea of Heaven might be like if the Jews
hadn’t invented one for us on totally different lines. It’s dreadful
that we should accept them as the impresarios of our religious dreamland
instead of the Greeks.”
“You are not very fond of the Jews,” said Elaine.
“I’ve travelled and lived a good deal in Eastern Europe,” said Youghal.
“It seems largely a question of geography,” said Elaine; “in England no
one really is anti-Semitic.”
Youghal shook his head. “I know a great many Jews who are.”
Servants had quietly, almost reverently, placed tea and its accessories
on the wicker table, and quietly receded from the landscape. Elaine sat
like a grave young goddess about to dispense some mysterious potion to
her devotees. Her mind was still sitting in judgment on the Jewish
question.
Comus scrambled to his feet.
“It’s too hot for tea,” he said; “I shall go and feed the swans.”
And he walked off with a little silver basket-dish containing brown
bread-and-butter.
Elaine laughed quietly.
“It’s so like Comus,” she said, “to go off with our one dish of
bread-and-butter.”
Youghal chuckled responsively. It was an undoubted opportunity for him
to put in some disparaging criticism of Comus, and Elaine sat alert in
readiness to judge the critic and reserve judgment on the criticised.
“His selfishness is splendid but absolutely futile,” said Youghal; “now
my selfishness is commonplace, but always thoroughly practical and
calculated. He will have great difficulty in getting the swans to accept
his offering, and he incurs the odium of reducing us to a
bread-and-butterless condition. Incidentally he will get very hot.”
Elaine again had the sense of being thoroughly baffled. If Youghal had
said anything unkind it was about himself.
“If my cousin Suzette had been here,” she observed, with the shadow of a
malicious smile on her lips, “I believe she would have gone into a flood
of tears at the loss of her bread-and-butter, and Comus would have
figured ever after in her mind as something black and destroying and
hateful. In fact I don’t really know why we took our loss so
unprotestingly.”
“For two reasons,” said Youghal; “you are rather fond of Comus. And I—am
not very fond of bread-and-butter.”
The jesting remark brought a throb of pleasure to Elaine’s heart. She
had known full well that she cared for Comus, but now that Courtenay
Youghal had openly proclaimed the fact as something unchallenged and
understood matters seemed placed at once on a more advanced footing. The
warm sunlit garden grew suddenly into a Heaven that held the secret of
eternal happiness. Youth and comeliness would always walk here, under
the low-boughed mulberry trees, as unchanging as the leaden otter that
for ever preyed on the leaden salmon on the edge of the old fountain, and
somehow the lovers would always wear the aspect of herself and the boy
who was talking to the four white swans by the water steps. Youghal was
right; this was the real Heaven of one’s dreams and longings,
immeasurably removed from that Rue de la Paix Paradise about which one
professed utterly insincere hankerings in places of public worship.
Elaine drank her tea in a happy silence; besides being a brilliant talker
Youghal understood the rarer art of being a non-talker on occasion.
Comus came back across the grass swinging the empty basket-dish in his
hand.
“Swans were very pleased,” he cried, gaily, “and said they hoped I would
keep the bread-and-butter dish as a souvenir of a happy tea-party. I may
really have it, mayn’t I?” he continued in an anxious voice; “it will do
to keep studs and things in. You don’t want it.”
“It’s got the family crest on it,” said Elaine. Some of the happiness
had died out of her eyes.
“I’ll have that scratched off and my own put on,” said Comus.
“It’s been in the family for generations,” protested Elaine, who did not
share Comus’s view that because you were rich your lesser possessions
could have no value in your eyes.
“I want it dreadfully,” said Comus, sulkily, “and you’ve heaps of other
things to put bread-and-butter in.”
For the moment he was possessed by an overmastering desire to keep the
dish at all costs; a look of greedy determination dominated his face, and
he had not for an instant relaxed his grip of the coveted object.
Elaine was genuinely angry by this time, and was busily telling herself
that it was absurd to be put out over such a trifle; at the same moment a
sense of justice was telling her that Comus was displaying a good deal of
rather shabby selfishness. And somehow her chief anxiety at the moment
was to keep Courtenay Youghal from seeing that she was angry.
“I know you don’t really want it, so I’m going to keep it,” persisted
Comus.
“It’s too hot to argue,” said Elaine.
“Happy mistress of your destinies,” laughed Youghal; “you can suit your
disputations to the desired time and temperature. I have to go and
argue, or what is worse, listen to other people’s arguments, in a hot and
doctored atmosphere suitable to an invalid lizard.”
“You haven’t got to argue about a bread-and-butter dish,” said Elaine.
“Chiefly about bread-and-butter,” said Youghal; “our great preoccupation
is other people’s bread-and-butter. They earn or produce the material,
but we busy ourselves with making rules how it shall be cut up, and the
size of the slices, and how much butter shall go on how much bread. That
is what is called legislation. If we could only make rules as to how the
bread-and-butter should be digested we should be quite happy.”
Elaine had been brought up to regard Parliaments as something to be
treated with cheerful solemnity, like illness or family re-unions.
Youghal’s flippant disparagement of the career in which he was involved
did not, however, jar on her susceptibilities. She knew him to be not
only a lively and effective debater but an industrious worker on
committees. If he made light of his labours, at least he afforded no one
else a loophole for doing so. And certainly, the Parliamentary
atmosphere was not inviting on this hot afternoon.
“When must you go?” she asked, sympathetically.
Youghal looked ruefully at his watch. Before he could answer, a cheerful
hoot came through the air, as of an owl joyously challenging the sunlight
with a foreboding of the coming night. He sprang laughing to his feet.
“Listen! My summons back to my galley,” he cried. “The Gods have given
me an hour in this enchanted garden, so I must not complain.”
Then in a lower voice he almost whispered, “It’s the Persian debate
to-night.”
It was the one hint he had given in the midst of his talking and laughing
that he was really keenly enthralled in the work that lay before him. It
was the one little intimate touch that gave Elaine the knowledge that he
cared for her opinion of his work.
Comus, who had emptied his cigarette-case, became suddenly clamorous at
the prospect of being temporarily stranded without a smoke. Youghal took
the last remaining cigarette from his own case and gravely bisected it.
“Friendship could go no further,” he observed, as he gave one-half to the
doubtfully appeased Comus, and lit the other himself.
“There are heaps more in the hall,” said Elaine.
“It was only done for the Saint Martin of Tours effect,” said Youghal; “I
hate smoking when I’m rushing through the air. Good-bye.”
The departing galley-slave stepped forth into the sunlight, radiant and
confident. A few minutes later Elaine could see glimpses of his white
car as it rushed past the rhododendron bushes. He woos best who leaves
first, particularly if he goes forth to battle or the semblance of
battle.
Somehow Elaine’s garden of Eternal Youth had already become clouded in
its imagery. The girl-figure who walked in it was still distinctly and
unchangingly herself, but her companion was more blurred and undefined,
as a picture that has been superimposed on another.
Youghal sped townward well satisfied with himself. To-morrow, he
reflected, Elaine would read his speech in her morning paper, and he knew
in advance that it was not going to be one of his worst efforts. He knew
almost exactly where the punctuations of laughter and applause would
burst in, he knew that nimble fingers in the Press Gallery would be
taking down each gibe and argument as he flung it at the impassive
Minister confronting him, and that the fair lady of his desire would be
able to judge what manner of young man this was who spent his afternoon
in her garden, lazily chaffing himself and his world.
And he further reflected, with an amused chuckle, that she would be
vividly reminded of Comus for days to come, when she took her afternoon
tea, and saw the bread-and-butter reposing in an unaccustomed dish.