IN the warmth of a late June morning the long shaded stretch of raked
earth, gravel-walk and rhododendron bush that is known affectionately as
the Row was alive with the monotonous movement and alert stagnation
appropriate to the time and place. The seekers after health, the seekers
after notoriety and recognition, and the lovers of good exercise were all
well represented on the galloping ground; the gravel-walk and chairs and
long seats held a population whose varied instincts and motives would
have baffled a social catalogue-maker. The children, handled or in
perambulators, might be excused from instinct or motive; they were
brought.
Pleasingly conspicuous among a bunch of indifferent riders pacing along
by the rails where the onlookers were thickest was Courtenay Youghal, on
his handsome plum-roan gelding Anne de Joyeuse. That delicately stepping
animal had taken a prize at Islington and nearly taken the life of a
stable-boy of whom he disapproved, but his strongest claims to
distinction were his good looks and his high opinion of himself. Youghal
evidently believed in thorough accord between horse and rider.
“Please stop and talk to me,” said a quiet beckoning voice from the other
side of the rails, and Youghal drew rein and greeted Lady Veula Croot.
Lady Veula had married into a family of commercial solidity and
enterprising political nonentity. She had a devoted husband, some blonde
teachable children, and a look of unutterable weariness in her eyes. To
see her standing at the top of an expensively horticultured staircase
receiving her husband’s guests was rather like watching an animal
performing on a music-hall stage.
One always tells oneself that the animal likes it, and one always knows
that it doesn’t.
“Lady Veula is an ardent Free Trader, isn’t she?” someone once remarked
to Lady Caroline.
“I wonder,” said Lady Caroline, in her gently questioning voice; “a woman
whose dresses are made in Paris and whose marriage has been made in
Heaven might be equally biassed for and against free imports.”
Lady Veula looked at Youghal and his mount with slow critical
appraisement, and there was a note of blended raillery and wistfulness in
her voice.
“You two dear things, I should love to stroke you both, but I’m not sure
how Joyeuse would take it. So I’ll stroke you down verbally instead. I
admired your attack on Sir Edward immensely, though of course I don’t
agree with a word of it. Your description of him building a hedge round
the German cuckoo and hoping he was isolating it was rather sweet.
Seriously though, I regard him as one of the pillars of the
Administration.”
“So do I,” said Youghal; “the misfortune is that he is merely propping up
a canvas roof. It’s just his regrettable solidity and integrity that
makes him so expensively dangerous. The average Briton arrives at the
same judgment about Roan’s handling of foreign affairs as Omar does of
the Supreme Being in his dealings with the world: He’s a good fellow and
’twill all be well.’”
Lady Veula laughed lightly. “My Party is in power so I may exercise the
privilege of being optimistic. Who is that who bowed to you?” she
continued, as a dark young man with an inclination to stoutness passed by
them on foot; “I’ve seen him about a good deal lately. He’s been to one
or two of my dances.”
“Andrei Drakoloff,” said Youghal; “he’s just produced a play that has had
a big success in Moscow and is certain to be extremely popular all over
Russia. In the first three acts the heroine is supposed to be dying of
consumption; in the last act they find she is really dying of cancer.”
“Are the Russians really such a gloomy people?”
“Gloom-loving but not in the least gloomy. They merely take their
sadness pleasurably, just as we are accused of taking our pleasures
sadly. Have you noticed that dreadful Klopstock youth has been pounding
past us at shortening intervals. He’ll come up and talk if he half
catches your eye.”
“I only just know him. Isn’t he at an agricultural college or something
of the sort?”
“Yes, studying to be a gentleman farmer, he told me. I didn’t ask if
both subjects were compulsory.”
“You’re really rather dreadful,” said Lady Veula, trying to look as if
she thought so; “remember, we are all equal in the sight of Heaven.”
For a preacher of wholesome truths her voice rather lacked conviction.
“If I and Ernest Klopstock are really equal in the sight of Heaven,” said
Youghal, with intense complacency, “I should recommend Heaven to consult
an eye specialist.”
There was a heavy spattering of loose earth, and a squelching of
saddle-leather, as the Klopstock youth lumbered up to the rails and
delivered himself of loud, cheerful greetings. Joyeuse laid his ears well
back as the ungainly bay cob and his appropriately matched rider drew up
beside him; his verdict was reflected and endorsed by the cold stare of
Youghal’s eyes.
“I’ve been having a nailing fine time,” recounted the newcomer with
clamorous enthusiasm; “I was over in Paris last month and had lots of
strawberries there, then I had a lot more in London, and now I’ve been
having a late crop of them in Herefordshire, so I’ve had quite a lot this
year.” And he laughed as one who had deserved well and received well of
Fate.
“The charm of that story,” said Youghal, “is that it can be told in any
drawing-room.” And with a sweep of his wide-brimmed hat to Lady Veula he
turned the impatient Joyeuse into the moving stream of horse and
horsemen.
“That woman reminds me of some verse I’ve read and liked,” thought
Youghal, as Joyeuse sprang into a light showy canter that gave full
recognition to the existence of observant human beings along the side
walk. “Ah, I have it.”
And he quoted almost aloud, as one does in the exhilaration of a canter:
“How much I loved that way you had
Of smiling most, when very sad,
A smile which carried tender hints
Of sun and spring,
And yet, more than all other thing,
Of weariness beyond all words.”
And having satisfactorily fitted Lady Veula on to a quotation he
dismissed her from his mind. With the constancy of her sex she thought
about him, his good looks and his youth and his railing tongue, till late
in the afternoon.
While Youghal was putting Joyeuse through his paces under the elm trees
of the Row a little drama in which he was directly interested was being
played out not many hundred yards away. Elaine and Comus were indulging
themselves in two pennyworths of Park chair, drawn aside just a little
from the serried rows of sitters who were set out like bedded plants over
an acre or so of turf. Comus was, for the moment, in a mood of
pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund of pointed criticism and unsparing
anecdote concerning those of the promenaders or loungers whom he knew
personally or by sight. Elaine was rather quieter than usual, and the
grave serenity of the Leonardo da Vinci portrait seemed intensified in
her face this morning. In his leisurely courtship Comus had relied
almost exclusively on his physical attraction and the fitful drollery of
his wit and high spirits, and these graces had gone far to make him seem
a very desirable and rather lovable thing in Elaine’s eyes. But he had
left out of account the disfavour which he constantly risked and
sometimes incurred from his frank and undisguised indifference to other
people’s interests and wishes, including, at times, Elaine’s. And the
more that she felt that she liked him the more she was irritated by his
lack of consideration for her. Without expecting that her every wish
should become a law to him she would at least have liked it to reach the
formality of a Second Reading. Another important factor he had also left
out of his reckoning, namely the presence on the scene of another suitor,
who also had youth and wit to recommend him, and who certainly did not
lack physical attractions. Comus, marching carelessly through unknown
country to effect what seemed already an assured victory, made the
mistake of disregarding the existence of an unbeaten army on his flank.
To-day Elaine felt that, without having actually quarrelled, she and
Comus had drifted a little bit out of sympathy with one another. The
fault she knew was scarcely hers, in fact from the most good-natured
point of view it could hardly be denied that it was almost entirely his.
The incident of the silver dish had lacked even the attraction of
novelty; it had been one of a series, all bearing a strong connecting
likeness. There had been small unrepaid loans which Elaine would not
have grudged in themselves, though the application for them brought a
certain qualm of distaste; with the perversity which seemed inseparable
from his doings, Comus had always flung away a portion of his borrowings
in some ostentatious piece of glaring and utterly profitless
extravagance, which outraged all the canons of her upbringing without
bringing him an atom of understandable satisfaction. Under these
repeated discouragements it was not surprising that some small part of
her affection should have slipped away, but she had come to the Park that
morning with an unconfessed expectation of being gently wooed back to the
mood of gracious forgetfulness that she was only too eager to assume. It
was almost worth while being angry with Comus for the sake of
experiencing the pleasure of being coaxed into friendliness again with
the charm which he knew so well how to exert. It was delicious here
under the trees on this perfect June morning, and Elaine had the blessed
assurance that most of the women within range were envying her the
companionship of the handsome merry-hearted youth who sat by her side.
With special complacence she contemplated her cousin Suzette, who was
self-consciously but not very elatedly basking in the attentions of her
fiancé, an earnest-looking young man who was superintendent of a People’s
something-or-other on the south side of the river, and whose clothes
Comus had described as having been made in Southwark rather than in
anger.
Most of the pleasures in life must be paid for, and the chair-ticket
vendor in due time made his appearance in quest of pennies.
Comus paid him from out of a varied assortment of coins and then balanced
the remainder in the palm of his hand. Elaine felt a sudden
foreknowledge of something disagreeable about to happen and a red spot
deepened in her cheeks.
“Four shillings and fivepence and a half-penny,” said Comus,
reflectively. “It’s a ridiculous sum to last me for the next three days,
and I owe a card debt of over two pounds.”
“Yes?” commented Elaine dryly and with an apparent lack of interest in
his exchequer statement. Surely, she was thinking hurriedly to herself,
he could not be foolish enough to broach the matter of another loan.
“The card debt is rather a nuisance,” pursued Comus, with fatalistic
persistency.
“You won seven pounds last week, didn’t you?” asked Elaine; “don’t you
put by any of your winnings to balance losses?”
“The four shillings and the fivepence and the half-penny represent the
rearguard of the seven pounds,” said Comus; “the rest have fallen by the
way. If I can pay the two pounds to-day I daresay I shall win something
more to go on with; I’m holding rather good cards just now. But if I
can’t pay it of course I shan’t show up at the club. So you see the fix
I am in.”
Elaine took no notice of this indirect application. The Appeal Court was
assembling in haste to consider new evidence, and this time there was the
rapidity of sudden determination about its movement.
The conversation strayed away from the fateful topic for a few moments
and then Comus brought it deliberately back to the danger zone.
“It would be awfully nice if you would let me have a fiver for a few
days, Elaine,” he said quickly; “if you don’t I really don’t know what I
shall do.”
“If you are really bothered about your card debt I will send you the two
pounds by messenger boy early this afternoon.” She spoke quietly and
with great decision. “And I shall not be at the Connor’s dance
to-night,” she continued; “it’s too hot for dancing. I’m going home now;
please don’t bother to accompany me, I particularly wish to go alone.”
Comus saw that he had overstepped the mark of her good nature. Wisely he
made no immediate attempt to force himself back into her good graces. He
would wait till her indignation had cooled.
His tactics would have been excellent if he had not forgotten that
unbeaten army on his flank.
Elaine de Frey had known very clearly what qualities she had wanted in
Comus, and she had known, against all efforts at self-deception, that he
fell far short of those qualities. She had been willing to lower her
standard of moral requirements in proportion as she was fond of the boy,
but there was a point beyond which she would not go. He had hurt her
pride besides alarming her sense of caution.
Suzette, on whom she felt a thoroughly justified tendency to look down,
had at any rate an attentive and considerate lover. Elaine walked
towards the Park gates feeling that in one essential Suzette possessed
something that had been denied to her, and at the gates she met Joyeuse
and his spruce young rider preparing to turn homeward.
“Get rid of Joyeuse and come and take me out to lunch somewhere,”
demanded Elaine.
“How jolly,” said Youghal. “Let’s go to the Corridor Restaurant. The
head waiter there is an old Viennese friend of mine and looks after me
beautifully. I’ve never been there with a lady before, and he’s sure to
ask me afterwards, in his fatherly way, if we’re engaged.”
The lunch was a success in every way. There was just enough orchestral
effort to immerse the conversation without drowning it, and Youghal was
an attentive and inspired host. Through an open doorway Elaine could see
the café reading-room, with its imposing array of _Neue Freie Presse_,
_Berliner Tageblatt_, and other exotic newspapers hanging on the wall.
She looked across at the young man seated opposite her, who gave one the
impression of having centred the most serious efforts of his brain on his
toilet and his food, and recalled some of the flattering remarks that the
press had bestowed on his recent speeches.
“Doesn’t it make you conceited, Courtenay,” she asked, “to look at all
those foreign newspapers hanging there and know that most of them have
got paragraphs and articles about your Persian speech?”
Youghal laughed.
“There’s always a chastening corrective in the thought that some of them
may have printed your portrait. When once you’ve seen your features
hurriedly reproduced in the _Matin_, for instance, you feel you would
like to be a veiled Turkish woman for the rest of your life.”
And Youghal gazed long and lovingly at his reflection in the nearest
mirror, as an antidote against possible incitements to humility in the
portrait gallery of fame.
Elaine felt a certain soothed satisfaction in the fact that this young
man, whose knowledge of the Middle East was an embarrassment to Ministers
at question time and in debate, was showing himself equally well-informed
on the subject of her culinary likes and dislikes. If Suzette could have
been forced to attend as a witness at a neighbouring table she would have
felt even happier.
“Did the head waiter ask if we were engaged?” asked Elaine, when
Courtenay had settled the bill, and she had finished collecting her
sunshade and gloves and other impedimenta from the hands of obsequious
attendants.
“Yes,” said Youghal, “and he seemed quite crestfallen when I had to say
‘no.’”
“It would be horrid to disappoint him when he’s looked after us so
charmingly,” said Elaine; “tell him that we are.”