AFTER the momentous lunch at the Corridor Restaurant Elaine had returned
to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of her numerous
aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions.
In the first place she was conscious of a dominant feeling of relief; in
a moment of impetuosity, not wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had
settled the problem which hours of hard thinking and serious
heart-searching had brought no nearer to solution, and, although she felt
just a little inclined to be scared at the headlong manner of her final
decision, she had now very little doubt in her own mind that the decision
had been the right one. In fact the wonder seemed rather that she should
have been so long in doubt as to which of her wooers really enjoyed her
honest approval. She had been in love, these many weeks past with an
imaginary Comus, but now that she had definitely walked out of her
dreamland she saw that nearly all the qualities that had appealed to her
on his behalf had been absent from, or only fitfully present in, the
character of the real Comus. And now that she had installed Youghal in
the first place of her affections he had rapidly acquired in her eyes
some of the qualities which ranked highest in her estimation. Like the
proverbial buyer she had the happy feminine tendency of magnifying the
worth of her possession as soon as she had acquired it. And Courtenay
Youghal gave Elaine some justification for her sense of having chosen
wisely. Above all other things, selfish and cynical though he might
appear at times, he was unfailingly courteous and considerate towards
her. That was a circumstance which would always have carried weight with
her in judging any man; in this case its value was enormously heightened
by contrast with the behaviour of her other wooer. And Youghal had in
her eyes the advantage which the glamour of combat, even the combat of
words and wire-pulling, throws over the fighter. He stood well in the
forefront of a battle which however carefully stage-managed, however
honeycombed with personal insincerities and overlaid with calculated
mock-heroics, really meant something, really counted for good or wrong in
the nation’s development and the world’s history. Shrewd parliamentary
observers might have warned her that Youghal would never stand much
higher in the political world than he did at present, as a brilliant
Opposition freelance, leading lively and rather meaningless forays
against the dull and rather purposeless foreign policy of a Government
that was scarcely either to be blamed for or congratulated on its
handling of foreign affairs. The young politician had not the strength
of character or convictions that keeps a man naturally in the forefront
of affairs and gives his counsels a sterling value, and on the other hand
his insincerity was not deep enough to allow him to pose artificially and
successfully as a leader of men and shaper of movements. For the moment,
however, his place in public life was sufficiently marked out to give him
a secure footing in that world where people are counted individually and
not in herds. The woman whom he would make his wife would have the
chance, too, if she had the will and the skill, to become an individual
who counted.
There was balm to Elaine in this reflection, yet it did not wholly
suffice to drive out the feeling of pique which Comus had called into
being by his slighting view of her as a convenient cash supply in moments
of emergency. She found a certain satisfaction in scrupulously observing
her promise, made earlier on that eventful day, and sent off a messenger
with the stipulated loan. Then a reaction of compunction set in, and she
reminded herself that in fairness she ought to write and tell her news in
as friendly a fashion as possible to her dismissed suitor before it burst
upon him from some other quarter. They had parted on more or less
quarrelling terms it was true, but neither of them had foreseen the
finality of the parting nor the permanence of the breach between them;
Comus might even now be thinking himself half-forgiven, and the awakening
would be rather cruel. The letter, however, did not prove an easy one to
write; not only did it present difficulties of its own but it suffered
from the competing urgency of a desire to be doing something far
pleasanter than writing explanatory and valedictory phrases. Elaine was
possessed with an unusual but quite overmastering hankering to visit her
cousin Suzette Brankley. They met but rarely at each other’s houses and
very seldom anywhere else, and Elaine for her part was never conscious of
feeling that their opportunities for intercourse lacked anything in the
way of adequacy. Suzette accorded her just that touch of patronage which
a moderately well-off and immoderately dull girl will usually try to mete
out to an acquaintance who is known to be wealthy and suspected of
possessing brains. In return Elaine armed herself with that particular
brand of mock humility which can be so terribly disconcerting if properly
wielded. No quarrel of any description stood between them and one could
not legitimately have described them as enemies, but they never disarmed
in one another’s presence. A misfortune of any magnitude falling on one
of them would have been sincerely regretted by the other, but any minor
discomfiture would have produced a feeling very much akin to
satisfaction. Human nature knows millions of these inconsequent little
feuds, springing up and flourishing apart from any basis of racial,
political, religious or economic causes, as a hint perhaps to crass
unseeing altruists that enmity has its place and purpose in the world as
well as benevolence.
Elaine had not personally congratulated Suzette since the formal
announcement of her engagement to the young man with the dissentient
tailoring effects. The impulse to go and do so now, overmastered her
sense of what was due to Comus in the way of explanation. The letter was
still in its blank unwritten stage, an unmarshalled sequence of sentences
forming in her brain, when she ordered her car and made a hurried but
well-thought-out change into her most sumptuously sober afternoon
toilette. Suzette, she felt tolerably sure, would still be in the
costume that she had worn in the Park that morning, a costume that aimed
at elaboration of detail, and was damned with overmuch success.
Suzette’s mother welcomed her unexpected visitor with obvious
satisfaction. Her daughter’s engagement, she explained, was not so
brilliant from the social point of view as a girl of Suzette’s
attractions and advantages might have legitimately aspired to, but Egbert
was a thoroughly commendable and dependable young man, who would very
probably win his way before long to membership of the County Council.
“From there, of course, the road would be open to him to higher things.”
“Yes,” said Elaine, “he might become an alderman.”
“Have you seen their photographs, taken together?” asked Mrs. Brankley,
abandoning the subject of Egbert’s prospective career.
“No, do show me,” said Elaine, with a flattering show of interest; “I’ve
never seen that sort of thing before. It used to be the fashion once for
engaged couples to be photographed together, didn’t it?”
“It’s _very_ much the fashion now,” said Mrs. Brankley assertively, but
some of the complacency had filtered out of her voice. Suzette came into
the room, wearing the dress that she had worn in the Park that morning.
“Of course, you’ve been hearing all about _the_ engagement from mother,”
she cried, and then set to work conscientiously to cover the same ground.
“We met at Grindelwald, you know. He always calls me his Ice Maiden
because we first got to know each other on the skating rink. Quite
romantic, wasn’t it? Then we asked him to tea one day, and we got to be
quite friendly. Then he proposed.”
“He wasn’t the only one who was smitten with Suzette,” Mrs. Brankley
hastened to put in, fearful lest Elaine might suppose that Egbert had had
things all his own way. “There was an American millionaire who was quite
taken with her, and a Polish count of a very old family. I assure you I
felt quite nervous at some of our tea-parties.”
Mrs. Brankley had given Grindelwald a sinister but rather alluring
reputation among a large circle of untravelled friends as a place where
the insolence of birth and wealth was held in precarious check from
breaking forth into scenes of savage violence.
“My marriage with Egbert will, of course, enlarge the sphere of my life
enormously,” pursued Suzette.
“Yes,” said Elaine; her eyes were rather remorselessly taking in the
details of her cousin’s toilette. It is said that nothing is sadder than
victory except defeat. Suzette began to feel that the tragedy of both
was concentrated in the creation which had given her such unalloyed
gratification, till Elaine had come on the scene.
“A woman can be so immensely helpful in the social way to a man who is
making a career for himself. And I’m so glad to find that we’ve a great
many ideas in common. We each made out a list of our idea of the hundred
best books, and quite a number of them were the same.”
“He looks bookish,” said Elaine, with a critical glance at the
photograph.
“Oh, he’s not at all a bookworm,” said Suzette quickly, “though he’s
tremendously well-read. He’s quite the man of action.”
“Does he hunt?” asked Elaine.
“No, he doesn’t get much time or opportunity for riding.”
“What a pity,” commented Elaine; “I don’t think I could marry a man who
wasn’t fond of riding.”
“Of course that’s a matter of taste,” said Suzette, stiffly; “horsey men
are not usually gifted with overmuch brains, are they?”
“There is as much difference between a horseman and a horsey man as there
is between a well-dressed man and a dressy one,” said Elaine, judicially;
“and you may have noticed how seldom a dressy woman really knows how to
dress. As an old lady of my acquaintance observed the other day, some
people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, others acquire
it, others look as if their clothes had been thrust upon them.”
She gave Lady Caroline her due quotation marks, but the sudden
tactfulness with which she looked away from her cousin’s frock was
entirely her own idea.
A young man entering the room at this moment caused a diversion that was
rather welcome to Suzette.
“Here comes Egbert,” she announced, with an air of subdued triumph; it
was at least a satisfaction to be able to produce the captive of her
charms, alive and in good condition, on the scene. Elaine might be as
critical as she pleased, but a live lover outweighed any number of
well-dressed straight-riding cavaliers who existed only as a distant
vision of the delectable husband.
Egbert was one of those men who have no small talk, but possess an
inexhaustible supply of the larger variety. In whatever society he
happened to be, and particularly in the immediate neighbourhood of an
afternoon-tea table, with a limited audience of womenfolk, he gave the
impression of someone who was addressing a public meeting, and would be
happy to answer questions afterwards. A suggestion of gas-lit
mission-halls, wet umbrellas, and discreet applause seemed to accompany
him everywhere. He was an exponent, among other things, of what he
called New Thought, which seemed to lend itself conveniently to the
employment of a good deal of rather stale phraseology. Probably in the
course of some thirty odd years of existence he had never been of any
notable use to man, woman, child or animal, but it was his
firmly-announced intention to leave the world a better, happier, purer
place than he had found it; against the danger of any relapse to earlier
conditions after his disappearance from the scene, he was, of course,
powerless to guard. ’Tis not in mortals to insure succession, and Egbert
was admittedly mortal.
Elaine found him immensely entertaining, and would certainly have exerted
herself to draw him out if such a proceeding had been at all necessary.
She listened to his conversation with the complacent appreciation that
one bestows on a stage tragedy, from whose calamities one can escape at
any moment by the simple process of leaving one’s seat. When at last he
checked the flow of his opinions by a hurried reference to his watch, and
declared that he must be moving on elsewhere, Elaine almost expected a
vote of thanks to be accorded him, or to be asked to signify herself in
favour of some resolution by holding up her hand.
When the young man had bidden the company a rapid business-like farewell,
tempered in Suzette’s case by the exact degree of tender intimacy that it
would have been considered improper to omit or overstep, Elaine turned to
her expectant cousin with an air of cordial congratulation.
“He is exactly the husband I should have chosen for you, Suzette.”
For the second time that afternoon Suzette felt a sense of waning
enthusiasm for one of her possessions.
Mrs. Brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in her
visitor’s verdict.
“I suppose she means he’s not her idea of a husband, but, he’s good
enough for Suzette,” she observed to herself, with a snort that expressed
itself somewhere in the nostrils of the brain. Then with a smiling air
of heavy patronage she delivered herself of her one idea of a damaging
counter-stroke.
“And when are we to hear of your engagement, my dear?”
“Now,” said Elaine quietly, but with electrical effect; “I came to
announce it to you but I wanted to hear all about Suzette first. It will
be formally announced in the papers in a day or two.”
“But who is it? Is it the young man who was with you in the Park this
morning?” asked Suzette.
“Let me see, who was I with in the Park this morning? A very
good-looking dark boy? Oh no, not Comus Bassington. Someone you know by
name, anyway, and I expect you’ve seen his portrait in the papers.”
“A flying-man?” asked Mrs. Brankley.
“Courtenay Youghal,” said Elaine.
Mrs. Brankley and Suzette had often rehearsed in the privacy of their
minds the occasion when Elaine should come to pay her personal
congratulations to her engaged cousin. It had never been in the least
like this.
On her return from her enjoyable afternoon visit Elaine found an express
messenger letter waiting for her. It was from Comus, thanking her for
her loan—and returning it.
“I suppose I ought never to have asked you for it,” he wrote, “but you
are always so deliciously solemn about money matters that I couldn’t
resist. Just heard the news of your engagement to Courtenay. Congrats.
to you both. I’m far too stoney broke to buy you a wedding present so
I’m going to give you back the bread-and-butter dish. Luckily it still
has your crest on it. I shall love to think of you and Courtenay eating
bread-and-butter out of it for the rest of your lives.”
That was all he had to say on the matter about which Elaine had been
preparing to write a long and kindly-expressed letter, closing a rather
momentous chapter in her life and his. There was not a trace of regret
or upbraiding in his note; he had walked out of their mutual fairyland as
abruptly as she had, and to all appearances far more unconcernedly.
Reading the letter again and again Elaine could come to no decision as to
whether this was merely a courageous gibe at defeat, or whether it
represented the real value that Comus set on the thing that he had lost.
And she would never know. If Comus possessed one useless gift to
perfection it was the gift of laughing at Fate even when it had struck
him hardest. One day, perhaps, the laughter and mockery would be silent
on his lips, and Fate would have the advantage of laughing last.