distaste for such brusque ill-breeding. Then Monty, as if nothing in
the world could have ruffled him, nodded slowly.
"That would be most kind," he replied. "_Most_ kind."
"I wonder how long it would be for?" pondered Edgar, aloud.
"Five hundred in a month's time. The whole of the rest within six
months. That I think I could promise definitely. Could you do it
yourself without inconvenience? You're most generous."
I wonder if I'm generous? thought Edgar, recalling Gaythorpe's jeer
at his morbidity. And secretly he knew that it was not generosity but
a sort of contempt which had prompted his leading question, and that
Monty himself, placed similarly, would have avoided the issue and
evaded the loan.
"Well, I'm not a money-lender; and it's quite true that the thing
presents difficulties. But I could certainly arrange to let you have
the money."
"My dear Mayne...."
"Not at all. When do you want it? And how?" He was impatient.
Monty shrugged. His orientalism was more marked than ever.
"This instant," he admitted. "Or ... as soon as possible." Edgar
nodded. "And I should like it," continued Monty, with his singular
smile, "I should like it--if that happened quite perfectly to suit
you--as an open cheque, payable to bearer...."
vi
"Oh!" cried Edgar, as if in surprise.
"I'm perfectly ready to sign any acknowledgment," insisted Monty. "But
this will be of peculiar service." There was a silence between them.
The cheque was to be open, and the matter was pressing: therefore the
payment was to be a secret payment. If Monty's investments were as
he stated them to be, and his relations with the bank and its branch
manager amicable, what purpose was there in such concealment? Edgar
frowned slightly. He was being used as a friend--as a convenience--by
one who was not his friend and who did not trust him with an
explanation. As if he felt what was in Edgar's mind, Monty interrupted.
"I feel I _must_ emphasise the point that my reason for wanting this
money privately is personal, and not financial," he said.
A sudden smile lighted Edgar's face.
"I perfectly understand that," he answered. "There's no more to be
said."
Together the two men went back to the studio. In two minutes they
had so mingled with the noise and rising spirits of the dancers that
their absence, if it had been noticed at all, was forgotten. Edgar
sought Rhoda Flower, and was amused to find her interest in himself
shown without concealment. But even as he talked to her he was from
time to time seeking in that crowd for Patricia, and seeking among his
impressions for something which would explain the change in her. As
far as Edgar could tell, Patricia did not concern herself at all with
him. It was strange how this wound that she had inflicted outstayed
every other sensation of the evening--from his pleasure in Rhoda to his
growing antipathy towards Monty. He was puzzled and chagrined.
CHAPTER TWELVE: ENCOUNTER
i
Patricia arrived at the Maynes' house a moment early. She had walked
from her rooms through one of the streets to the north of the King's
Road, and in spite of her new boredom, which made her a little shrink
from the prospect of an evening with uncongenial people, she was
aware of curiosity at sight of the house. It was one of those tall
featureless houses which lie in respectable avenues in Kensington,
stained by a kind of grim insipidity and separated from the road by an
iron railing, a grass plot, and an immense flight of stone steps. The
portals were massively columnar, and the windows bay. There was nothing
to make the Maynes' house different from those upon each side of it
excepting the number and the fact that the iron gate did not groan as
it was opened. From without, the house was what Patricia expected.
Indoors it was distinct. There was no smell of cooking; the walls
were papered in a blue-gray, the staircase was fresh and clean with
blue-grey paint, and a carpet of the same colour in a rather darker
shade extended as far as she could see. Her mind instantly received
the impression: "Liberty!" The maid was young, pretty, smiling, and
curious. And as Patricia went forward into the room into which she was
informally shown Edgar himself was there, with a plump old lady and
a pretty young woman and a surreptitiously barking immature cocker
spaniel all close behind him. Patricia received a shock. This was
a home, the first home she had been in for years. These were kind
people. Her heart was opened to them. She was a child at once, eager
that they should like her and be her friends. How strange it was,
when she had dreaded something alarming and something boring. She was
hardly conscious that they looked at her with keen eyes and brains, so
definitely did she feel herself greeted by warm hearts. She was for an
instant deeply moved.
"My mother, Claudia, Pulcinella ..." said Edgar, with a minimum of
awkwardness.
There were two warm hand-clasps, and a glance, ever so rapid, at
Claudia; and Patricia saw the little dog's tail twisting, and
stooped to pat the glossy body which was being shyly insinuated into
her notice by its agreeable owner. In the firelight and gaslight
there was cheerfulness, but there was peace also, and it was the
tranquillity--the homely quality of peace--that Patricia first noticed.
She saw it for a moment only; and then Claudia led the way up to a
bedroom in which she could remove her cloak and hat, and smooth her
hair, and if necessary, powder her face before dinner. But Patricia had
no need to powder her face, and so the two girls had no opportunity
for any prolonged mutual scrutiny by means of the mirror. They were
shy of each other, and hardly spoke together until their return to the
drawing-room. It was then that Patricia, sitting down, first properly
glimpsed the Mayne household, which by now had been brought to full
strength by the arrival of old Mr. Mayne and a sedate cat whose name
was Percy.
Mr. Mayne was a man of over sixty, small and thin, with a fierce aspect
and a ridiculously mild voice. He had a moustache and beard resembling
the pictures Patricia had seen of pirates. His eyes were commanding.
Only his voice was inappropriate. It was a clear deep voice, but it
lacked volume; and in face of such a terrifying presence it came
as the bleat of the kid from the mouth of the jaguar. His wife was
equally gentle, but she looked placid, and in Mrs. Mayne there were
no sharp contrasts. She was round, plump, and cheerful, the sort of a
woman upon whose lap a ball of wool refuses to stay, especially when
there is a little dog at hand. Very different from these were the two
children. For Edgar Patricia was conscious of an increasing sense of
respect. She now saw that his quietness had its quality and interest.
His rather grave face, with its general air of brownness, was not one
which attracted her; but he looked well-built, and her friendliness
towards him would have been perfect if she had not felt one very
singular thing about Edgar. It was that he went his own way. With great
considerateness of others, she was sure, but quite inhumanly, he went
his own way. Patricia felt that if he decided to do a thing an effort
beyond her own power would be needed to turn him from his object. She
had made up her mind that he was not subject to human weaknesses, and
she resented the aloofness created by this freedom.
Claudia was different again, but not equally disconcerting. She was
tall, and noticeably pretty, with a very occasional immaturity of
gesture which indicated her youthfulness. Dark, and a little like
her brother, she had a gaiety of demeanour and a sparkling air of
enthusiasm which his temperament forbade. To Patricia there was
something irresistibly charming and wise about Claudia. That she also
went her own way, if such was the case, caused in Claudia's case no
barrier between them. It was natural and right that Claudia, being a
modern young woman, should go her own way. Patricia went her own way.
She thought of Claudia: "She's prettier than I am, but her figure isn't
as good. Nor's her taste. She doesn't dress as well as I do. She's
very clever and kind and nice. I like her. Of course, not as clever or
as nice as I am. But then I'm...."
It was extremely pleasant to be in a comfortable home which really was
a home, and to be in the company of such born friends as the Maynes.
Patricia sighed with content.
ii
She had not noticed Percy, who had entered the room during her absence;
and Percy, who had been washing his face, had not noticed Patricia.
When he discovered that a stranger was in the room Percy was slightly
annoyed. He did not like strangers. It had taken him some weeks to
grow used to Pulcinella and even now he sometimes spat at the little
dog, for Percy had been for three years the dominating force in this
house. When Percy wished to leave or to enter a room he gave a single
blood-curdling deep miaow; when he thought the time had come for him to
be nursed he took his welcome for granted; when he shook off the years
and demanded a game they were all at his service. Although Pulcinella
was insistently lively, no real romp ever occurred in which Percy was
not the leader. Even Pulcinella, who barked and bounded in the effort
to produce a mock-battle, was afraid of Percy; and the human beings
were not so much afraid as respectful and affectionate towards him.
Percy therefore disliked strangers, who disturbed his sense of what was
proper. Pausing in the act of licking delicately extended fingers, he
stared rudely at Patricia. He decided to watch her for a few moments
before making up his mind as to her acceptability as a new acquaintance.
Patricia, quite unconscious of this important scrutiny, was allowing
herself to be entertained by Percy's elders. She did not see a big
Persian cat, whose long hair was nearly as black as his dignified nose
and whose tail, when paraded, was as large as an ostrich feather. She
merely looked from the small face with bushy whiskers of Mr. Mayne
to the beautiful soft complexion of Mrs. Mayne, and again to the
exuberantly expressive eyes and lips of Claudia. She liked Claudia
better and better each minute. She did not look at all at Edgar, in
whom she was conscious of feeling no true interest whatever.
"Isn't it very lonely for you to live alone, Miss Quin?" Mrs. Mayne
was asking. She did not wait for an answer; but continued: "I've never
lived alone, so I don't know what it's like; but I should have thought
it likely to make a young girl miserable. Yet I know, of course, that
one sometimes wishes very much to be alone with one's thoughts. As a
_holiday_ it must be very pleasant...." It was the quiet voice of a
contented woman that meandered slowly and almost prattlingly among
words that came without effort.
"Think of the liberty, mother!" exclaimed Claudia. "Not always having
other people to consider. Not always having somebody to say she isn't
ladylike."
"I like it," said Patricia. "And I'm not at all ladylike."
"Perhaps you're not much alone?" suggested Claudia.
"Oh, yes. All day. But I'm generally out in the evenings."
"Claudia always speaks as though I were a fault-finding mother; but
it isn't true, and I don't think she means it altogether. I should be
sorry to think I was a fault-finder," ruminated Mrs. Mayne.
"You're a darling," Claudia declared. "But, like most mothers, you live
in the past. You don't feel that you're grown up and that you don't
understand this generation. That's what I complain of." She turned to
Patricia. "This is a very difficult household. Father doesn't care two
straws about anything that goes on outside the house, except the things
that are put into newspapers. He _would_ write letters to the papers,
only he prides himself on never having written to the papers. He's
conceited about it. That's what saves us endless humiliation. Mother
thinks the world's a very distressing place, and the latest sort of
girls very top-heavy and reckless and...."
"I don't think they're very happy," urged Mrs. Mayne.
"Perhaps they're not. All the better. Perhaps something will come of
it--unless they enjoy their unhappiness too much, as some of them do.
She doesn't understand that there have been _changes_ since she was a
girl."
"Only too well." Mrs. Mayne showed spirit.
"Well, she doesn't sympathise with them. She doesn't realise her
standards don't apply to to-day. She's absolutely----"
"I'm sure I'm very faulty," agreed Mrs. Mayne, almost approvingly.
Edgar laughed at his mother's unquenchable power to discomfit Claudia,
and the two exchanged a glance.
"As for Edgar," proceeded Claudia, "he's quite hopeless. I bring
friends here, and he thinks they're awful. So they are--he's quite
right. But I shouldn't know they were awful if he didn't point it out.
That's the disastrous consequences of bringing people here. Edgar says
nothing about them at all, and so he stimulates _my_ corrosive faculty.
He'll drive me to having surreptitious friends."
Patricia's nose was a little in the air.
"I don't think he's very human," she said.
"You see?" Claudia looked in triumph at her brother. To Patricia,
she continued. "The trouble about him is, he's a _good_ man. He's
old-fashioned. He has principles. It's a nuisance when a man has
principles. He was brought up to think it was the thing to be decent
and honourable, and so on. He doesn't live in our age at all, when
everybody's trying hard to be wicked and only half-succeeding."
"I know," agreed Patricia, relishing the irony but perceiving the
truth of her new friend's analysis. "I think it's impossible for one
generation to understand the next."
"Exactly. But the next can understand the one--like winking."
"I'm sure I'm very easy to understand," said Mrs. Mayne. "Edgar isn't.
I've never understood him. Or, for that matter, Claudia, although she's
my own daughter."
"You know too much _about_ me to understand me, mother," cried Claudia.
"That's true, isn't it, Edgar? Too many things, I mean."
"It's certainly ingenious," agreed Edgar, quietly. He had hitherto been
listening in silence to the debate, although all had been aware of his
presence.
"What nonsense!" cried Mrs. Mayne.
Patricia thought: How nice and silly they are with each other! Her
spirits rose yet higher. She felt that here the talk was the kind
of talk--nonsensical and yet true--that she liked above every other
kind. It was clear and light, without strain and without stereotyped
slang. After so much that was quite otherwise, that aped smartness
and achieved only repetition, this chatter gave her ease of heart as
nothing else could have done. She smiled upon them all, impulsively, so
that Edgar turned away to hide his passionate relief.
iii
"Dinner is served, ma'am," said the pretty maid, at the door. They all
moved forward, leaving Percy at his toilet and losing Pulcinella _en
route_.
Patricia, leading the way with Mrs. Mayne, saw the dining room with a
friendly and interested eye; and as the chairs and sideboard were all
of old mahogany, she supposed herself to be amid the relics of Mr. and
Mrs. Mayne's early married life. The room was large and lofty, and the
mahogany furniture suited it, so much did the shape and arrangement of
everything accord. It was very different from the drawing room, where
the note had been a light grey, with loose covers of flowered chintz
upon the more comfortable seats and curtains of a shade warmer than
that which otherwise prevailed. Here in the dining room the curtains
were dark and the gas-shades mellow in tone. Everything was subdued.
It was an "old" room, not at all what she would have expected from
her quick imagination of Claudia's taste. Well, that was a puzzle the
more. Involuntarily she shook her head. In this house the older people
counted more heavily than she could have expected. The younger ones
were not all-powerful. She guessed that the drawing room represented
the farthest concession Mrs. Mayne would make to modernity; and it was
already fifteen years out of date. She did not realise that it heralded
the coming revival of Liberty in house-decoration.
Her insight was gone as quickly as it had come. Patricia hardly knew
what had been her impression, so much less apt was she in thought than
in intuitive knowledge. She was still charmed; but she knew that Mrs.
Mayne also was in the habit of going her own way. It was a family
habit. Patricia could not restrain a half-glance at the whiskered
Mr. Mayne, who sat with such benignant fierceness at the head of the
table. Was his pictorial ferocity merely a compensation? Or was his
mildness the serenity of a dictator? Perhaps even Mr. Mayne.... She
was deeply and childishly impressed. For an instant her self-assurance
trembled. Patricia, of course, was unquestionably Patricia and in
that respect unique; but could there possibly be other people--other
real people--than Patricia in the world? It had seemed in that very
uncomfortable instant as though there might be four others. With
something like panic, she raised her spoon from the table.
iv
"What I should like to do," explained Claudia, "would be to re-shuffle
the world a little. I could do it so nicely. I'd separate people under
forty and people over forty. They could meet, and talk, and the people
over forty wouldn't be made to feel they were quite useless; but they
shouldn't have any power over the younger ones."
"It would be a splendid idea." Patricia was eagerly responsive.
"For a month," agreed Mrs. Mayne, with her natural irony.
"For always," firmly insisted Claudia. "Oh, you'd see a change."
"Forty in _years_?" asked Edgar. "Isn't that rather arbitrary?"
"I didn't mean I'd destroy them. Only separate them."
Edgar laughed a little.
"I believe you'd have a reactionary 'left' even then," he said,
agreeably. "And a revolutionary 'right,' too. And another thing,
Claudia ... you don't take into account the fact that some quite young
people are obscurantist. When you think of young people you always
think of yourself. Never of Johnny Rix or Daphne Petton...."
"Oh, but they're _awful_! I'd expose them at birth!" declared Claudia.
Edgar was unconvinced. He shook his head.
"You can't be everywhere at once," he warned.
"Well, there's Miss Quin...."
"Two of you--against a multitude."
"You're _hopelessly_ cynical, Edgar. Miss Quin, he's a Pyrrhonist, I
find."
"Good gracious!" Patricia was astounded. "What's that?"
"Nothing. Simply nothing at all."
"Inhuman?" asked Patricia, hopefully.
"Perfectly. I forget whether it comes from a man or a place; but he
doesn't believe in anything at all. It's a ghastly state of mind to be
in."
"Really, Claudia; you're _too_ sweeping," protested Mrs. Mayne.
"Anybody would think Edgar wasn't the kindest and best----"
"Oh, _ever_ so good. Good unbelievably. Kind.... Frightfully interested
in the insect world of human beings. Considerate--as few men are
considerate--to the poor creatures who live around him."
"And very tolerant of Claudia," pursued Mrs. Mayne, turning to
Patricia. "Oh, dear, this fish is over-cooked, Rachel, and I
particularly.... However, it's no good grumbling.... I hope you'll like
it, my dear. We have a very good fishmonger, and a very good cook, too;
but ... Edgar, I wish you'd speak for yourself. Claudia will give Miss
Quin such a peculiar...."
"He doesn't care ..." Claudia looked across at her brother. "Do you?"
Patricia could tell that he did not care. He was quite unconcerned.
A slight grimness came into her expression. She wished him less
unconcerned. She would have liked to believe in Edgar's susceptibility
to pain. As it was, he seemed invulnerable. Patricia turned once more
to Claudia with great sympathy and friendliness.
"I think your idea's very attractive," she said. "About the division."
Mr. Mayne gave a short, rather sardonic laugh.
"Wine's corked," he remarked. "Take it away, Rachel. And bring another
bottle. With the chill off. Properly. Not roasted...."
Patricia lost her head. A tremulous twitching seized the corners of
her mouth. She tried to control herself, and became desperate in the
effort. In another instant she felt that she must giggle. Fortunately
there came a diversion which saved her.
"Miaow!" cried Percy, from outside the door.
"What a menagerie it is!" said Mr. Mayne, in a savage tone. "It's
incredible! Let him in, let him in! Of course, it's the fish. I never
knew a cat...." His voice, even in this protest, was very low. He spoke
as hushedly as a man telling a tale of horror.
It was then that Patricia saw that behind his ferocious air Mr. Mayne
could hardly restrain his own ridiculous laughter. She looked swiftly
round the table, from one to the other, from Edgar, to whom her
glance first went, to Claudia, at his side. All were smiling, as if
good-naturedly and at something absurd. Uncontrollably she laughed a
little, thankful to find that they were not even solemn. And as she
did this Percy appeared. Patricia had a glimpse of brilliant eyes and
a huge waving tail which stood high above Percy's body as he made a
leisurely entrance.
v
"Do you go to the theatre much, Miss Quin? My husband and I sometimes
go, but it always seems to me that it's only an excuse for going out
to dinner and for dressing up and seeing crowds of expensively-dressed
people who are enjoying the same experience. I'm really much happier
at home with a book. Although the books nowadays don't seem to be
as interesting as they were. They're not very amusing. Very clever,
I suppose, telling us all about our thoughts--which I'm sure we
never have--and about young men and girls who seem to me to be very
disagreeable and morbid and get themselves into sad trouble about
things that don't happen to any of our friends. Do you like them?"
"I'm never quite sure," admitted Patricia. "They _are_ very clever, of
course."
"I wonder if cleverness _is_ a good thing. Is it, Edgar?"
"Very good thing, mother," said Edgar, obediently, as if he had been
thinking of something else.
"He doesn't think so!" declared Claudia. "Nor do I. It's only
self-consciousness."
Mrs. Mayne appeared to digest the information. Unchecked, she
thoughtfully continued:
"People _are_ self-conscious, of course. Even I notice that. Of course,
I'm old; and so I take an interest in what _other_ people are doing.
But I don't think I was ever any different. I'm sure I'm not always
thinking about myself or my own affairs, which is all that seems to
engross most of the people Claudia brings to the house. They seem
_rather_ peculiar. I'm not always saying that the young ones don't
understand me----"
"It wouldn't be true," interjected Claudia. "It would be absurd."
"I think it _might_ be true. But we hear nothing at all from Claudia,
from morning to night, but the great disadvantages of young people; and
their wisdom, and foresight; and----"
"Mother!"
An extremely mischievous smile appeared upon Mrs. Mayne's face. With
her white hair and clear complexion, and in her rather high-cut dress
of amber-coloured silk, she looked, when she smiled, ageless. She was
a match for her daughter. Behind that rambling speech was a brain as
acute and as teasing in its workings as anything Claudia could show;
and Mrs. Mayne had the advantage over Claudia that her ideas were
inflexible, while her daughter's were undisciplined and often wholly
undetermined. Claudia resumed:
"I think you ought to know, Miss Quin, that mother's very unscrupulous.
I mean, you must have noticed it for yourself; but you're so nice that
perhaps you may not have let yourself _think_ it. Father and I are the
only people in this house who are scrupulous. We're very just. Edgar's
pretty awful. But mother's unscrupulousness passes all bounds. I _have_
this evening said a few words about young people, but that's because of
something Edgar was saying earlier in the evening. He said you were a
young woman, as though that conveyed anything at all. He was asked to
describe you; and he said _that_."
"Oh, more than that," interpolated Edgar. "Surely."
"That was the principal thing. I said: 'What sort of a young woman?'
and mother admitted that 'young woman' sounded like a term of reproach.
Which it certainly is. She _admitted_ it."