"Now be reasonable Tims. You can be if you choose."
Mildred was perched on a high stool in Tims's Chambers, breathing spring
from a bunch of fresh Neapolitan violets, grown by an elderly admirer of
hers, and wearing her black, winter toque and dress with that invincible
air of smartness which she contrived to impart to the oldest clothes,
provided they were of her own choosing. Tims, who from her face and
attitude might have been taken for a victim of some extreme and secret
torture, crouched, balancing herself on the top rail of her fender. She
replied only by a horrible groan.
"Who do you suppose is the happier when Milly comes back?" continued
Mildred.
"Well--the brat."
"Tony? He doesn't even know when she's there; but by the time she's done
with him he's unnaturally good. He can't like that, can he?"
"Then there's Ian, good old boy!"
"That's humbug. You know it is."
"But it's Milly herself I really care about," cried Tims. "You've been a
pig to her, Mil. She says you're a devil, and if I weren't a scientific
woman I swear I should begin to believe there was something in it."
"No, Tims, dear," returned Mildred with earnestness. "I'm neither a pig
nor a devil." She paused. "Sometimes I think I've lived before, some
quite different life from this. But I suppose you'll say that's all
nonsense."
"Of course it is--rot," commented Tims, sternly. "You're a physiological
freak, that's what you are. You're nothing but Milly all the time, and
you ought to be decent to her."
"I don't want to hurt her anyhow," apologized Mildred; "but you see when
I'm only half there--well, I am only half there. I'm awfully rudimentary
and I can't grasp anything except that I'm being choked, squeezed out of
existence, and that I must make a fight for my life. Any woman becomes
rudimentary who is fighting for her life against another woman; only
I've more excuse for it, because as a scientist you must see that I can
only be in very partial possession of my brain."
Tims had pulled her wig down over her eyes and glared at space. "That's
all very well for you," she said; "but why should I help you to kill
poor old M.?"
"Do try and understand! Every time she comes back she's more and more
miserable; and that's not cheerful for Ian either, is it? Now, through
that underhand trick of rudimentary Me--you see I don't try to hide my
horrid ways--she knows Ian adores me and, comparatively speaking,
doesn't care two straws about her. That will make her more miserable
than she has ever been before. She'll only want to live so that I
mayn't."
"I don't see how Ian's going to get on without her. _You_ don't do much
for him, my girl, except spend his money."
"Of course, that's quite true. I'm not in the least suited to Ian or his
life or his income; but that's not my fault. How perverse men are!
Always in love with the wrong women, aren't they?"
Tims's countenance relaxed and she replied with a slight air of
importance:
"My opinion of men has been screwed up a peg lately. Every now and then
you do find one who's got too much sense for any rot of that kind."
Mildred continued.
"Ian's perfectly wretched at what happened; can't understand it, of
course. He doesn't say much, but I can see he dreads explanations with
Milly. He's good at reserve, but no good at lies, poor old dear, and
just think of all the straight questions she'll ask him! It'll be
torture to both of them. Poor Milly! I've no patience with her. Why
should she want to live? Life's no pleasure to her. She's known a long
time that Tony's really jollier and better with me, and now she knows
Ian doesn't want her. How can you pretend to think Milly happy, Tims?
Hasn't she said things to you?"
"Yes," groaned Tims. "Poor old M.! She's pretty well down on her luck,
you bet."
"And I enjoy every minute of my life, although I could find plenty to
grumble at if I liked. Listen to me, Tims. How would it be to strike a
bargain? Let me go on without any upsets from Milly until I'm forty. I'm
sure I sha'n't care what happens to me at forty. Then Milly may have
everything her own way. What would it matter to her? She likes to take
time by the forelock and behaves already as though she were forty. I
feel sure you could help me to keep her quiet if only you chose."
"If I chose to meddle at all, I should be much more likely to help her
to come back," returned Tims, getting snappish.
"Alas! I fear you would, Tims, dear, in spite of knowing it would only
make her miserable. That shows, doesn't it, how unreasonable even a
distinguished scientific woman can be?"
This aspersion on Tims's reasoning powers had to be resented and the
resentment to be soothed. And the soothing was so effectually done that
Tims owned to herself afterwards there was some excuse for Ian's
infatuation.
But Tims had no desire to meddle, and the months passed by without any
symptoms of the change appearing. It seemed as if Mildred's hold upon
life had never been so firm, the power of her personality never so fully
developed. She belonged to a large family which in all its branches had
a trick of throwing up successful men and brilliant women. But in
reaction against Scottish clannishness, it held little together, and in
the two houses whence Mildred was launched on her London career, she
had no nursery reputation of Milly's with which to contend.
One of these houses was that of her cousin, Sir Cyril Meres, a
fashionable painter with a considerable gift for art, and more for
success--success social and financial. His beautiful house, stored with
wonderful collections, had a reputation, and was frequented by every one
of distinction in the artistic or intellectual world--by those of the
world of wealth and rank who were interested in such matters, and the
yet larger number who affected to be interested in them. For those
Anglo-Saxon deities, Mammon and Snobbery, who have since conquered the
whole civilized globe, had temporarily fallen back for a fresh spring,
and in the eighties and early nineties Culture was reckoned very nearly
as _chic_ as motoring in the first years of the new century.
Several painters of various degrees of talent attempted to fix on canvas
the extraordinary charm of Mrs. Stewart's appearance. Not one of them
succeeded; but the peculiar shade of her hair, the low forehead and
delicate line of the dark eyebrows, the outline of the mask, sometimes
admired, sometimes criticised, made her portrait always recognized,
whether simpering as a chocolate-box classicality, smiling sadly from
the flowery circle of the Purgatorio, or breaking out of some rough mass
of paint with the provocative leer of a _cocotte_ of the Quartier Latin.
The magnetism of her personality defied analysis, as her essential
beauty defied the painter's art. It was a magnetism which surrounded her
with an atmosphere of adorations, admirations, enmities--all equally
violent and irrational. Her wit had little to do with the making of her
enemies, because it was never used in offence against friends or even
harmless acquaintances; only against her foes she employed it with the
efficiency and mercilessness of a red Indian wielding the tomahawk.
The other family where she found her niche awaiting her was of a
different order. It was that of the retired Indian judge, Sir John
Ireton, whose wife had chaperoned her through a Commemoration the summer
she had taken her First in Greats. Ireton was not only in Parliament,
but his house was a meeting-place where politicians cemented personal
ties and plotted party moves. Milly in her brief appearances, had been
of use to Lady Ireton, but Mildred proved socially invaluable. There
were serious persons who suspected Mrs. Stewart of approaching politics
in a flippant spirit; but on certain days she had revealed a grave and
ardent belief in the dogmas of the party and a piety of attitude towards
the person of its great apostle, which had convinced them that she was
not really cynical or frivolous.
Lady Augusta Goring was the most important conquest of the kind Milly
had made. She was the only child of the Marquis of Ipswich, and one of
those rather stupid people whose energy of mind and character is often
mistaken by themselves and others for cleverness. Lady Augusta was
handsome in a dull, massive way, and so conscientious that she had
seldom time to smile. Her friends said she would smile oftener if her
husband caused her less anxiety; but considering who George Goring was
and how he had been brought up, he might have been much worse. Where
women were concerned, scandal had never accused him of anything more
flagrant than dubious flirtations. It was his political intrigues,
constantly threatening unholy _liaisons_ in the most unthinkable
directions; his sudden fits of obstinate idleness, often occurring at
the very moment when some clever and promising political scheme of his
own was ripe for execution, which so unendurably harassed the staid
Marquis and the earnest Lady Augusta. They were highly irritating, too,
to Sir John Ireton, who had believed himself at one time able to tame
and tutor the tricksy young politician.
The late Lord Ipswich had been a "sport" in the Barthop family; a black
sheep, but clever, and a well known collector. Accidental circumstances
had greatly enriched him, and as he detested his brother and successor,
he had left his pictures to the nation and all of his fortune which he
could dispose of--which happened to be the bulk--to his natural son,
George Goring. But his will had not been found for some weeks after his
death, and while the present Marquis had believed himself the inheritor
of the whole property, he had treated the nameless and penniless child
of his brother with perfect delicacy and generosity. When George Goring
found himself made rich at the expense of his uncle, he proposed to his
cousin Lady Augusta and was accepted.
Mildred was partly amused and partly bored to discover herself on so
friendly a footing with Lady Augusta. Putting herself into that passive
frame of mind in which revelations of Milly's past actions were most
often vouchsafed to her, she saw herself type-writing in a small,
high-ceilinged room looking out on a foggy London park, and Lady Augusta
seated at a neighboring table, surrounded by papers. Type-writing was
not then so common as it is now, and Milly had learned the art in order
to give assistance to Ian. Mildred was annoyed to find herself in danger
of having to waste her time in a mechanical occupation which she
detested, or else of offending a woman whom her uncle valued as a friend
and political ally.
It was a slight compensation to receive an invitation to accompany the
Iretons to a great ball at Ipswich House. There was no question of Ian
accompanying her. He was usually too tired to care for going out in the
evening and went only to official dinners and to the houses of old
friends, or of people with whom he had educational connections. It did
not occur to him that it might be wise to put a strain upon himself
sometimes, to lay by his spectacles, straighten his back, have his beard
trimmed and appear at Mildred's side in the drawing-rooms where she
shone, looking what he was--a husband of whom she had reason to be
proud. More and more engrossed by his own work and responsibilities, he
let her drift into a life quite apart from his, content to see her world
from his own fireside, in the sparkling mirror of her talk.
Ipswich House was a great house, if of little architectural merit, and
the ball had all the traditional spectacular splendor common to such
festivities. The pillared hall and double staircase, the suites of
spacious rooms, were filled with a glittering kaleidoscopic crowd of
fair and magnificently bejewelled women and presumably brave, certainly
well-groomed and handsome men. The excellence of the music, the masses
of flowers, the number of great names and well-advertised society
beauties present, would subsequently provide material for long and
eulogistic paragraphs in the half-penny press and the Ladies' Weeklies.
Mildred enjoyed it as a spectacle rather than as a ball, for she knew
few people there, and the young political men whom she had met at her
uncle's parties were too much engaged with ladies of more importance, to
whom they were related or to whom they owed social attention, to write
their names more than once on her programme. One of these, however,
asked her if she had noticed how harassed both Lord Ipswich and Lady
Augusta looked. Goring's speech, he said, at the Fothering by-election
was reported and commented upon in all the papers, and had given
tremendous offence to the leaders of his party; while the fact that he
had not turned up in time for the ball must be an additional cross to
his wife, who made such a firm stand against the social separation of
married couples.
When Mildred returned to her uncle she found him the centre of a group
of eminent politicians, all denouncing in more or less subdued tones the
outrageous utterances and conduct of Goring, and most declaring that
only consideration for Lord Ipswich and Lady Augusta prevented them from
publicly excommunicating the hardened offender. Others, however, while
admitting the outrage, urged that he was too brilliant a young man to be
lightly thrown away, and advised patience, combined with the
disciplinary rod. Sir John was of the excommunicatory party. Later in
the evening he disappeared into some remote smoking or card-room, not so
much forgetting his niece as taking it for granted that she was, as
usual, surrounded by friends and admirers of both sexes. But a detached
personality, however brilliant, is apt to be submerged in such a crowd
of social eminences, bound together by ties of blood, of interests, and
of habit, as filled the salons of Ipswich House. Mildred walked around
the show contentedly enough for a time, receiving a smile here and a
pleasant word there from such of her acquaintances as she chanced upon,
but practically alone. And being alone, she found herself yielding to a
vulgar envy of richer women's clothes and jewels. Her dress, with which
she had been pleased, looked ordinary beside the creations of great
Parisian _ateliers_, and the few old paste ornaments which were the only
jewels she possessed, charming as they were, seemed dim and scant among
the crowns and constellations of diamonds that surrounded her. Her pride
rebelled against this envy, but could not conquer it.
More gnawing pangs, however, assailed her presently, the pangs of
hunger; and no one offered to take her in to supper. The idea of taking
herself in was revolting; she preferred starvation. But where could
Uncle John have hidden himself? She sought the elderly truant with all
the suppressed annoyance of a chaperon seeking an inconsiderate flirt of
a girl. And it happened that a spirit in her feet led her to the door of
a small room in which Milly and Lady Augusta had been wont to transact
their business. A curious feeling of familiarity, of physical habit,
caused her to open the big mahogany door. There was no air of public
festivity about the room, which was furnished with a substantial, almost
shabby masculine comfort. But oh, tantalizing spectacle! Under the
illumination of a tall, crimson-shaded, standard lamp, stood a little,
white-covered table, reminding her irresistibly of a little table in a
fairy story, which the due incantation causes to rise out of the ground.
A small silver-gilt tureen of soup smoked upon it and a little pile of
delicate rolls lay beside the plate set for one. But alas! she might
not, like the favored girl in the fairy story, proceed without ceremony
to satisfy her hunger at the mysterious little table.
A door immediately opposite that of the small sitting-room opened
noiselessly, and a young man entered with a light, quick step. He saw
Mildred, but for a second or so she did not see him. He was at her side
when she looked around and their eyes met. They had never seen each
other before, but at that meeting of the eyes a curious feeling, such as
two Europeans might experience, meeting in the heart of some dark
continent, affected them both.
There was something picturesque about the young man's appearance, in
spite of the impeccable cut and finish of his dress-suit and the waxed
ends of his small blond mustache. His hair was of a ruddy nut-brown
color, and had a wave in it; his bright hazel eyes seemed exactly to
match it. His face had a fine warm pallor, and his under lip, which with
his chin was somewhat thrust forward, was redder than the lip of a
child. It was perhaps this noticeable coloring and something in his port
which made him, in spite of the correct modernity of his dress, suggest
some seventeenth-century portrait.
"Forgive my passing you," he said, at length; "but I'm starving."
"So am I," she returned, hardly aware of what she was saying. Some
strange, almost hypnotic attraction seemed to rivet her whole attention
on the mere phenomenon of this man.
"By Jove! Aren't they feeding the multitude down there?" he asked,
nodding in the direction of the supper-room.
"Of course," she answered, with the simple gravity of a child, her blue
eyes still fixed upon him. "But I can't ask for supper for myself, can
I?"
Her need was distinctly material; yet the young man confronting her
white grace, the strange look in her blue eyes, had a dreamlike feeling,
almost as though he had met a dryad or an Undine between two of the
prosaic, substantial doors of Ipswich House. And as in a dream the most
extraordinary things seem familiar and expected, so the apparition of
the Undine and her confidence in him seemed familiar, in fact just what
he had been expecting during those hours of fog off the Goodwins, when
the sirens, wild voices gathering up from all the seas of the world, had
been screaming to each other across the hidden waters. That same inner
concentration upon the mere phenomenon of a presence, an existence,
which had given the childlike note to Mildred's speech, froze a
compliment upon his lips; and they stood silent, eying each other
gravely. A junior footman appeared, carrying a bottle of champagne in a
bucket, and the young man addressed him in a vague, distracted tone,
very unlike his usual manner.
"Look here, Arthur, here's a lady who can't get any supper."
The footman went quite pink at this personal reproach. He happened to
have heard some one surmise, on seeing Mildred roaming about alone, that
she was a newspaper woman.
"Please sir," he replied, "I don't know how it's happened, for her
Ladyship told Mr. Mackintosh to be sure and see as the newspaper ladies
and gentlemen were well looked after, and he thought as they'd all had
supper."
It seemed incredible that Mildred should not have heard this reply,
uttered so close to her; but though it fell upon her ears it did not
penetrate to her mind.
"Bring up supper for two, Arthur," said Goring, in his usual decisive
tone. "That'll do, won't it?" he added, and turned to Mildred, ushering
her into the room. "You'll have supper with me, I hope? My name's
Goring; I'm Lord Ipswich's son-in-law and I live in his house; so you
see it's all right."
The corollary was not evident; but the mention of the name brought
Mildred back to the ordinary world. So this was George Goring, the
plague of his political party, the fly in the ointment of a respectable
Marquis and his distinguished daughter. She had not fancied him like
this. For one thing, she did not know him to be younger than his wife,
and between the careworn solidity of Lady Augusta and this vivid
restless personality, the five actual years of difference seemed
stretched to ten.
"I'm convinced it's all right, Mr. Goring," she replied, throwing
herself into a chair and smiling at him sparklingly. "It must be all
right. I want my supper so much I should have to accept your invitation
even if you were a burglar."
Goring, whose habit it was to keep moving, laughed as he walked about,
one hand in his trousers pocket.
"Why shouldn't I be a burglar? A burglar, with an assistant disguised as
a footman, sacking the bedrooms of Lord Ipswich's house while the ball
proceeds? There's copy for you! Shall I do it? 'Mr. George Goring's
Celebrated Black Pearls Stolen,' would make a capital head-line. Perhaps
you've heard I'd do anything to keep my name in the newspapers."
"It certainly gets there pretty often," returned Mildred, politely; "and
whenever it's mentioned it has an enlivening effect."
The footman had reappeared and they were unfolding their dinner-napkins,
sitting opposite each other at the little table.
"As how, enlivening?"
"Like a bit of bread dropped into a glass of flat champagne."
"You think my party's like champagne? Why, it couldn't exist for a
moment if it sparkled."
"I was talking of newspapers, not of your party; though there's no doubt
you do enliven that."
"Do I? Like what? No odiously inoffensive comparisons, if you please."
"Well, I have heard people say like--like a blister on the back of the
neck."
Goring laughed. "Thanks. That's better."
"The patient's using language, but he won't really tear it off, because
he knows that would hurt him more, and the blister will do him good in
the end, if he bears with it."
"But there's the blister's side to it, too. It's infernally tiring for a
blister to be sticking on to such a fellow everlastingly. It'll fly off
of itself before long, if he doesn't look out. Hullo! What am I saying?
I suppose you'll have all this out in some confounded paper--'The Rebel
Member Returns. A Chat with Mr. Goring'--Don't do that; but I'll give
you some other copy if you like."
"You're very kind in giving me all this copy. What shall I do with it?
Shall I keep it as a memento?"
"No, no. You can sell it; honor bright you can."
"Can I? Shall I get much for it? Enough money to buy me a tiara, do you
think?"
"Do you really want to wear the usual fender? Now, why? I suppose
because you aren't sufficiently aware how--" he paused on the edge of a
compliment which seemed suddenly too full-flavored and ordinary to be
addressed to this strangely lovely being, with her smile at once so
sparkling and so mysterious. He substituted: "How much more
distinguished it is to look like an Undine than like a peeress."
Mildred seemed slightly taken aback.
"Why do you say 'Undine?'" she asked, almost sharply. "Do I--do I look
as if I came out of a Trafalgar Square fountain with fell designs on
Lord Ipswich?"
"Of course not. But--I can't exactly define even to myself what I mean,
only you do suggest an Undine to me. To some one else you might be
simply Miss--Forgive me, I don't know your name."
He had not even troubled to glance at her left hand, and when the "Mrs."
was uttered it affected him oddly. It was one of the peculiar
differences between her two personalities that, casually encountered,
Mildred was as seldom taken for a married woman as Milly for an
unmarried one.
"Do I look as if I'd got no soul?" she persisted, leaning a little
towards him, an intensity that might almost have been called anxiety in
her gaze.
He could even have fancied she had grown paler. He, too, became serious.
His eyes brightened, meeting hers, and a slight color came into his
cheeks.
"Quite the contrary," he answered. "I should say you had a great
deal--in fact, I shall begin to believe in detachable souls again. Fancy
most people as just souls, without trimmings. It makes one laugh. But
your body looks like an emanation from the spirit; as though it might
flow away in a white waterfall or go up in a white fire; and as though,
if it did, your soul could certainly precipitate another body, which
must certainly be like this one, because it would be as this is, the
material expression of a spirit."
She listened as he spoke, seriously, her eyes on his. But when he had
done, she dropped her chin on her hand and laughed delightedly.
"You think I should be able to grow a fresh body, like a lobster growing
a fresh claw? What fun!"
There was a sound without, not of the footman struggling with dishes and
plates and the door-handle, but of middle-aged voices.
Instinctively Goring and Mildred straightened themselves and looked
polite. Lord Ipswich and Sir John Ireton, deep in political converse,
came slowly in and then stopped short in surprise. Mildred lost not a
moment in carrying the war into their country. She turned about and
addressed her uncle in a playful tone, which yet smacked of reproof.
"Here you are at last, Uncle John! I thought you'd forgotten all about
me. I've been walking miles in mad pursuit of you, till I was so tired
and hungry I think I should have dropped if Mr. Goring hadn't taken
pity upon me and made me eat his supper."
Sir John defended himself, and Lord Ipswich was shocked to think that a
lady had been in such distress in his house; although the apparition of
Goring prevented him from feeling it as acutely as he would otherwise
have done. His pleasant pink face took on an expression of severity as
he responded to his son-in-law's somewhat too cheerful greeting.
"Sorry to be so late, but we were held up by a fog at the mouth of the
Thames."
"It must have been very important business to take you all the way to
Brussels so suddenly."
"It certainly wouldn't wait. I heard there was a whole set of Beauvais
tapestries to be had for a mere song. I couldn't buy them without seeing
them you know, and the big London and Paris dealers were bound to chip
in if I didn't settle the matter pretty quick. I'm precious glad I did,
for they're the finest pieces I ever saw and would have fetched five
times what I gave for them at Christie's."
"Ah--really!" was all Lord Ipswich's response, coldly uttered and
accompanied by a smile more sarcastic than often visited his neat and
kindly lips. Sir John Ireton and Mildred, aware of the delicate
situation, partly domestic and partly political, upon which they were
intruding, took themselves away and were presently rolling through the
empty streets in the gray light of early morning.