Finding Claude Rutherford the most agreeable person in a house full of
people, Mrs. Bellenden took possession of him on the first evening--not
with any obvious devices or allurements, but coolly and calmly,
just as she possessed herself of the most becoming arm-chair in the
drawing-room, with such an air of distinct appropriation that other
women avoided it.
"You seem to be the only amusing person here," she said, as he came to
her side after dinner. "Isn't it strange that in so small a party there
should be such a prodigious amount of dullness?"
"Have you sampled all the people? There is Mr. Fitzallan over there,
talking to Lady Waterbury, a musical genius, who sets Shakespeare's
sonnets and Heine's ballads deliciously, and sings them delightfully.
You can't call him dull."
"Not while he is singing--but I have heard all his songs."
"Ask him to sing presently, and you will find he has brought a new
batch. Then there is Eustace Lyon, the poet."
Mrs. Bellenden smiled.
"Do you know what they say of him?" she asked.
"Who can remember half the things people say of a genius who lays
himself out to be talked about?"
"People are impertinent enough to say that he invented _me_."
"That is to make him equal to Jove, nay, superior, for it was only
incarnate wisdom--not surpassing beauty--that came from the brain of
the Thunderer."
"I believe he did rave about me the year before last, when I set up
house in London--went about talking idiotically--called me 'a soothing
gem,' and a hundred other ridiculous names."
"But you didn't mind? You bear no malice."
"No, he and I are always chums. I rather liked being advertised."
"Gratis?"
"Of course. I treat him rather worse than my butler, but I admire his
genius, and I let him sit on the carpet and read his poems to me,
before they go to the printer."
The poet joined them presently, stalking across the room, a tall, slim
figure, with a pale, lank face and long hair.
The composer joined the group five minutes afterwards, and Mrs.
Bellenden, having appropriated the only interesting men in the party,
sank farther back in her deep chair, slowly fanning herself with her
large white ostrich fan, and, as it were, withdrawing her beauty from
circulation.
Other women might affect a little fan, but Kate Bellenden knew the
value of a large one, when there is a perfect arm with a hoop of
Brazilian diamonds to be displayed.
"I am only one of three," Claude said later in the week, when one of
the men chaffed him about Mrs. Bellenden's favours. "She is a _tête de
linotte_, and at her best in a quartette. One would soon come to the
end of one's resources as an amusing person in a _tête-à-tête_."
He told himself that this peerless beauty might soon become a bore;
and he thought how much peerless loveliness there must have been
in the Royal Preacher's palace at the very time he was writing
Ecclesiastes: but all the same he found that Mrs. Bellenden's
conversation--empty-headed as it might be--gave a gusto to his days
and nights during that Goodwood week. Their trivial talk was pleasant
from its very foolishness. It was conversation without disturbing
thought. There were no flashlights of memory to bring sudden sadness. A
good deal of their talk was sheer nonsense--of no more value than the
dialogue in a musical comedy--but it was a relief to talk nonsense, to
laugh at bad puns, and to ridicule the serious side of life. Claude
gave himself up to the mood of the moment, and was at his best: the
irresponsible trifler, the mocker at solemn things, who had once been
the desire of every hostess; the light, airy jester, to keep the table
in a roar, the insidious flirt and flatterer, to amuse women after
dinner.
People told each other that Rutherford was quite in his old form.
He had become horribly _blasé_ and _distrait_ of late, as if all the
sparkle had gone out of him under the weight of his wife's gold.
"I don't believe a millionaire can be happy," said the poet.
"Rutherford has been deteriorating ever since his marriage. He rushes
about doing things; racing, ballooning, flying, acting, hunting,
shooting; perpetual motion without gaiety. He was twice the man when he
was loafing about the world on fifteen hundred a year."
"He is one of those men whom marriage always spoils," replied the
painter. "A chameleon soul that ought never to have worn fetters. To
chain such a creature to a wife is as bad as caging a skylark. If he
can't soar, he can't sing."
"I take it he will soon be out of the cage. He has done two years of
the married lover's business, and we shall see him presently as the
emancipated husband."