TOBY'S PARTNER
Toby finished his cigarette when Kit left him, and threw the end over
the balcony into the street. It went flirting through the air like a
small firework, and he saw it pitch on the shoulder of an immense
policeman below, who looked angrily round. And so it was that the
discreet Toby withdrew softly into the ballroom.
It was only a little after one, and the dancing was at its height.
Everyone who intended to come had done so, and no one yet had thought of
going away. From the band in the gallery came the enchanting lilt of the
dance music, with its graceful stress and abatement, making it
impossible not to dance. The light-hearted intoxication of rhythmic
movement entering into the souls of many women whom one would naturally
have supposed to have left their dancing days behind them, for reasons
over which they had no control, had produced the same sort of effect in
them as a warm November day does in the bluebottles who have outlived
the summer, and they were deluding themselves into thinking that "June
was not over, though past her full." The ballroom was ideally occupied;
it was peopled enough, but not overcrowded, and like a whisper
underneath the shouting band you could hear the sibilant rustle of
skirts, and the "sip-sip" of shoes over the well-polished floor.
Kit and her partner were as well matched and graceful a pair as could be
found in London--too well matched, the world said; but the world is
never happy unless it is saying something of the sort, and the wiser
there, among whom even her bitterest friends put Kit, are accustomed to
discount all that is said. To repeat fresh gossip without actually
believing or disbelieving it, and to hear it in the same light-hearted
spirit makes the world as fresh as a daily paper to someone just arrived
from long sea, and Kit's interest in what was said about her was of the
most breezily superficial sort. She never intended that it should be
ever so distantly possible that she should compromise herself, for she
recognised with humble thankfulness how hard she was to compromise. She
had done many risky things in her life, and there was safety in their
very numbers. People would only say that her conduct with So-and-so had
been much riskier, and yet it had come to nothing. Probably, then, this
intimacy with Lord Comber was equally innocent. Other people had merely
looked over hedges and been accused of stealing horses, while Kit, so to
speak, had been found before now with the stolen halter in her hand; and
yet her excellent grace in giving it up at the proper moment to the
proper owner had got her out of what might have been a scrape to a less
accomplished adventurer.
And to-night nobody talked more disagreeably than they had talked scores
of times before. Up to a certain point repetition is the soul of wit; at
least, the point of a joke grows by dwelling on it, but the repetition
in excess is wearisome, and to-night people scarcely said more than
what a beautiful couple they were.
About this there could scarcely be two opinions. Kit was very tall and
slenderly made, and there was a boyish spring and grace about her
dancing which gave a peculiar spontaneousness to this pretty
performance. Ted Comber, a fresh-faced, handsome youth, had no extra
weight on his hands; the two moved with an exquisite unanimity of
motion. Amiable indiscretions and a course of life not indicated in the
educational curriculum had led the authorities both at Eton and Christ
Church to make their parting with him take place sooner than he had
himself intended, but, as Kit said in her best manner, "He was only a
boy then." He was in years not much more than a boy now; in appearance,
especially by artificial light, he was a boy still, and the two numbered
scarcely more than fifty years between them.
But balls are not given in order to furnish a hunting-ground for the
novelist and reformer, and to-night there were few such present. Indeed,
anyone must have had a soul of putty not to have laid criticism aside;
not to have forgotten all that had been said before, and all that might
be said afterwards, in the enchanting moment. This dance had been on the
board some ten minutes when Toby entered; people with winds and what is
known, by an elegant periphrasis, as a superfluity of adipose tissue had
paused; and for a few minutes there were not more than half a dozen
couples on the floor. Kit, secure in the knowledge that no one present
except herself and Jack had been to that City dinner a fortnight before,
had put on again the same orange chiffon creation as she had worn that
night, and she blazed out against the man's dark clothes; she was a
flame in his encircling arm. The room was nearly square, and they danced
not in straight lines up, across and down, but in one big circle, coming
close to the walls only at four points in the middle of the sides of the
room; like some beautiful twin star they moved round a centre, revolving
also on a private axis of their own. Indeed, the sight of them whirling
fast and smoothly in perfect time to the delicious rhythm was so pretty
that no one thought of alluding to their private axis at all. Even the
Hungarian Ambassador, as sprightly a young man of eighty or thereabouts
as you could wish to see, and still accustomed to lead the cotillion,
recognised the superiority of the performance. "Decidedly all the rest
of us cut a poor figure when those two are dancing," he said with
unwonted modesty to Lady Haslemere.
But in a few minutes the room grew crowded again. Recovered couples
sprang up like mushrooms on the floor, and the pace slowed. Lord Comber
steered as no one else could steer, but checks infinitesimal but
infinite could not but occur. It would have been good enough had it not
just now been better.
"We'll wait a moment, Ted," said Kit; "perhaps at the end it will be
emptier again."
She stopped opposite one of the doors.
"Shall we go on to the balcony?" he asked. "There will be no one there."
"Yes. Oh, there is Mrs. Murchison! Take me to her. I'll follow you in a
moment."
Ted swore gently under his breath.
"Oh, leave the Croesum alone," he said. "Do come now, Kit. This is my
last dance with you this evening."
But Kit dropped his arm.
"Fetch Toby," she said under her voice to Lord Comber; "fetch, you
understand, and at once. He is over there." Then, without a pause, "So
we meet again," she said to Mrs. Murchison. "You were right and I was
wrong, for I said, do you remember, that the one way not to meet a
person was to go to the same dance. And did you get all those great
purchases of yours home safely? You were quite too charitable! What will
you do with a hundred and forty fire-screens?--or was it a hundred and
forty-one? Miss Murchison, what magnificent pearls you have! They are
too beautiful! Now, if I wore pearls like yours, people would say they
were not real, and they would be perfectly right."
Miss Murchison was what Kit would have called at first sight an
uncomfortable sort of a girl, very pretty, beautiful indeed, but
uncomfortable. What she should have said to Kit's praise of her pearls
Kit could not have told you, but having made yourself agreeable to
anyone, it is that person's business to reply in the same strain. Else,
what happens to social and festive meetings? But Miss Murchison looked
neither gratified nor embarrassed. Either would have shown a proper
spirit.
"They are good," she said shortly.
Kit kept a weather eye open for Toby. She could see him near, and yet
far, for the room was full, being reluctantly "fetched" by Lord Comber,
who appeared to be expostulating with him. There were still some seconds
to elapse before he could get to them, but Kit had determined to
introduce him then and there to Miss Murchison. Perhaps her beauty would
be more effective than her own arguments.
"It is only quite a little dinner to-morrow," she said to Mrs.
Murchison, in order to fill up the time naturally. "You will have to
take a sort of pot-luck with us. A kind of 'no fish-knife' dinner."
Better and better. This was a promising beginning to the intimacy Mrs.
Murchison craved. It was nothing, she said to herself, to be asked to a
big dinner; the pot-luck dinner was far more to her taste.
"Well, I think that's perfectly charming of you, Lady Conybeare," she
said. "If there's one thing I am _folle_ about, it's those quiet little
dinners, and one gets so little of them. Be it ever so humble, there's
nothing like dining quietly with your friends."
Kit's face dimpled with merriment.
"That's so sweet of you," she said. "Oh, here's Toby. Toby, let me
introduce you to Mrs. Murchison. Oh, what's your name?--I always forget.
It begins with Evelyn. Anyhow, he is Conybeare's brother, you know, Mrs.
Murchison."
Mrs. Murchison did not know, but she was very happy to do so. Also the
informality was charming. But her happiness had a momentary eclipse. She
knew that a man was introduced to a woman, and not the other way about,
but might not some other rule hold when the case was between a plain
miss and the brother of a Marquis? English precedence seemed to her a
fearful and wonderful thing. But Kit relieved her of her difficulty.
"And Miss Murchison, Toby," she said. "Charmed to have seen you again.
Till 8.30 to-morrow;" and she smiled and retreated with Ted.
Blushing honours were raining thick on the enchanted lady. "One thing
leads to another," she said to herself, and here was the brother of
Lord Conybeare endorsing the happy meeting of this afternoon.
Then aloud:
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance," she said, for the phrase was
ineradicable. She had searched in vain for a cisatlantic equivalent, but
could not get hold of one. Like the snake in spring, she had cast off
the slough of many of her transatlanticisms, but "very pleased" was
deeply engrained, and appeared involuntarily and inevitably.
But Toby's inflammable eye had caught the _filia pulchrior_.
"My sister-in-law tells me you are dining with her to-morrow," he said
genially. "That is delightful."
He paused a moment, and racked his brain for another suitable remark;
but, finding none, he turned abruptly to Miss Murchison.
"May I have the pleasure?" he asked. "We shall just have time for a turn
before this is over."
"Of course you may, Lord Evelyn," said her mother precipitately.
Miss Murchison paused for a moment without replying, and Toby, though
naturally modest, told himself that her mother's ready acceptance for
her justified the pause.
"Delighted," she said.
Toby might be described as a good, useful dancer, but no more. People
who persist in describing one thing in terms suitable to another speak
of the poetry and the melody of motion, and the dancing Toby had no more
poetry or melody in his motion than a motor car or a street piano. The
tide of couples, as inexplicable in its ebb and flow as deep
sea-currents, had gone down again, and they had a fairly free floor.
But before they had made the circuit of the room twice Kit and Lord
Comber reappeared, and Kit heaved a thankful sister-in-law's sigh.
"Toby is dancing with the Murchison girl," she said; "and she hardly
ever dances. Now----"
And they glided off on to the floor.
"A design of yours?" asked Ted.
"Yes, all my own. _Ego fecit_, as Mrs. Murchison says. She has millions.
If Jack were dead and I was a man, I should try to marry her myself.
Simply millions, Ted. Don't you wish you had?"
"Certainly; but I am very content dancing with you. I prefer it."
"That is silly," said Kit. "No sane man really prefers dancing
with--with anyone, to having millions."
"Why try the cynical _rôle_? Do you really believe that, Kit?"
"Yes, and I hate compliments. Compliments should always be insincere,
and I'm sure you mean what you say. If they are sincere they are
unnecessary. Oh, it's stopping. What a bore! Six bars more.
Quicker--quicker!"
The coda gathered up the dreamy threads of the valse into a vivid
ever-quickening pattern of sound, and came to an end with a great blare.
The industrious and heated Toby wiped his forehead.
"That was delicious," he said. "Won't you have an ice or something, Miss
Murchison? I say, it is sw--stewing hot, isn't it?"
Lily took his arm.
"Yes, do give me an ice," she said. "Who is that dancing with Lady
Conybeare?"
Toby looked round.
"I don't see them," he said. "But I expect it's Ted Comber. Kit usually
dances with him. They are supposed to be the best dancers in London. Oh
yes, I see them. It is Comber."
"Do you know him?"
"Yes, in the sort of way one knows fifty thousand people. We always say
'Hulloa' to each other, and then we've finished, don't you know."
"You don't like him, apparently."
"I particularly dislike him," said Toby, in a voice that was cheerful
and had the real ring of sincerity.
"Why?"
"Don't know. He doesn't do any of the things he ought. He doesn't shoot,
or ride, or play games. He stays at country houses, you see, and sits
with the women in the drawing-room, or walks with them, and bicycles
with them in the afternoon. Not my sort."
Lily glanced at his ugly, pleasant face.
"I quite agree with you," she said. "I hate men to sit on chairs and
look beautiful. He was introduced to me just now, though I did not catch
his name, and I felt he knew what my dress was made of, and how it was
made, and what it cost."
"Oh, he knows all that sort of thing," said Toby. "You should hear him
and Kit talking chiffon together. And you dislike that sort of
inspection?"
"Intensely. But most women apparently don't."
"No: isn't it funny! So many women don't seem to know a man when they
see him. Certainly Comber is very popular with them. But a man ought to
be liked by men."
Miss Murchison smiled. Toby had got two ices and was sitting opposite
her, devouring his in large mouthfuls, as if it had been porridge. She
had been brought up in the country and the open air, among horses and
dogs, and other nice wholesome things, and this mode of life in London,
as she saw it, under her mother's marchings and manoeuvres to storm
the smart set, seemed to her at times to be little short of insane. If
you were not putting on a dress, you were taking it off, and all this
simply to sit on a chair in the Park, to say half a dozen words to half
a dozen people, to lunch at one house, to dine at another, and dance at
a third. All that was only incidental in life seemed to her to be turned
into its business; everything was topsy-turvy. She understood well
enough that if you lived in the midst of your best friends, it would be
delightful to see them there three times a day, in these pretty
well-dressed settings, but to go to a house simply in order to have been
there was inexplicable. Mrs. Murchison had given a ball only a few weeks
before at her house in Grosvenor Square, about which even after the
lapse of days people had scarcely ceased talking. Royalty had been
there, and Mrs. Murchison, in the true republican spirit, had
entertained them royally. Her cotillion presents had been really
marvellous; there had been so many flowers that it was scarcely possible
to breathe, and so many people that it was quite impossible to dance.
But as success to Mrs. Murchison's and many other minds was measured by
your crowd and your extravagance, she had been ecstatically satisfied,
and had sent across to her husband several elegantly written accounts of
the festivity clipped from society papers. The evening had been to her,
as it were, a sort of signed certificate of her social standing. But to
Lily the ball had been more nearly a nightmare than a certificate:
neither she nor her mother knew by sight half the people who came, and
certainly half the people who came did not know them by sight. The
whole thing seemed to her vulgar, wickedly wasteful, and totally
unenjoyable.
There are those, and her mother was one, who would cheerfully be
asphyxiated in a sufficiently exalted crowd. To be found dead among a
heap of Duchesses would be to her what to a soldier is death in the
forefront of the battle. A mob of fashionable people had eaten and drunk
at her expense, listened to her band and marvelled at her orchids. She
had also to a high degree that excellent though slightly barbarous
virtue which is called hospitality. She liked to feed people. But the
human soul, as poets are unanimous in telling us, is ever aspiring
upwards, and this point reached, Mrs. Murchison, as has been already
stated, desired more. Her tastes became childlike again; she yearned for
simple little dinners with the mystic few, those dinners which never
even appeared in the papers, and were followed by no ball, perhaps not
even by a "few people." Cold roast beef or bits of common bacon on
skewers are sometimes served in the middle of banquets. Mrs. Murchison
longed for her bits of bacon in suitable company. It was very nice to
have the Prince asking after your dachshund's cough, but she had got
past that.
These things passed vaguely through Miss Murchison's mind, as she and
Toby ate their ices. He was like a whiff of fresh air, she thought, to
one who had been breathing a close and vitiated atmosphere. He did not
ask her where she had been last night, and where she had dined to-day,
and who was in the Park in the morning. He seemed to be as little of the
world which danced and capered in the next room, chattering volubly
about itself, as she was herself. On that point she would like
information.
"Do you like London?" she asked, at length, and then thought herself
inane for saying that. It sounded like one of the _banalités_ she found
so desperately stupid.
But Toby understood. He had just finished his ice, and with his spoon he
made a comprehensive circle in the air. "This sort of thing, do you
mean?" he asked. "All these fine people?"
"Yes, just that. All these fine people."
"It seems to me perfectly idiotic," he replied.
"Then why do you come?"
"Why? Oh, because there are a lot of people I really do like--real
friends of mine, you understand, whom I see in this way. And they come
for the same reason, I suppose."
Lily looked at him a moment out of her big dark eyes, and then nodded
gravely.
"Yes, that makes all the difference," she said. "If you have a lot of
friends here, there is a reason for coming. But----" and she stopped
loyally.
Toby guessed what was on the end of her tongue, and with a certain
instinct of delicacy changed the subject, or rather led it away from
what he imagined was in her mind.
"I know what you mean," he said, "and everyone finds it a bore at times.
One goes to a party hoping to see a particular person, and the
particular person is not there. Really, I often wish I was never in
London at all. But, you see, I am private secretary to my cousin
Pangbourne, and while they are in office and the House is sitting I have
to be in town. What would happen to the British Constitution if I
wasn't, I don't dare to think."
Miss Murchison laughed.
"That must be interesting, though," she said. "I should love to be in
the middle of the wheels. I notice in England that a sudden hush always
comes over a room whenever a politician enters. Somebody describes the
English as a race of shopkeepers. It is a very bad definition; they are
much more a race of politicians. The shopkeepers come from America."
Toby shook his head.
"I wish I could notice a hush whenever I came into a room," he said. "I
should feel as if I was making a mark. But I don't."
"But it is interesting, is it not?" asked Miss Murchison--"being
secretary to a Minister, I mean."
Toby considered.
"Last week," he said, "I looked over the bills for the flowers in Hyde
Park. They were immense, so I hope you approve of the flowers. I also
checked the food of the ducks in St. James's Park, so I hope you do not
think they are looking thin. Those ducks are the bane of my existence.
Since then I have done nothing. My cousin comes into the secretaries'
room every morning to see that we are working. He invariably finds us
playing cricket with the fire-shovel. I am usually in."
"That also is interesting," said Miss Murchison. "I love games. Oh,
there's my mother! I think she is looking for me."
"But I may have this dance?" asked Toby.
"I am sure she would allow me," said the girl; and as they both thought
of her mother's feverish acceptance for her of the last, their eyes
met.
"Let us go," said Toby gravely; and he gave her his arm back into the
ballroom.
Miss Murchison, when she left half an hour later with her mother, was
conscious of having enjoyed herself much more than she usually did at
such parties. For the most part they seemed to her sad and strange forms
of amusement. She danced with a certain number of young men, who admired
her pearls or her profile. It is true that both were admirable,
especially her profile. But to talk to them was like talking to order
through a telephone; it seemed impossible to get beyond the _banalités_
of the day. She was labelled, as she knew, as the heiress of the year;
and it was as difficult to forget that as to forget that other people
remembered it. No doubt when she got to know people more intimately it
would be different; but these first weeks of débutancy could not, she
thought, be considered amusing.
But Toby had been a most delightful change. Here was an ordinary human
young man, who did not seem to be merely a weary automaton for going
from one party to another. He was fairly stupid--an unutterable relief;
for if there was one mode of conversation she detested, it was cheap
epigram; and he was quite sensible and natural, a relief more
unutterable.
Her mother drove home with her in a state of elation. The mystic
innermost shrine was going to be unlocked at last.
"Lady Conybeare said that simply no one was coming to-morrow night," she
said. "We shall be six or eight only. Lord Comber, I think, is coming,
and Lord Evelyn. It will be quite an arcanum. She said she would wear
only a tea-gown--I should say a tea-gown only. So _chic_. We will have a
little tea-gown party before the end of the season, dear. You and Lord
Evelyn quite hobnailed together. Did you enjoy yourself, Lily?"
"Yes, very much."
"So glad, darling. I saw no pearls so good as yours. Wear them
to-morrow, dear. Lady Conybeare said she adored pearls. 'Ah,
Margerita!'" And Mrs. Murchison hummed a bar or two of Siebel's song in
a variety of keys. "And the evening after we go to see 'Tristram and
Isolde,'" she continued. "It is a gala night, and Jean de Risky plays
Tristram. How lucky we were to get the box next the royal box! I hope it
won't be very hot, for I hear that everybody stops to the end in
'Tristram.' There is a Leitmotif--or is it Liebstod?--at the end, which
is quite marvellous, I am told. However, we can go late. I hope it will
be in Italian. Italian is the only language for singing. I remember when
I was a girl I used to sing 'La donna è nobile.' I forget who wrote it;
those Italian names are so alike. And what did you talk to Lord Evelyn
about, dear? Was he amusing? We might ask him to our box on Thursday to
see 'Tristram.'"
"I don't think he cares about Wagner," said Lily; "indeed, he told me
so."
"How very unfashionable! We all like Wagner now. Personally I think it
is quite enchanting; but it always sends me fast asleep, though I enjoy
it very much until. But there is a great sameness in the operas; they
are like those novels I used to read by Mrs. Austen--'Sense and
Sensibleness,' and all the rest of them about Bath and other
watering-places. I thought them very tedious; but I was told one must
read them. Or was it Sir George Eliot who wrote them? Dear me, how
stupid of me! Sir George was there to-night, and I never once thought
of telling him how much I enjoyed his charming novels!"
"George Eliot was a woman," remarked Lily, leaning back in her corner,
tremulous with heroically-repressed amusement.
"You may be right, dear; but it isn't a common name for a woman. Of
course, there's George Sand. But if you are right, how lucky I did not
speak about his novels to Sir George! He would not have liked being
mistaken for someone else. Some of those literary men are so sensitive."
"But, you see, he did not write any of those novels," said Lily, with a
sudden little spasm of laughter.
"No, dear, that is just what I was saying. How you catch one up! My
dearest, I am so glad you enjoyed yourself this evening. Sometimes I
have thought you looked a little bored and tired. Really, London is
charming! So much _jeu d'esprit_ about it, is there not? And to-morrow
we dine at Lady Conybeare's! How pleasant, and what a wonderful dress
she had on this evening! She made me feel quite a dodo--I should say a
dowdy."
Lily broke into a sudden peal of laughter, and her mother beamed
good-humouredly.
"Laughing again at your poor mother," she said, patting her hand. "You
are always laughing, Lily; you are a perfect _fille de joie_. Dear me!
I'm always saying the wrong word. Here we are, darling. Get out very
carefully, because my dress is all over."
Lily stepped out into a perfect mob of powdered footmen who lined the
steps of the Murchison mansion. Mrs. Murchison, when she took her house,
gave what she called _bête noire_ to a celebrated firm of London
decorators (meaning, it is to be supposed, _carte blanche_) to make it
as elegant and refined as money could. The result was an impression of
extraordinary opulence; and the eminent firm of decorators, wise in
their generation, had pleased Mrs. Murchison very well. Not the smallest
part of her gratification was the immense sum she had to pay them. Money
meant almost nothing to her, but it meant a good deal to other people;
and to be able to say truthfully that one ceiling had cost a couple of
thousand pounds was a solid cause of self-congratulation. Indeed, the
contemplation of the cheque she had drawn pleased her nearly as much as
what the cheque had accomplished.
She paused a moment in the hall, while one footman took off her cloak
and handed it to another, and looked contentedly round on the stamped
leather and the old oak, the Louis XIV. chairs, the Nankin ware, and the
Persian rugs; and her mind went back for a second to the days of
pitch-pine and horsehair, and in her excellent heart there rose a sudden
thrill of thankfulness. Lily was already on the stairs, and her mother's
eye followed her, and rested there so long that the third footman had
closed the door, and stood to attention, waiting for her to move. And
one hair of Lily's head was dearer to her than all the old oak and the
opulence and the powdered footmen. She gave a heavy sigh, all mother.
"Put the lights out, William," she said, "or is it Thomas?"