CHAPTER I

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CIRCE’S DAUGHTER

“La vie est un instrument qui on commence toujours par jouer faux.”

CIRCE’S DAUGHTER

BY

PRISCILLA CRAVEN

Author of

“A Lighted Candle,” “The School of Love,” etc.

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

DUFFIELD & COMPANY

1913

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY DUFFIELD & COMPANY

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

PART I

I.—THE GAME 3

II.—CIRCE’S DAUGHTER 15

III.—THE WORLD, THE FLESH—— 24

IV.—A TOY MOTHER 34

V.—GREEN BAY-LEAVES 47

VI.—A MOTHERS’ MEETING 63

VII.—“LOVE IS THE ONLY CONVENTION” 75

PART II

I.—EN ROUTE 91

II.—“LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!” 105

III.—“ICH LIEBE DICH” 114

IV.—“NOT SATISFIED” 130

V.—THE GIRLIE GIRL 141

VI.—UNE CHAMBRE À LOUER 151

VII.—“MISS FAY MORRIS THAT WAS” 165

VIII.—“TWO IN A STUDIO” 177

IX.—“MELTON GREEN” 193

X.—“THE STAR TURN” 207

XI.—“OUT AT SEA” 214

XII.—“ASHES” 219

XIII.—A DANGER SIGNAL 232

XIV.—AN UNEMOTIONAL FISH 237

XV.—WHY NOT? 247

XVI.—NATURE’S FAULT 264

XVII.—THE GREAT THRESHOLD 274

XVIII.—DRUNK AND DISORDERLY 290

XIX.—AN AMIABLE STUFFED ANIMAL 299

XX.—BACK TO “THE GAME” 311

XXI.—THE MEANING OF LIFE 322

XXII.—A SICK MAN’S FANCY 332

XXIII.—AROUND THE CORNER 342

XXIV.—THE STRIKE 360

XXV.—“COME” 370

CIRCE’S DAUGHTER

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE GAME

Richards looked carefully over the table with the eye of the well-trained

manservant. He retouched a bowl of lilac that offended against his

slavish idea of symmetry and then put a screen across the dying fire.

It was the end of May and the night was warm, but as Carey Image was

to be one of the guests that evening, Richards had seen to it that the

room was well heated. For Carey Image had just come back from five

years’ sojourn on the frontier of India, and Richards was afraid that

the rigours of the Eastern climate—particularly trying to a man in the

fifties—might strike a chill into his sunbaked body. He was thinking

about him as he placed the screen, for Richards had been in the Currey

family for many years, and he remembered well the genial little man,

generous with his _pourboires_ and “full of pleasant remarks”—the

expression was Richards’ own, communicated to his wife, the cook—who had

been godfather to the owner of the rooms thirty-two years ago, and had,

on the occasion of the christening, optimistically prophesied that the

baby would grow into a remarkable man.

Richards had heard the remark, and he now recalled it as he drew the

curtains. Was not Carey Image’s prophecy coming true? He had been the

first in the field, if one may use that expression of a prophet, but

others now began to endorse his opinion.

“Wonderful how he knew,” muttered Richards to himself, “for babies is

that alike, all pink and squally.”

Then by a natural sequence of thought Richards glanced at a large

photograph of his master in wig and gown which reposed on a table,

and which had been taken at the request of his mother, who lamented

afterwards that it made him look too severe and old. A remarkable man?

No, the title was not yet earned; for no man is remarkable until he is

forty and has buried the prophet, his godfather. Still, Gilbert Currey

was well on the way to success, and that very week had seen him take a

big stride forward. Had not his success in the Driver case made the eyes

of the legal profession and a good many of the public turn towards him?

Richards was old-fashioned enough to take a pride in the fortunes of his

master.

A slight noise through the curtains which shut off the dining-room from

the room in the front portion of the flat caused the butler to turn.

One of the guests had arrived early. He must apologize for his master’s

non-appearance. Gilbert Currey was still dressing; he generally rushed

home from his chambers at the last moment.

“Ah!” said a well-remembered voice, “it is the faithful Richards. How do

you do, Richards, and how have the years treated you?”

Carey Image smiled genially, and Richards, as to an old family friend,

permitted himself an answering smile.

“I hope I see you well, sir.”

“Tolerably, Richards. My bones creak a little.... Ouf! Was it always the

custom to make the rooms so hot?”

Richards, crestfallen, explained. “I will open the window wider.”

“Yes, do. But it was thoughtful of you, Richards, very thoughtful. It

seems that everyone looks on me now as a salamander.... So you are here

with my godson in his flat. How is that?”

“Well, sir, when Mr. Gilbert came to live in town, my mistress was

anxious that I should look after him, so my wife and I came up here.”

“Ah! let me see. Your wife made delicious omelettes. I remember them

well. So you came here to give him, as it were, all the comforts of home.

Lucky young dog. I am confident of a good dinner now, for I was a little

doubtful, Richards, as I dressed. Gilbert is not an epicure, or at least

he was not five years ago. He eats—well, he eats, and that’s all there

is to it. I have come to the age when I dine. And I remember your wife’s

cooking. Will you tell her so?”

The compliment pleased Richards and afterwards the cook, as it was meant

to. Image had been born with the knack of saying the graceful thing in

the right place, and his memory was wonderful. This trick had made many

friends for him.

“I will tell my master you are here.”

“No, no, don’t hurry him. A party of five, eh? To celebrate his birthday

and his latest success at the Bar? He _is_ going to be a remarkable man.”

“I was just remembering what you said, sir, when you came in.”

Image smiled, and taking off his glasses, carefully polished them.

“Ah! he was so sturdy and he shut his little mouth so firmly—a great

deal in the set of the mouth even at the early age, Richards—and he

knew what he wanted so decidedly that I felt there was a career before

him. He commenced to orate loudly in church, and I understand the same

oration—more intelligible and persuasive—won this much talked-of Driver

case. Don’t hurry him on my account. I have not yet become accustomed to

the taxi-cabs. Distances by rickshaws and distances by four-wheelers I

know, but taxi-cabs—I find myself hurrying along like the witch on her

broomstick.”

Richards quietly withdrew, and Image surveyed the rooms through his

glasses, which made his near-sighted brown eyes so extraordinarily

brilliant and piercing. He nodded in old acquaintanceship to several

pieces of furniture and a few pictures, for Gilbert’s mother had robbed

Wynnstay Manor for her son’s furnishing. On either side of the fireplace

were two new portraits which had been painted since Image had been away.

One represented a woman, with delicate colouring and well-chiselled

features. The calm blue eyes were shallow as pools of water in the sun,

and there were no full curves to the lips or any indication of deep

emotion or temperament. A well-preserved woman—Gilbert’s mother. On

the other side was a companion picture, Sir John Currey, Bart., M.P.

No weakness there, rather a dominating nature, an iron will, a certain

ruthlessness in the lines of the heavy jaw, a certain coldness in the

direct glancing eyes.

“A capital portrait, my old friend,” apostrophized Image. “I wonder if

Gilbert will——”

“Now, Carey, talking to the devil?” broke in a voice on his meditations,

a full, very masculine voice, that filled the room. It made Image’s voice

seem effeminate and thin. “My old nurse used to say when she found me

muttering to myself that I was telling the devil too much of my mind.”

“My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you again. It’s a silly habit of

mine. I and myself, we often talk to one another.... Let’s have a good

look at you.... A bit heavier——”

“Yes,” said Gilbert laughing ruefully, “I am putting on flesh. Don’t get

enough exercise. You haven’t changed, Carey.”

“Ah! I have definitely come to the shrivelled stage. I was looking at

your father’s portrait. Capital! When you laugh you are not so like, but

your face in repose—very like. I am glad to hear of your success, my

boy. Johnson Marks was in court yesterday, and he told me your speech was

truly remarkable for a young man, and you know how many young barristers

he has heard. You must have been very pleased at the successful issue of

the trial.”

“Yes, I confess I was. I wanted to pull the thing off. I made up my mind

to get him acquitted.”

As he said it, the determined set of his mouth was old beyond his years

and reminded Image very powerfully of his father. Then Gilbert smiled and

clapped Image on the back, and the impression of egoistic ruthlessness

was dissipated. When Gilbert Currey smiled he had considerable charm.

Women would have let him know this if he had found time to court them.

Richards’ voice was heard at the door. “Mr. Iverson.”

“Hallo, old chap, flushed with victory, eh? Lord! what a lot of swotting

you must have done over that case. Your knowledge of Eastern poisons

knocked me silly. You’re a nut, you are.”

No one could have mistaken Jack Iverson for anything else but a Service

man. As a matter of fact, he was in the Blues, and exceptionally

good-looking, with that rare distinction in a man—a wonderful clear,

healthy skin. His eyes a curious jadelike green with the bluish clear

whites that one usually sees only in the eyes of a small child, Jack

Iverson was one of the handsomest and richest young men that lounged

about Mayfair.

Image did not know Jack Iverson, but he knew the next guest, an old

friend, Dr. Fritz Neeburg, and he had heard of the last arrival,

Gilbert’s particular friend and college chum, Colin Paton.

The impression Paton made on the casual observer was that of a

well-groomed reserved man of a very English type, and one of the best.

There was nothing at all arresting in his appearance; he had regular

features, smooth hair, well-cared-for hands, and a general air of

wellbeing. He was three years older than Gilbert, though they had been

at Oxford together, but he had been delicate in his early manhood, and

had spent several years in desultory travel. Paton’s movements were all

quietly deliberate; they might have belonged to a man of fifty equally

well as to a man of thirty. He did not give the impression of forceful

energy, as did his friend. Quite unlike in character and tastes, they

were yet excellent friends, and though Gilbert would have been at a

loss to describe or analyse Paton—he had no interest in psychology,

apart from its bearing on his legal work—Paton had long ago realized the

possibilities and the limitations of his host.

They sat down to dinner in a pleasant intimate circle of yellow light.

Richards’ wife had a passion for flowers—she would spend hours standing

in front of the beautiful florists’ displays in the West End, when

she took her constitutionals—so Gilbert’s rooms and table were always

tastefully decorated. This evening, heavy-headed, fragrant jonquils,

rather sick and drooping with their own sweetness, nodded from some

exquisite Venetian glass, while bunched violets in silver bowls added to

the spring-like effect. Image was quick to notice the flowers.

“The English flowers! You must have spent ten years in the tropics to

appreciate them. One gets so satiated with gorgeousness and overpowering

perfume, just as one gets tired of the burning sun and the eternal

blue sky. But the English flowers one never tires of. There is such a

wonderful simplicity and purity about them. They refresh and cleanse one.

In the East there are flowers that are positively wicked, one almost

starts back from their viciousness. But the English flowers are perfect.

“I saw your lights burning at two o’clock this morning,” observed

Neeburg; “were you celebrating your victory, Gilbert?”

“No. I was working.”

“Don’t overwork, old man. Don’t urge the willing steed too fast and

furious. I think we are all inclined to do that nowadays. Faster and

faster physical and mental locomotion seems the order of the day.”

“And that’s how you rake in the guineas, Neeburg. You shouldn’t grumble.

But I’m as strong as a horse. Work doesn’t hurt me. Thank God, I

inherited a good constitution from my father.”

“My dear fellow, the strongest horse, if you overwork him, will sometimes

go lame. You’ve been working very hard the last couple of years. Keep

things in their proper proportions—that’s the secret of life and

happiness—proportion!”

“Ah!” said Image briskly, “that’s very true, Fritz, only we usually learn

that secret when it’s too late and everything is out of proportion.”

“Proportion!” said the host quickly. “How can you keep a sense of

proportion nowadays? Look at me. When you start in the legal profession

the proportion is on the wrong side. You have nothing to do except to

wear out the leather chairs at your chambers. Get a move on and a few

eyes directed to you, and you are very soon swamped with work. And if

a man doesn’t work for all he is worth with a singleness of aim and

ambition between twenty-five and forty, he will never arrive. You have to

keep your nose to the grindstone or success will pass you by. It’s all

very well for doctors to talk of moderation and a sense of proportion,

but how can you be moderate? Life is immoderate nowadays.”

“You mean that a man’s ambitions and wants are immoderate,” returned

Neeburg.

Jack Iverson, who was quite frankly out of the conversation, tried to

contribute his quota. “I say, what’s the good of spending all the days of

your youth swotting?” he said in his rather rich, lazy voice. “The game

isn’t worth the candle.”

Gilbert went on a trifle impatiently. “The thing to do nowadays is to

specialize. Make up your mind what you can do best, and what you want,

and hang on like a bulldog till you get it.”

“A bit of a gamble if you only stake on worldly success,” said Paton

quietly.

Image nodded emphatically, and looked curiously from one young man to the

other.

“It isn’t such a gamble. I believe most firmly that you can ensure

success provided that you have certain abilities and a fair constitution.

You hear a lot of people blaming Fate for their non-success in life. How

many of them have really striven whole-heartedly to get what they want?

The road to success is a sort of obstacle race, and you can’t afford,

while you are surmounting the obstacles, to either look to the right or

the left or even behind you, to see who is possibly going to overtake

you. Success isn’t a chance; it’s a certainty if you concentrate.”

Gilbert had a very decisive manner, which was worth its weight in gold to

him in the courts.

For a moment there was silence as he ceased speaking.

“Yes, but my dear boy,” said Image at length, “what is success?”

“Making money, I suppose,” said Jack Iverson, watching Richards refill

his glass. He was glad that he did not do any of these strenuous things.

He had a secret awe and lazy admiration of Gilbert.

“No,” said his host, “you generally make money if you are successful—it

follows as the night the day—but I should say that very few of the

world’s successful men have worked for the sake of money.”

“Well, how do you define it? Notoriety, fame, the applause of

undiscriminating men who shout with the crowd, paragraphs in the

halfpenny papers side-by-side with an account of the latest high

kick of a popular actress, a long obituary notice to be followed by

a badly-written book of biography by one of the family which nobody

reads—is that worth struggling for?” Paton put the question quietly, his

voice a trifle colourless after Gilbert’s.

“_You_ are not ambitious,” retorted Gilbert. “You never were. You have

always let other fellows walk over you, chaps with half your brains. You

dream your time away.”

“No, excuse me, I don’t dream. I hate excessively to hear myself classed

with those vague, anæmic brains that wander like will-o’-the-wisps

over the world. You think I wasted my time at Oxford because I did not

take any degree. I don’t. I taught myself how to think. I refused to

cram my brains with facts most of which would be of little use to me

in after-life, or to my neighbour. I tried to leave a little room for

the imagination. Oxford appealed to my imagination, and I think I have

brought something away from her that will be a precious possession all my

life. You came away with an enormous capacity for assimilating knowledge,

with a well-trained memory and a habit of pigeonholing everything and

everybody. Most useful to you in your profession, my dear fellow, but it

did not appeal to me as worth working for.”

“You have no ambition to be labelled ‘successful’?” said Image, who had

been watching Paton as he spoke with his brilliant dark eyes. He found

something that he liked in Paton, something which he vaguely missed in

Gilbert and had always missed in his father before him.

“I don’t care for what is usually called success. Of course, many people

say that because they know they won’t set the world on fire; and in

spite of what Gilbert says, there are people who will never, with any

amount of concentration, arrive; but, honestly, I don’t much care what my

fellow-creatures think of me from the point of view of worldly success—I

care very much otherwise; and I refuse to try and narrow myself down

within the cramped little borders of success. I want room to develop,

and I don’t want to be forced through the world’s mill and come out in a

certain pattern.”

“And Gilbert doesn’t care a pin what people think of him ‘otherwise,’

but very much from the world’s stand-point, that’s the difference between

you,” said Neeburg, helping himself to a quail _en cocotte_. “Now, I

wonder which makes for happiness?”

“Oh, hold on!” cried Gilbert, laughing. “I like people all right. I

protest, Neeburg.”

Neeburg smiled and shook his head. “Individuals are not really necessary

to you,” persisted Neeburg.

“I won’t be made out a hard and miserable materialist just because I am

honest enough to say I am ambitious.”

“My dear boy, there are many like you,” said Neeburg; “and ambition is

by no means a bad thing. But with you the game is the thing. You are the

type of man who lives and dies in harness. Men and women are pawns in the

game of life to you. Once I thought as you do, but I was checked in time.

And I found it wasn’t worth while. Bay-leaves may be bitter.”

“Well,” said Image; “to every man his own meat and his own poison. I’ve

met a good many famous men in my time, and I can’t recall that any of

them seemed to be particularly happy. To be great is to be lonely.... How

delicious these strawberries are!... I think I’d rather be one of the

common herd. The big man looks over the heads of others in a crowd, but

he misses a lot of friendly glances and intimate whispers. I even like

some of the jolly, familiar nudges one gets. No one would dare to nudge a

great man.”

The others laughed, and Richards came in with the coffee.

“That reminds me of something that was said to me yesterday,” said

Neeburg, “by an Anglo-Indian just come home. Was no end of a pot in India

with absolute control over a big province. He was lamenting that it

was horrible to find himself obliged to use buses and sit next to—just

anybody!”

“He doesn’t appreciate the nudges,” laughed Gilbert.

“He’s forgotten how jolly they are,” retorted Image, with a twinkle.

“That’s just what I complain of.”

Jack Iverson, who had been vainly trying to follow “those brainy

fellows,” broke in with a commonplace. “Well, I hate the people you see

in buses and tubes. They think they are as good as you, and they always

seem in such a beastly hurry to get somewhere. And, all the time, I

suppose most of ’em don’t do anything in particular.”

“No, they only earn their livings,” said Neeburg drily.

“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to,” said Iverson, lighting his cigar. “I’d

rather have money than brains. I say, I’ve got to rush off soon, Gilbert.

Claudia insisted that I must go to Lady Laud’s dance at the ‘Ritz.’

Rotten fag, bunny-hugging and Gaby-gliding.”

“Is your sister going too?” asked Gilbert quickly.

“Claudia? Yes. I suppose you got an invitation?”

“Yes, but I had forgotten all about it.”

“Dancing is a beastly bore. I’m fed up with it,” continued Iverson

complacently, his striking good looks in obvious contrast to his

commonplace mind. “I’d rather play bridge any day, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I don’t dislike dancing, only I can’t afford the time. If I go to

a dance I always stay too late. And I certainly should if I danced with

your sister.”

“Not half a bad dancer, is she? She goes on at me for being too

lackadaisical. She says she likes a partner who _feels_ the music. But

how can you feel the _Chocolate Soldier_ every night, and what are you

to feel? Quite imposs. I can’t understand all these delicate sort of

feelings. They were playing ‘The Rosary’ the other night at supper, and

the girl with me put on such a die-away air that I thought she felt sick.

She was awfully annoyed with me for offering her some brandy.”

There was a general laugh as the men moved away from the table. The

noise of the traffic outside was like a huge buzzing bee; the fresh air,

holding a subtle promise of spring, came in through the open casement

windows.

Iverson was the first to break up the party. “Claudia will go for me if I

don’t get there in decent time.”

Fritz Neeburg went with him. He never kept late hours, for the hand of

the surgeon must be steady and there must be no overnight fogs in his

brain. Presently Carey Image, Paton and their host, were alone together.

CHAPTER II

CIRCE’S DAUGHTER

“Well, I’ve been an unsuccessful man as the world counts success,” said

Image, as though the thread of their early conversation had never been

broken, “but I’ve had fifteen years of great personal happiness. Can one

expect more than that in life? Could I have been more successful? And

I’ve laid up a store of beautiful memories for my old age.”

Everyone knew the story of Carey Image. He had himself started out in

life at the Bar. When in his thirty-second year and well on the road to

be a K.C., he was briefed as counsel in a divorce case. The woman was

unsuccessful in divorcing her husband, the definition of legal cruelty

did not cover practices and habits that had reduced a beautiful, healthy

woman to a frightened shadow; but she was successful in winning a heart

that had stood between her and the world for fifteen years afterwards.

Pariahs in social London—for in those days public opinion was more cruel

than it is to-day—they had wandered all over the world together. They

had not been quite idle, for she helped Image to write several books of

thoughtful travel that had first set the fashion of “wander literature.”

She had died five years previously, and never once had Image regretted

what he had given up for her. He had rescued a woman from the lowest

depths and made her perfectly happy. His worldly failure in life had

been his real success. The look in the dying woman’s eyes as they had

turned to him had made an imperishable crown.

Gilbert was silent. As a child he had known Image, and he had often

wondered since if it had really been worth while to make a pariah of

himself. He was answered now. It was so different from his mother’s

version of the good-looking woman who got Image in her clutches and whom

he was too unworldly to see through.

“I think that fifteen years of happiness is more than most of us can hope

for,” said Paton quietly.

“I remember as a boy,” said Image reminiscently, “being asked what I

wanted to do in life, and I replied ‘To do one thing well and make one

person happy.’ I think I did the latter, but in the first I have failed.

My globe-trotting books are pretty well known, but what are they, after

all?” He looked at the portrait of Gilbert in his wig and gown, and there

was a sort of gentle regret in his eyes.

“Surely you have been successful in both,” said Paton. “To love

well—isn’t that one of the rarest talents?”

Image turned on him with his charming smile. “Ah! but it was so easy. If

you had known her you would realize it was nothing to my credit—nothing

at all.” He said it very simply, as though stating an undeniable

fact. For a moment there was silence, while the ghost of a beautiful,

sweet-natured woman passed through the room.

Then Gilbert, who, like most Englishmen, felt rather uncomfortable at the

sentimental vein into which they had fallen, poured himself out a whisky

and soda, and the prosaic hiss of the syphon dispelled the ghost.

“Well, I must be going,” said Paton, rousing himself from a little

reverie and slowly getting out of the big armchair; “time for all good

children, et cetera. Good-night, Mr. Image, I am very pleased to have

met you. I hope we shall meet again.”

“We are sure to,” said Image cordially. “I wish you would come and

lunch with me at my club one day? You will? Good. I’ll drop you a line.

Good-night to you.”

Gilbert went to see him out, and Image, rising, looked again at the

photograph of him which his mother said was too severe. As Gilbert came

back to the room he compared the original with the photograph. More than

a presentable man, Gilbert Currey was distinctly good-looking. The brow

was broad and high, and the hair grew thick and strongly. His eyes,

which Image remembered in the baby had been blue like his mother’s,

were now a darkish grey and the lids fell rather heavily over them.

This, however, did not give any impression of sleepiness, rather that

of self-sufficiency and reserve force. The nostrils of his well-shaped

nose were somewhat wide, denoting his energy and driving power. The chin

was rather too heavy, and had he not closed his mouth so firmly the

lips would have been a trifle sensual. Above the medium height, he gave

promise of being one day a heavy man if he did not exercise sufficiently,

but now he was still well-proportioned. The two men were physically a

great contrast, for Carey Image was always known as “little Carey Image,”

though the diminutive indicated affection as well as size. He had the

small build and fineness of the Japanese.

“Well, cousin Carey,” laughed Gilbert as he met the ruminative gaze of

the brown eyes, “sizing me up, eh? Find me much changed?” He took out a

pipe and commenced to fill it.

“No, very little, surprisingly little. You’re going to be like your

father. How is he?”

“Well, and fiercely combating socialism and all the other revolutionary

‘isms.’ You can imagine how much he likes the democratic tendency of the

times. He gets grimmer over them every time we meet.”

Image smiled. “Yes, politically I find a great change in England since

I left it. But it’s interesting—very.... Your friend Paton is very

charming. What does he do?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer. I can’t reply “nothing,” because

he is always doing something. Much more energetic than he looks. His

father is urging him to go into Parliament, and I think he will later on.

But at present he says he is ‘informing himself,’ whatever that may mean.

He is helping Sir John Tollins with his Prison Reform Crusade at the

moment, and he is visiting various institutions all over the country.”

“Ah! yes, a sociologist. Such men do very useful work. And what is Mr.

Jack Iverson?”

“A rich young ass,” laughed Gilbert.

“Sir,” said Carey with a twinkle; “that is not information. I can see

into shop windows as well as you.”

“Well, he’s in the Blues; but I always think of him as Claudia’s

brother.” He said it without the slightest embarrassment, just as he

might have referred to his own uncle.

“Claudia! A pretty name. Is she as pretty as her name?”

“Prettier. But they are a wonderfully handsome family. Looks on both

sides.”

Image lit another of his French cigarettes, and then he said gently, “And

have you any designs on the pretty sister?”

“Yes,” said Gilbert, with a curious thoughtful deliberation. “I think—I

think I shall marry her.”

A look flashed into his godfather’s eyes at the—to him—curious way in

which a young man expressed his intention of asking a woman to confer the

greatest honour upon him. But the modern young man was always astounding

Carey Image and making him wonder if he had lost his bearings in India or

if some mischievous god had deliberately turned things upside down.

“I was going to ask you if you had any plans other than worldly.... Is

Miss Iverson likely to do you the honour to——?”

Gilbert broke in rather abruptly. The subtle reproof had passed him

by, immersed as he was in his own thoughts. “You know the family? Mrs.

Iverson was Sybil Daunton-Pole, and Geoffrey Iverson is Lord Creagh’s

third son.”

“Why, of course; I wondered why the name was familiar.” A light broke in

on him and he became animated. “I remember—why, yes. She was the woman

who made such a sensation when she was first presented, and her portrait

was painted as Circe and exhibited at the Academy? A lovely creature.”

Gilbert nodded. “Time has taken his toll now.”

Image was searching back many years. “Let me see, and wasn’t she supposed

to be a Circe in real life? Wasn’t there a story about her and a member

of Parliament——?”

“Oh! a hundred stories. One of the most talked-of women in London.”

“A certain Royal personage was supposed——”

“Yes, it’s always said so.... I should say she has had a high old

time. Iverson never tried to control her. Of course, as I say, she’s a

bit _passée_ now. She knows it, too, and has taken up with occultism,

mysticism, or whatever you call it. ‘I must occupy myself,’ she said to

me the other day. ‘I have decided definitely to retire from the stage of

Love while I am still desirable. My children bore me. I will seek the

occult.’”

“Not an ideal mother for a girl,” said Image.

“Oh! Claudia is all right. Here’s her photo. She promised it to me if

I won the Driver case. It only came this morning.” He took it out of

a drawer and handed it to Image. In the corner was written in a firm

individual hand, “Best congratulations, Claudia.”

“Beautiful,” said Image warmly, who was ever an admirer of all things

lovely, especially women. “I think I have met her somewhere. Not at all

like I remember the portrait of Circe.”

“Not a scrap like her mother. A good deal of what the French call _beauté

du diable_ about Mrs. Iverson. Claudia’s look are quite different.”

Image began to recall various tit-bits of scandal and gossip that had

found their way out to India regarding Claudia’s mother. Utterly unmoral,

passionately heartless, the fascinations of a siren, Image had heard

many tales of her. He recalled vaguely one story, which was particularly

scandalous and which questions the paternity of one of the daughters.

There had been whisper at that time that she had gone too far, and weak,

complaisant Geoff Iverson would be roused to divorce her.

“Miss Iverson is dark, I should say? Yes, I thought so.” Image looked

at the girl in the portrait, who looked back at him. She had adopted no

coquettish pose, no drooping eyelids or heavenward gaze, but she looked

straight out of the frame with her clear, fine eyes. And they seemed to

Image to be asking innumerable questions of life. There was a suggestion,

too, of eagerness about the mobile lips, as though they would open and

presently shape the word “why?”

“Not a bit like her mother.” Gilbert seemed to take a comfort in

repeating it. “And although there is all this talk about heredity

nowadays, such a woman as Circe is something unusual. Of course, if I

thought——”

“My dear boy, can you be in love with her and stop to think it over in

this way?” Image was a little impatient with his godson. He liked the

girl with the questioning eyes.

Gilbert looked up in slow surprise. “Well, mother doesn’t like Mrs.

Iverson, as you may imagine. She calls her that ‘dreadful, immoral

woman.’ And you know what mothers are. She’s carefully picked out a girl

for me. Plenty of money, and influential family relations. But the girl

annoys me: she is one of the clinging, sentimental sort. I don’t think I

could stand her as my wife.”

“Why—why are you marrying?” said Image slowly. Gilbert had evidently

consulted his mother, or at least listened to her counsels. In some way

Image was old-fashioned in his ideas of what is due to a parent, but he

had never held it right that a mother should select a wife for her son.

“Why?” Gilbert knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “Well, I think it is

about time.”

“I see.” Image looked again at the photograph. Gilbert was only marrying

because “it was about time.” What were the eager dark eyes asking for?

Only for that? “You don’t believe in having any sentiment about choosing

one’s life partner?”

“Oh, yes, of course. I’ve just told you the girl my mother has picked

out would annoy me no end. I like Claudia very much. Only she is in a

bad set, though it doesn’t seem to have affected her. As a matter of

fact, her mother has hardly had any intercourse with her. She has none of

the domestic virtues, you know. As far as one can see there is no taint

there, but—well, its a serious responsibility to marry the daughter of a

Circe. And people talk so much about heredity and eugenics——”

“My dear boy,” said Image heatedly, “love snaps its fingers at heredity

and pulls a long nose at eugenics. To the devil with them, I say. It’s

too much talk about these things that makes people so anæmic these days.

If you love a woman, take her in your arms and keep her there. A good

woman won’t want to go far astray. But keep her in your arms. Don’t

put them round her once and hold her tight till she says ‘yes’ and then

loosen hold. Most Englishmen deserve to lose their wives.” Image spoke

with such warmth that Gilbert smiled.

“A champion of woman!” He took the photo from Image. For the first time a

tinge of warmth crept into his voice. It may have been caught from Image.

“She is handsome, isn’t she?”

“No, I do not stand up as a champion of women. I would not dare to do

such a thing. But, thank God, I was brought up to love and respect women

and to think that they needed protection and guarding. And men are all

the better for the responsibility.”

“Women nowadays resent guarding and protecting. They’ve changed while

you’ve been away.”

“Nonsense, I don’t believe it. They resent bullying and spying and the

things that are done under the name of protection. They may _pretend_ to

like guarding and protecting themselves, but it’s because their men-folk

are such incompetent slacksters. You modern lovers, what you miss in

life! Don’t be a fool, Gilbert. You are in love with her, aren’t you?”

“Oh! yes, I have a feeling that way.” Gilbert gave a little laugh to

cover his confession. For Image’s enthusiasm was infective. And really

Claudia was very charming. What a good hostess she would make. And she

was quick to see things; her fine eyes had a wonderful way of lighting

up—one of the gifts of the gods; she was interested in his career——

Image rose and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Why don’t you put on your dancing-pumps and go off and dance with her

to-night? I daresay she’ll cut out some unfortunate fellow for you.”

Gilbert considered. “I must go down to my chambers early to-morrow, and

I wanted to read over a brief to-night. Still, I might go for an hour.

After all——” He broke off and put his pipe on the mantelpiece. After

all, he had been celebrating a victory and his birthday. He had the

feeling that he might allow himself a little treat. Claudia would be

surprised and, he thought, pleased to see him. It was always easy to see

her emotion mirrored in her eyes.... Yes, he would treat himself.

Image said good-night and went down in the lift. He was thinking of

Gilbert, a little puzzled, a little regretful, of what he hardly knew—and

he flashed back a glance to his own youth.

He stood still for a moment in the warm spring air and looked up at the

stars. Then he took off his hat and for a moment stood bareheaded, as

before a shrine.

“I’m very glad,” he said softly; but why he was glad no one but himself

knew, unless it were the stars.

CHAPTER III

THE WORLD, THE FLESH——

The dance was at its height when Gilbert entered the ball-room. He

thought of Jack Iverson’s protest as the strains of the waltz from the

_Count of Luxembourg_ began to float over the room, played as only a

Viennese orchestra can play it. Yet the strains were alluring to that

part of him that was not the successful barrister, and his feet itched

like any ordinary young man’s to be dancing. Claudia, of course, would be

booked up—she was, as her brother had left unsaid, a beautiful dancer—and

no matter who went short of partners, Claudia did not. She had been out a

year, and rumour said that she had had a good many offers of marriage. An

aunt, who was anxious to see her settled, had said, with annoyance, that

Claudia must be waiting for a prince.

Gilbert caught sight of Jack Iverson dancing with a pretty débutante who

was too plainly desirous of winning his approval. The only son, he was in

the curious position of being wealthier than his own father, for an aunt,

who had in the sixties married an immensely rich Jew, had recently died

and left all her fortune to him. Why, heaven knows, unless she thought

that the money would be put into quick circulation. This made young

Iverson a very desirable _parti_ in the matrimonial market, and mothers

of budding and blooming daughters were extremely polite to him. But Jack

Iverson’s taste did not lie in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair.

Gilbert waited about, but he could not see Claudia. He turned away,

more disappointed than he would have owned, and there, under a big palm,

tapping her fan impatiently on her knee, he saw her—alone.

“Claudia,” he said, going quickly up to her, “are you not dancing this?”

He called all the Iverson family by their Christian names. He had known

them in his early youth, when their country house had adjoined his

father’s. When Claudia was ten, their house had been sold—it was too

far from town—and it was only during the last few months that he had

really renewed his acquaintance with the family. Lady Currey had been

unfeignedly glad when the Iversons moved away.

Claudia jumped up, all animation. “You here! I thought you couldn’t

afford the time for such frivolities.”

“I can’t really, but I’ve come for an hour. I wondered if there was a

chance of getting a dance with you.” The music was humming in his ears,

there was a heady odour from a group of lilies beside them, and—and

Claudia was glad to see him. “I should not have come otherwise,” he

added. He smiled at her, and though he used the smile very seldom, it was

quite attractive.

She met his eyes squarely without the least bit of a flutter, but a

faint flush rose to her smooth cheeks. “Well, come,” she said, putting

her hand within his arm. “I am engaged for this—but my partner has kept

me waiting. So he can lose the dance. A laggard dancer, like a laggard

lover, deserves to lose his partner.”

“Blessings on his laggardism.”

“If I had been an Early Victorian maiden, I should have waited patiently,

like a brown paper parcel, till he came to claim me.... Ah, well! You

dance much better than he does. He dances like a pair of animated fire

tongs.”

Some people dance, and others move their feet. Claudia would have

inspired an elephant to tread coquettishly. She had the real spirit

of the dance in her, and a magnetism that communicated itself to her

partners, no matter how stodgy and how deep one foot was in the grave.

An old colonel had once said—he was turned sixty, and out of pure good

nature she had danced with him—that it was too dangerous to dance with

Claudia Iverson. “I can’t afford to regret my youth so bitterly.” Circe

had had a good deal of magnetism in her youth, but it had been purely

animal. With Claudia it was a tantalizing blend of spirit and body.

For some time they waltzed in silence. Then Gilbert said involuntarily,

“I’m glad I came.”

“I’m glad, too,” said Claudia softly. A little strand of soft dark hair

that had become unloosened swept his cheek now and again, her body gave

to every movement, lithe, supple and warm. He forgot his career and the

brief he had meant to study. His youth asserted itself—he had never

really enjoyed it—and insolently told his maturer intellect to hold off

and take a back place.

But Claudia, like most women, could think of many things while she was

thoroughly enjoying the dance, for women can do several things at the

same time. She was thinking of his triumph the day before. Many people

had been talking about him the last few days, and prophesying big things

for him. He was the young man of the hour, and he had left his work to

come and dance with her. The thought was intoxicating.

Claudia was desperately tired of the men who did nothing. Her father did

nothing—he sat on one or two boards, and grumbled at having to attend

their monthly meetings—her brother did very little. Although he was in

the army, his duties sat lightly upon him, and those duties seemed to

involve little or no brain power. Jack confessed that the only time

he thought was the few minutes when he was sitting in his bath in the

morning. The man with whom she should have danced the waltz did nothing.

He was vaguely going in for politics one day, in the meantime he

gracefully and idly existed. Most of the men Claudia knew, except one

or two elderlies who were M.P.’s or the heads of large companies, did

nothing in particular. And Claudia had a great admiration for the people

who did things. As a girl, she had read all the biographies of famous men

that she could lay her hands upon, and she had even once had a desire to

do something big herself. Though she had long ago given up the idea, she

still admired the vigorous men who did and thought strongly.

The dance came to an end and Gilbert led her out of the room.

“I was in court yesterday,” said Claudia, tucking the little strand of

hair tidily away under the fillet of pink coral and pearls which she

wore. She was dressed in a pastel shade of something diaphanous and soft,

that harmonized exactly with the creamy tones of her skin. The only

colour about her was supplied by the corals which she also wore wound in

strands round her neck and drooping over the front of her corsage.

“No, were you?” said Gilbert, thrilling at this evidence of her interest.

“I made Uncle John take me.... I had to bribe him by promising to go

and play backgammon with him two afternoons this week. But it was worth

it. I—well, I should have howled if you hadn’t won the case, I was so

excited. Uncle John went to sleep and snored, and he says I’ve pinched

him black in my indignation. Isn’t it dreadful to be old and not be

interested in anything for more than half an hour? He said it was the air

of the courts.”

“I did make a long speech though. Did you realize I was speaking for two

hours? You were not there all that time?”

“Yes, I was. Uncle John went to get something to eat, but I never

budged.”

“Claudia, how sweet of you.” He came a little nearer to her and his

nostrils dilated a little. No man is unmoved by the subtle flattery of a

beautiful woman, and Claudia was looking her best that night.

“But,” said Claudia, with an abrupt change of voice, “I wish the man, the

prisoner, had been more worth it. An awful poor thing, wasn’t he? Even if

he didn’t murder the boy, he was only a wisp of straw, wasn’t he?”

“If men and women were all fine strong characters, my services wouldn’t

be required, would they?”

Claudia looked thoughtful, and the brown eyes seemed to grow larger and

brighter, as though some lamp were burning behind them. “No, I suppose

you live on people’s weaknesses and lack of morals and stamina. Oh! dear,

I don’t like to think that.”

“Well, don’t think it. Don’t let’s talk about my work. Tell me what you

have been doing since I saw you last week?”

She was leaning a little forward, her elbow on her knee, and he could see

the rise and fall of her bosom, the soft curves outlined by the clinging

chiffon. And though he sat outwardly unmoved, something tingled within

him and strained like a dog in a leash.

Claudia sat up with a shrug of her shoulders. It was a little trick of

hers that suited her dark eyes. “I have been gloriously doing nothing in

particular, the same things as I did last year, meeting much the same

people and talking much the same talk. I spent two afternoons helping at

the Duchess’s bazaar, and I smiled a continuous persuasive smile from

ear to ear all the time, and I told a great many lies trying to sell

things that were of an unutterable hideousness, and that nobody could

want to buy. There was such a funny man came up to me. I tried to sell

him a poker-work photo frame. ‘Isn’t it charming?’ I murmured. ‘Madam,’

he said, with a little twisty smile that began in his eyes and came down

to his lips, ‘if you will frankly tell me what you think of it, I will

purchase it. Your tone lacks conviction.’ ‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘frankly I

think it one of the ugliest things I have ever seen and nothing would

induce me to have it in my room.’ ‘How much?’ said he. And he bought it.

I should like to meet him again. I am sure we should be friends.”

“I wonder what he did with it?” laughed Gilbert. “Perhaps he put his

worst enemy into it.”

“If I ever see him again I shall ask him.... Have you heard about Pat?

She has run away from Germany and come home. She says that speaking the

Teutonic language all day was spoiling the shape of her mouth, and there

was something in the air or the water that she was sure was making her

figure spread! Isn’t she too quaint? She announces that she has learnt

quite enough for the present, and she insists that mother shall bring her

out.”

“Why, she’s quite a child, surely!”

“Oh, no! Patsy is—let me see—nearly eighteen. Mother is so annoyed. You

see I keep out of her way, but Pat is noisy about the house. She finds

Pat absolutely antagonistic to—well to the spooks and the thought waves.

She had hoped Pat would stay over in Germany for six months and acquire

a philosophic language. Pat informed mother yesterday that she knew her

type of good looks went off early, and she advised mother to get her

safely off-hand before she began to fade.” Claudia laughed heartily at

the remembrance. “She’s awfully pretty. You don’t remember her?”

“I remember a small child with forget-me-not eyes and flaxen hair, who

was always sitting down heavily on choice seedlings in the flower-beds

and then crying because she had ‘hurted them.’”

“Yes, that was Patsy. But she’ll get married quite easily. She’s really

sweet. She’s got little tricks with her eyes, quite natural, not

affected—and her eyebrows go up in a funny way that makes her look like

an intelligent cock robin. By the way, have robins got eyebrows? They

seem eyebrows all over, don’t they? Oh! Pat will make a hit when she

comes out.”

Gilbert looked at her curiously. Did Claudia not think about getting

married? He hazarded a question in a bantering, rather intimate way.

“And when are you going off?”

“It sounds like a firework, doesn’t it? I don’t mind telling you in a

burst of confidence that Aunt Lucretia thinks the squib is a little damp.

It hasn’t gone bang yet! But Pat will make a brilliant firework. Mind you

don’t get burnt.”

The music had struck up again, and Claudia took up her programme with a

faint sigh.

Gilbert put his hand over the little white-gloved one that held the card.

“Who are you dancing with? Never mind who it is. Throw him over. Yes,”

he said firmly, as she protested, “I know it isn’t your usual habit.

But—well, isn’t it a special night somehow? It’s my birthday for one

thing and——”

“Oh, is it? Many happy returns. You got my photograph this morning?”

“Yes, it’s on my mantelpiece now.... Never mind the wretched programme.”

“But what shall I say?” she protested laughingly, for, womanlike, she

loved a high-handed man who insists on getting his own way.

“Say—say you prefer to dance with me.... Isn’t it true, Claudia? Say it

is.”

One hand was quite lost in his. His compelling eyes were on her face.

Something for an instant caught her by the throat and made her shut her

eyes as she said almost under her breath, “Yes, it’s true.”

They made their way back to the ball-room. More than one man stopped to

congratulate Gilbert, and a good many women smiled up at him invitingly.

As far as Claudia knew, Gilbert never flirted. She had never heard his

name coupled even lightly with that of any woman. And he was thirty-two!

It was almost unique in her set, where sexual philandering is one of

the most amusing games for passing the time. She did not realize that

it was precisely for lack of time that he had not paid much attention

to women. The Law had been his only love. Claudia was a little tired

and contemptuous of the hurrying, bee-like gentleman who sips from many

flowers with no distinct preference for any bloom. Many such had buzzed

around her, but she had kept fast closed the petals of her heart. But

Gilbert Currey was different; yes, he was certainly different.

A pale-faced, vapid youth, the heir to a famous dukedom, was just inside

the door.

“Quick, that’s my real partner. He’ll grab me.”

“He won’t,” said Gilbert firmly. He caught her to him a little fiercely,

with all the primitive man in him awake. His mother’s warning about the

bad stock from which Claudia sprang was forgotten. He had decided that

Claudia was his. _He_, and he only, was going to grab her and carry her

off to his Wigwam. _His_ wife would never want to be a Circe. Geoffrey

Iverson had never been worth much as a husband. Like most men, Gilbert

had his fair share of conceit.

He guided her skilfully round the room, interposing himself and his arm

between her and possible collisions, for the room was inconveniently

crowded. She happily forgot the rest of the world and gave herself up to

the sensuous music. But some of the gay spirit with which she had danced

earlier in the evening had gone from her, a slight languor, more than a

little pleasant, had stolen into her veins. The music seemed a lullaby

to send her brain to sleep. She liked to feel the pressure of Gilbert’s

arm and know that it enclosed her safely. She had danced with him before

on one or two other occasions; but to-night his arm seemed to caress her.

There was a curious charm in it and she abandoned herself to it. She had

never before danced with anyone who had given her this sensation.

And Gilbert felt the blood rushing through his veins as he would have

thought impossible an hour ago. The knowledge of her liking, her nearness

to him, seemed to make a little hammer pound away in his head, so that

he had to set his teeth not to let himself get giddy. And Gilbert,

when roused, had a good deal of the masculine animal in him, only he

was so seldom roused. When he was a youth at Oxford his very clear and

reasonable brain had warned him of a possible danger to his working

powers in the delights of the flesh, and he had made himself not think

about them by grinding away at his books. His work and his intellect

had become an almost invulnerable armour. But to-night passion took him

by the throat and he could think of nothing but the lissome pretty body

in his arms. And his intellect, not quite drugged, approved of this

diversion. His mother had said it was time to marry. Why not combine

pleasure and duty? His reason quite approved of this proceeding.

“Claudia,” he said breathlessly, coming to a standstill, “it’s

confoundedly hot in here. Don’t you feel it. Shall we—shall we try for

some fresh air?”

She nodded, she did not want to speak. A beautiful dream had been roughly

broken into. She had been happy in her unsubstantial dream; he—had not.

Gilbert was lucky enough to find an untenanted cosy corner in a

convenient angle that cut them off from the rest of the world.

“Claudia, will you?” His arm was round the back of the couch ready to

take her in his arms.

“Will I—what?” faltered the girl. She knew what he would ask, but she

had not imagined being proposed to thus. She had thought the man she

could love would lead up gradually with protestations, with promises,

with entreaties. Why did there seem no time for this? Why did something

hurry her into his arms, something irresistibly compelling, stronger than

herself?

“Will you marry me?” She tried to raise her eyes to his, and perhaps he

caught a glimpse of what was in them for the next instant she felt his

lips on hers, and the world rocked and then stood still.

* * * * *

Afterwards, she wished that it had been more as her imagination had

planned. Though every pulse in her body still throbbed with his kisses,

she yet vaguely regretted that Prince Charming had not come in the guise

she had imagined. But that it was the real Prince Charming—in somewhat of

a hurry and a little inarticulate—she did not doubt for a moment.

“But nothing is just as one imagines it will be,” said Claudia to herself

and the pillow that night. And having discovered that truth, Nature

kindly pulled down the blinds and she went to sleep.

CHAPTER IV

A TOY MOTHER

Later the same day Claudia awakened to the sound of snortings and

snufflings. Exasperated puffings sounded in her ear. For an instant

she dreamed that she was being pursued down a long road by an angry

motor-car bent on her destruction. It came nearer and nearer—now it was

quite close—she put out her hand in vague dreamlike fashion to push

it away. The motor-car retreated somewhere at her touch, but returned

in a few seconds to make a fresh onslaught. Then something soft and

velvety—obviously not a motor-car—rubbed up against her cheek. Claudia

came back from the world of Nowhere in Particular to her own room in

Grosvenor Square.

To whom could those snortings and snufflings belong save Billie, her

beloved dachshund!

Claudia yawned lazily. Billie gave another tug to the brown plait on her

pillow. That was always Billie’s way of engaging her attention in the

morning. Extraordinary, how long these superior mortals took to awake in

the morning when they were always so bright and fond of pulling his ears

at night!

The outline of the map of the world was still blurred for his mistress

when she vaguely remembered that something very pleasant had happened to

her. What was it that made her open her eyes that sense of _bien être_?

“Oh!... Oh! Billie!” She turned on her elbow and kissed Billie’s silky

brown coat with unusual fervour. He was the most delightful thing in

dachshunds, with a coat like sealskin, only softer and warmer, and the

most pathetic and companionable eyes in the world. He was exclusively

devoted to Claudia, who, in return, gave him a big corner of her heart.

To the rest of the family he was a little elusive and aloof, rather bored

with their desultory attentions, occasionally very busy with his own

thoughts and affairs. Only Claudia’s hand gave him real joy. Sometimes

out of politeness he allowed Pat to think he liked her petting, but that

was because she was only a young thing and Claudia was fond of her.

“Billie,” she said, with a rippling laugh of sheer happiness, “you

don’t know it, but I’m different from what I was yesterday morning. I’m

engaged!”

Billie regarded her seriously. He seemed to be digesting the news and

wondering what difference it would make to him.

“Yes,” continued his mistress, giving him a hug. “I’m engaged. I’ve

promised to marry someone very, very nice. Congratulate me, Billie.”

Billie rose to the situation and barked joyously.

“Thank you, sir. I am sure they were most sincere congratulations. Heigh

ho! we shall have to tell mother.... What do you say to breakfast, eh?”

She put her hand on the bell, and Billie blinked happily. He always

waited to take his breakfast with Claudia, and really she was very late

during the season.

“Billie, don’t rootle about in the bed like that. Be more respectful,

because I’m much more important to-day than I was yesterday.” Then she

lay back among the pillows and thought happily of Gilbert. She longed to

see him or hear from him. She hoped he would telephone or perhaps send

her some flowers on his way to his chambers. She was certain he must be

thinking of her just as she was thinking of him.

She had a curious and not unpleasant feeling that last night she had

settled her whole life. She was like someone who had been standing at the

cross-roads awaiting an indication which turning to take. Last night she

had taken what she was sure was the right turning. Now the road of her

life seemed to stretch before her like a glorious golden riband.

Yet, oddly enough, at the back of her mind was a sense of loss. She had

lost the right of making her choice, she had lost a certain excited

feeling that life was a great adventure. The adventure had taken definite

shape now like a fluid that has been poured into a mould. Some of the

delightful indecision, one of the biggest “perhapses” of life had gone.

She had always taken it for granted that she would marry without making

it her business to do so. She had looked with soft, speculative eyes at

the men she met. Perhaps it will be this one—perhaps I shall sit next to

him at dinner to-night—perhaps he will be one of my partners at the dance

to-morrow! A girl who knows that she is attractive to men always has this

feeling consciously or unconsciously. Now this feeling had merged into

something else, the happy glow of knowledge. Love had come.

It seemed to Claudia that it had come rather suddenly, although she had

known Gilbert for many years. It was only the last month he had seemed

a “possible.” She remembered the exact moment that the label had fixed

itself upon him. She had been at a big dinner-party, given by the wife of

the Home Secretary, and the man who took her in had talked all through

the fish and the entrée about him. That was before the Driver case,

when he had definitely proved his metal, but her dinner companion had

been brought into contact with him over some business and been greatly

impressed with his ability. Claudia had heard vaguely of Gilbert’s

distinguished career at Oxford, but the thumb-nail sketch which her

companion drew of him in his chambers arrested her attention. Then later

that very evening she had met him at a reception which her aunt, Lady

Pitsea, gave.

Claudia had an almost Greek appreciation and love for physical fitness,

and had Gilbert not been a most personable man, her interest in his

mental achievements might have evaporated. But because he was strong

and came of healthy stock, the night-oil that he had burned had so far

left no mark upon him. There was no doubt that he had personality, that

he would never be overlooked wherever he went. Claudia could never have

married a handsome man without brains, but it is doubtful if she could

have loved anything lacking in physical fitness. She demanded a certain

amount of beauty and colour in her life, just as she demanded a certain

amount of fresh air and food.

Until the reception they had not met for a couple of years, and he showed

unmistakably that he admired her. After that he seemed to dwarf the other

men with whom she ate and danced and talked. That she did not meet him

often at social gatherings—he was too busy to go—whetted her appetite for

his company. Sometimes he would come in to some gathering with a little

line of fatigue between his brows. It had been an agreeable pastime to

smooth it out by her conversation and gaiety.

She realized this morning, as she stirred her coffee, that actually they

had talked very little. Not that he was a silent companion, but they

had always talked in crowded places of other people and current events.

Necessarily their talk had been largely on the surface—a large surface,

but yet only the surface of the things that matter. She had never, since

childhood’s days, been with him for many consecutive hours. She had

never, since those days, been alone with him in the country, tramping

side by side, or sitting for long, lazy hours under the green trees.

Claudia knew that such times bare the man or woman of mannerisms and

conventionalities, and expose the real ego. Two or three times before she

had thought she liked men, but always on further and closer knowledge

she had found them disappointing. Then she had been annoyed with herself

for even that faint stirring of interest. In some unaccountable way

she had felt humiliated when her brain failed to approve of them. But

Gilbert could not disappoint her. How could such an admittedly clever man

disappoint any woman? She was glad he was going to have a career, she

saw herself helping him, entering into his thoughts and aims, working

and loving side by side. She was glad she had not fallen in love with a

nonentity or an idle, rich man.

She reflected that she would have hated to feel apologetic for her

husband. And yet she had seen girls of her own age, whom she knew to be

clever and even brilliant, marry men, and not for money or position,

who seemed to be absolutely devoid of the grey matter we call brain.

She had heard them rave rapturously over commonplace males that bored

her in twenty minutes, and she knew that Love is a freakish thing. Fate

might have played a joke on her. “I wonder what it is exactly—this sex

attraction?” she murmured to the sleeping dachshund, and pigeonholed the

question for future investigation, when her mind was quite clear and at

rest, for Gilbert had urged a speedy marriage.

Gilbert’s love-making had been almost inarticulate. She wished he had

said something memorable, something she could enshrine in her heart and

when she was an old woman bring forth with a happy smile—“Do you remember

you said——” But Gilbert had hardly even said the conventional _Ich liebe

dich_. Ah! but his heart, beating violently against her own, had said

it. Claudia did not know that in the crucial moment love and passion are

indistinguishable, so she had no doubt that his soul had spoken to hers.

Billie raised his head from the eiderdown and looked questioningly at

the door. Someone was approaching. A rap with something sharp and hard

followed.

“Can I come in, Claudia? Johnson said you were having your breakfast.”

Claudia called out permission to enter, and a fair young Amazon,

riding-crop in hand, stalked into the room. It was Patricia Iverson,

generally called Pat, the youngest of the three children of Circe. Pat

was unusually tall, and in her long riding-habit she looked even taller

than usual. She was flushed with exertion, her fine, fair skin showed

almost startlingly against the black of her hat and habit.

“Bill, where are your manners? Why don’t you wag your tail? All right, I

shall wag it for you! What’s the good of being a dog with a usable tail,

if you don’t wave it when a lady enters the room? Oh! it was spiffing in

the Park this morning.”

“I am sure it was. I feel ashamed to be in bed, but I was so late again

this morning. Past four. Aren’t we fools to dance the night away and

spend the mornings in bed?”

“Yes,” said Patricia, disposing her long limbs in an easy chair. “But I

shall do it when I get the chance.”

“You ache to be dissipated?”

“Rather, because after dissipation you can appreciate virtue and—a rest.

Claudia, why are you smiling like a Cheshire cat this morning? I hate

people to smile like that unless they tell me the reason. It’s like

hearing the music of a dance you can’t go to.”

Claudia wondered if she would break the news to Pat. It was strange, but

there was nobody to whom she felt _compelled_ to impart her news. There

was no one would quite understand and be glad with her in her gladness.

Pat was so young, and then you never knew how she would take things.

Sometimes she was as hard as nails, and Claudia naturally felt she would

like a sympathetic ear.

“I’ve been riding with Mr. Paton,” continued Patricia, pulling Billie’s

ear, a proceeding which he bore with the patience of an early Christian

martyr. “We had such a jolly gallop. He’s awfully nice, isn’t he?”

“Very nice,” agreed Claudia heartily. She felt that the whole world of

men and women were nice this morning, but she could honestly give Paton

an emphatic adjective. “He’s a great friend of—of Gilbert Currey’s.”

“He says such quaint things sometimes, and he isn’t a bit like most men

you meet. Do you know what we were talking about this morning? We were

discussing animals, and how far they feel human emotion, and how much

brain they’ve got. He’d been reading some German book on the subject.

He’s fond of animals. Oh! he sent you a message.”

“Yes?” Claudia was wondering what the bond of sympathy was between the

two men.

“He told me to tell you that he’s ordered that book you wanted from the

publisher. And I am to convey an invitation for us both to have tea with

him to-day in Kensington Gardens. We don’t need Jujubes.”

Jujubes was a disrespectful name applied to Miss Morrow who had once been

with them as governess, and had slid into position of amiable General

Utility. She could be used as a chaperon, walking-stick, or sedative.

Hence Pat’s nickname for her.

“I promised to go to some theatricals at Stretton House,” said Claudia,

grabbing her diary, “and, let me see—yes, I ought to go with Aunt Carrie

to call on some people.”

But her words were regretful. She would have loved to sit in the Park and

have tea under the trees, where the birds come hopping round your chairs

for crumbs, and everything around is green and fragrant. It would have

accorded so much better with her mood than paying formal calls on people

to whom she couldn’t tell the great and important thing that had happened

to her.

“Don’t be a pig, Claudia. I’m not allowed to do much, and you might say

yes. Mr. Paton won’t want me without you.”

“Oh, yes, he would. Take Jujubes.”

“Pooh! he looks upon me as a flapper. Wait till mother gives me some

proper dresses and I begin to fill out. I look like the Bones of the Holy

Innocents now, but you wait till I get some curves. They are beginning to

come.”

She nodded her head knowingly, as she looked down at herself.

Claudia suddenly decided she would throw over Aunt Carrie. This was

a special day in her life, and she felt she ought to do just what

she wanted most. If only Gilbert could tea with them! She thought of

telephoning, and then some instinct warned her that Gilbert would

think it trivial. Gilbert not being available, Claudia found the idea

of a quiet sunny afternoon with Colin Paton quite pleasing. One never

had to be politely talkative and interested in him. One talked or one

didn’t talk, just as one pleased. Sometimes one found oneself talking

particularly well, helped by the right word or the appreciative smile.

Claudia thought of him in a sort of revolving roundabout with Gilbert,

as she took her bath, and tried to find the right word to express him.

The best she could get was “companionable,” although she felt that was a

little tepid.

When she was dressed she sent a message to her mother. She must tell her

the news. Sometimes Claudia did not see her for days together, and they

were in no sense mother and daughter, but Claudia felt it was the proper

thing to inform her at once. It had always seemed to her friends that

Mrs. Iverson was a mother merely for the three weeks she had to remain an

invalid. After that she shook off her maternity.

The maid came back with the answer that Mrs. Iverson was having her face

massaged, but that Claudia could come to her.

Her mother’s bedroom and dressing-room suggested a hothouse with a

quantity of mirrors. Circe had always been something of an exotic, and

lately she had grown more so, or what Pat called “stuffier.” There was an

insidious Eastern perfume that always trailed after Sybil Iverson, and

the room Claudia entered was heavy with it. The hangings and huge divan

were Oriental in colouring and material. The sun was excluded from the

room by pink curtains closely shrouding the windows, and electric lamps

with becoming shades were burning. Her mother was in the dressing-room,

prostrate under the hands of the masseur, who had a great reputation

among women, especially those who were on the borderland of youth and

middle age. He was ridiculously expensive, but his hands were magical.

Mrs. Iverson lazily opened her closed eyelids and regarded Claudia. Her

eyes were still very beautiful. “You wanted to see me dear?”

Claudia hesitated. “Yes, but——” If it had been Pat she would have said

cryptically “P and P”—private and particular.

“Well, Jules has nearly finished.” Mrs. Iverson was still beautiful,

but with a great effort. In her youth when the famous portrait had been

painted, she had been almost as fair as Patricia, but now her hair was

tinted auburn and her complexion was enamelled to match. Her eyes—still

marvellous—were of a deep shade of blue, like a violet under the rays

of the midday sun. Her mouth was much fuller than Patricia’s; and told

its own tale. Mrs. Iverson had always been unutterably bored with her

children, but she seemed to like or rather dislike Claudia the least.

Patricia annoyed her, because she was reminded of her own lost freshness,

and Jack she found stupid. She really rather liked to talk to Claudia for

a quarter of an hour or so. Claudia was neither _gauche_ nor ignorant.

And her brown eyes, with their purposeful gaze—well, some memories are

pleasanter than others, even to a Circe.

Claudia picked up the _Occult Review_, and tried to be interested in it

till her mother should be free.

At length Jules departed. Mrs. Iverson inspected the result in the

hand-mirror.

“He’s a marvel. I hope he’ll still be alive when you want him.... I like

the cut of your skirt, Claudia. Who made it? Ah! I thought so. She can

cut skirts. Don’t you find her ruinous?”

It was a polite interrogation, as though to a stranger.

“Yes, I thought her more of a robber than usual,” continued her mother.

“I’m glad you haven’t got such long legs as Patricia. When she comes

toward me with her arm waving she reminds me of a sign-post on a country

road. It’s a pity. Men don’t like too long women. You and I are just the

right height. I think this modern girl by the yard is a mistake. None of

the famous women such as Jeanne du Barry and Ninon de Lenclos were very

tall. Patricia will make most men look ridiculous.”

“Perhaps Pat doesn’t want to be a Ninon de Lenclos,” suggested Claudia,

with a twinkle.

“Nonsense, every woman wants to be a Ninon de Lenclos, if she could have

the chance. Don’t be taken in by this talk of ‘I wouldn’t.’ It’s a case

of ‘I couldn’t.’ Most women have to be virtuous, because they can’t be

anything else, and they make the best of it. What’s that American saying,

‘Virtue must be its own reward—any other would be a tip.’ Do you know

what Ninon said herself, ‘Love is a passion, not a virtue: and a passion

does not turn into a virtue because it happens to last—it merely becomes

a longer passion.’ ... But what did you want to see me about?”

It should have been a propitious opening, this discussion of love, but

somehow it was not.

“I think—I think I ought to tell you something.”

“Don’t unless you want to,” said her mother quickly. “I don’t think you

_ought_ to tell me anything. If you think it will interest me—tell me,

but don’t use me as a mother, please.”

“Would it interest you to know that I am engaged?” It was out. Claudia

breathed more freely. Then she blushed as her mother looked at her with

unusual attention.

“Yes, that quite interests me. I have wondered once or twice what sort of

a man you would choose. Who is it?”

“Gilbert Currey, mother.”

“Gilbert C——yes, the M.P.’s son. Does something, doesn’t he? A barrister?

I remember his mother Marian Darby. She never liked me, and I returned

the compliment; but we were once great friends. What made you choose her

son?”

“Mother! I—I fell in love with him. Why do people marry?”

Circe smiled at her young daughter, who met her eyes quite squarely but

was obviously uncomfortable.

“For hundreds of reasons, my dear. You’ll find out some of them later

on. Of course, one must marry”—she retouched an eyebrow with a little

brush—“just as one must have a birth certificate and a license for the

motor.... I don’t think I’ve noticed him since he was a boy. I remember

him at Wynnstay. I used to see him in a canoe on the river, deep in his

books. Is he still strenuous and booky?”

“People say he is going to have a big career.” It was difficult to talk

to her mother.

“Really? And you want to be part of that career? Well, I daresay it is

all right. Better tell your father. I should think you might have done

better from a worldly point of view, though the Curreys are rich, and

Gilbert will succeed to the baronetcy.... You’ve really made up your

mind? Your aunt was telling me the other day that you are considered one

of the most attractive girls in Society to-day. She mentioned a Russian

prince of great renown—I forget his name——”

“He is fifty and has been married twice already.”

“Men grow more appreciative, not less so, as they get older. And Russians

are sometimes fascinating. I remember one—Russians can be very wild and

romantic.”

“I don’t want a wild and romantic husband.” Claudia laughed outright.

“No?—perhaps you are right. There is plenty of time, and I daresay a

Russian would not make a comfortable husband. Well, child, I am glad

if you are glad. I must meet my future son-in-law.” She made a little

grimace. “It adds at least five years to my age, but I suppose I can’t

ask you to consider me. I think he had better come to dinner one night.

Look in my engagement book and find a night. Thursday—yes, that will

do. Write down your name and Gilbert’s, and then I shall remember

all about it. One or two of the family might be asked.” She gave her

daughter a smile of dismissal. It was very sweet, if a trifle automatic,

and it showed to advantage her perfect and natural teeth. Mrs. Iverson

never kissed her children, but then she thought kissing between women

ridiculous. The only thing she ever kissed of the female sex was a little

toy terrier.

When Claudia went downstairs, relieved that the news had been broken, she

found the book had arrived that Colin Paton had promised to obtain for

her. She cut the string and dipped into it. It was a volume of essays

that he had mentioned to her and that she had expressed a desire to read.

Colin Paton never forgot things.

She looked from the book to the telephone and wished that Gilbert had

found time to ring her up and just say, “Hallo! Here am I and there are

you!” It would have seemed to make last night more real, more sure. Like

a puff of wind it crossed her mind that the sender of the book would have

somehow got in touch with the woman he had asked to be his wife the night

before. Pat liked him. Perhaps he would marry Pat, she thought idly.

She was too keenly, too tinglingly alive for delicate essays that

morning. Later on she would enjoy them. She put them down and picked up

an illustrated paper.

The first thing that met her gaze was a portrait of Gilbert and a

paragraph recording his right to such a distinction.

There was no one in the library, and she raised it impulsively to her

lips. It was not a satisfactory kiss, for the paper smelt of something

nasty and oily. Still the portrait seemed to bring Gilbert into the

room with her. And this man was hers, this man at whom all the Bar was

looking, was hers, hers, hers!

Because she was only twenty-one, thoroughly healthy and full of life,

she danced round the room holding the paper to her breast. Her eyes were

alight with happiness; her soft lips were curved with the joy of love and

life.

Then having danced her little Te Deum to the music of her heart, she

waltzed out of the door with a cheery shout for Billie. She would take

him for a walk and give him joy, too.

CHAPTER V

GREEN BAY-LEAVES

Lady Currey was not at all pleased with her son’s engagement, and she

said so. She came to town for this purpose, and made Gilbert give her

lunch while she strongly disapproved, from the _hors d’œuvres_ to the

coffee. She had the soulless good looks which Time, as if contemptuous,

neglects to touch. And because she could afford to do so, she purposely

dressed in a middle-aged, sober fashion which she considered dignified.

She had a great sense of her own importance, and the modern grandmother

of fifty in ninon and picture-hats was to her extreme anathema. She and

Circe were much the same age. Sybil Daunton-Pole had flashed into society

like a brilliant comet, a trail of admirers behind her, when Gilbert’s

mother, the amiable daughter of the then Home Secretary, had been one of

the small and unremarked stars that dot the social firmament.

Lady Currey had brought her husband a considerable sum of money, but the

only thing for which she needed money was to gratify her craze for old

china. If she had any heart or soul it was given to her specimens of

priceless Ming and old Chelsea. She spent hours every day dusting her

cabinets. Her only idea of travel was the opportunity it gave her for

visiting museums and picking up bargains in rare porcelain.

For Gilbert she had a pleasant feeling of proprietorship—much the same

as she felt for the wonderful _famille rose_-jar of the Kien-Lung period

which she had herself unearthed in a visit to the East. Gilbert was an

only child, and he had been little or no trouble. This was the first

time he had disappointed her. When other mothers complained of their

sons, of escapades at Eton and Oxford, or premature and undesirable love

affairs, of monumental debts and lack of family pride, Lady Currey’s lips

always took on an added shade of complacency as she thought of Gilbert

and the even and admirable tenour of his way. It was entirely becoming

that Gilbert should be so satisfactory and in some way reflected well on

herself, just as did the discovery of the _famille rose_-jar. Lady Currey

liked everything around her to be _comme il faut_, not the elastic _comme

il faut_ of fashion, but rather the correctness of the copybook and the

ten commandments. Curiously enough, engrossed in herself and her china,

she had never until quite recently speculated, as do most mothers, on

her son’s probable choice of a wife. When she had thought of it, she had

dismissed the idea with the assurance that Gilbert would choose wisely

and soberly and to his advantage. It was not in her to feel any jealousy

of the woman Gilbert should love.

“I am grieved,” she said, sitting very upright—she rarely used the

back of a chair—“I am grieved to think that you intend to marry into

the Iverson family. The Iversons are not a family of which I—or any

right-thinking people—approve.”

“But, mother,” said Gilbert, rather taken aback, for he had become used

to her invariable approval, “I am not marrying the family. I am marrying

Claudia.”

“Ah! that’s what you think—the usual reply. For Geoffrey Iverson I

have no particular dislike—he has been the cat’s-paw of a clever and

unscrupulous woman. His family is a very good one. She would have spoilt

any man who had the misfortune to be married to her. Why, Sybil Iverson

is notorious!”

“Claudia is quite unlike her in every way. Why, she is not even like her

in appearance.”

Lady Currey lifted her thin, fair eyebrows. It was unbecoming that she

should tell him the scandalous rumours that floated about respecting

Claudia’s parentage: Such things could only be told by a father to a

son. She vehemently disapproved of any plain speaking between the sexes.

Such a crime could never be laid to her charge; not even in the marital

chamber had she ever discussed any such thing.

“She is the daughter of her mother, Gilbert, and the mother—I say it

deliberately—is a bad woman, a woman who has trailed the glory and

purity of the flower of womanhood in the dust.” Lady Currey occasionally

indulged in such flights of rhetoric. She had rehearsed this in the train.

“I don’t think the two women see much of one another.” Gilbert was a

little nettled. “Claudia told me herself that she hardly knew her mother

at all in her young days. She was left entirely to her governesses. She

can hardly have imbibed any—any idea from her mother.”

The pathos of such an admission did not strike Lady Currey, it only

helped to justify her present attitude.

“It is, of course, very painful for me to have to mention such matters to

you, but why has she seen so little of her mother? Because Sybil was—I

blush to say it—so surrounded by lovers that she neglected her maternal

duties. I say again, she is notorious for her lax life and morals. Don’t

you believe in heredity, Gilbert? Think of the blood that runs in that

girl’s veins.”

Gilbert frowned. “Heredity is a curious thing. Not worth worrying over, I

think. I don’t profess to understand it.”

“I have studied the question.” She had read one book that was quite out

of date. “I firmly believe in heredity. The vices or the virtues of

the father and mother are surely transmitted to the children.” It was

pleasing to think that only virtues could be transmitted to Gilbert,

but it was all the more annoying that those inherited virtues should be

linked with the vices of Sybil Iverson’s child.

Gilbert was becoming annoyed, and made no reply. After all, his mother

was only a woman, and women never could argue. It jarred on his manhood

that she should take him to task, and his voice was a little cold as he

inquired what she would take to drink.

“You know I always take _one_ glass of claret.” The tone somehow implied

that a woman like Sybil Iverson might reprehensibly vary her drink with

lunch, but she had regular habits. Then she returned to the attack.

“Claudia is not the woman that we—your dear father and I—would have

chosen for you.”

“Doesn’t every mother say that about her son’s choice?”

His mother sighed and waited while Gilbert ordered the wine. “What sort

of bringing-up has she had? What sort of a wife and mother will such

a girl make? Her mother’s only god was pleasure, her only commandment

‘Enjoy the fleeting hour.’ Do you mean to tell me that the daughter

of such a woman has proper ideas about life? Would you care to be the

complaisant husband of a Circe?”

But here Gilbert put his foot down. His mother must be made to see that

he knew quite well what he was about, that he had not run haphazard into

this engagement. Not on any account would he let her see that curious

mixture of surprise and annoyance at the back of his mind when he thought

of the proposal scene. He had an undefined feeling that he had been

hurried into it, though how he had been hurried, by whom or by what, he

did not seek to explain even to himself. To Gilbert’s cast of mind vague

feelings were best ignored as symptoms of a weak and illogical brain,

much the same as vague symptoms may denote an illness of the body. Still

the feeling was there, behind many stacks of docketed and pigeonholed

pieces of information. Yet he had almost made up his mind to propose to

Claudia—oh! yes—only—that particular night?

“Mother, I cannot hear you say such ridiculous things about Claudia. You

do not know her. You might as well say that the children of murderers

will all grow up murderers.”

“You might commit murder in a sudden fit of passion, but such a warped,

degraded nature as Sybil Iverson’s is another story. Besides—the sons of

a murderer have probably seen him hanged or punished—the law steps in;

but who punishes a woman like Sybil Iverson? Society, nowadays, is too

lax to such creatures, and virtuous women have to mix with them and take

them by the hand, or else be dubbed ridiculous or old-fashioned. Well,”

with a sudden little gust of passion like a disturbance in a tea-cup,

“thank God, I am old-fashioned and absurd. I can say my prayers every

night and lie down in peace.... No, Gilbert, you know I only take _one_

glass of claret.”

“They say Mrs. Iverson has given up her wicked, siren-like ways and gone

in for spiritualism.” He wished his mother realized that she was keeping

him from his work and would hurry up with her lunch. The leisurely ways

of the country were not those of town. But Lady Currey was doing her duty.

“Such women never give up their wicked ways, they take them to the grave

with them.” Both Gilbert and his mother had very little sense of humour,

with the distinction that Gilbert knew when things were ridiculous. “I

know Sybil’s mother died of a broken heart.” This was quite untrue, she

had died of fatty degeneration of the liver. “But there, the Psalms say

that the wicked flourish like green bay-trees, and if they did in King

David’s time there is no doubt they do now. But their punishment awaits

them, Gilbert; always remember that.”

Gilbert nodded absently. Life after death was one of the vague things,

like psychology, that he did not consider as practical politics. But he

did not tell his mother this. If she liked to imagine him striving for a

golden harp with humility of soul, she might.

“I confess I am disappointed in you, Gilbert. I had looked forward to

your choosing some nice girl I could take to my heart, someone like Maud

Curtice, for example.”

Maud Curtice was a colourless girl who agreed with Lady Currey in being

shocked at the modern scanty fashion of dressing—she was painfully thin

and had ungainly hands and feet—and who devoted herself to the mothers of

eligible sons. She also had a large income.

“Wait till you know Claudia, mother. You are sure to like her.”

“I have heard she is very handsome and a great favourite in Society,”

returned his mother gloomily. “It is a bad report to my way of thinking.

That’s how her mother started.”

Just then, to his great relief, Gilbert caught sight of Colin Paton

wending his way out of the restaurant. He hailed him with joy, and Paton

came to a standstill beside their table.

Lady Currey approved of Colin Paton. His manners were respectful and he

showed an intelligent interest in china. She never noticed the quizzical

gravity with which he received her views on life, nor the humorous

twinkle in his eyes at her criticisms. She thought him “a very nice young

man.”

“Colin, old man, come and have some coffee with us.”

“Just had some. I hope you are quite well, Lady Currey?”

Gilbert made a business of looking at his watch and starting with alarm.

“By jove, I didn’t know it was so late. I must just swallow my coffee and

run. May I leave the mater with you to finish her coffee at her leisure?”

Colin caught the appeal in Gilbert’s eyes and guessed the cause.

“Certainly, if Lady Currey will accept me as a poor substitute for you.”

Lady Currey smiled a gracious assent. “I hope your dear mother is better,

Mr. Paton?”

“Yes, thank you.... Busy as usual, Gilbert? I hear the proverbial busy

bee is quite out of it.”

“Well, I am tearingly busy. Don’t get a minute to myself.”

Paton slipped into his chair. “And yet you’ve found time to get engaged,

I hear? I wrote my congratulation this morning.”

“Thanks, old chap. Oh! getting engaged doesn’t take very long.” Gilbert

laughed pleasantly and displayed his firm white teeth.

“Doesn’t it?” returned Paton, smiling. “I think it would take me no end

of a time. But there, we shall soon be born in the morning, married at

midday, and buried in the evening!” He saw Lady Currey looking at him

rather doubtfully. “A man like your son, Lady Currey, takes a woman and

the world by storm. _Veni, vidi, vici_ is not for me. Women have to know

me quite a long time before they remember me.”

“I am sure you have a great many friends,” she said encouragingly.

“Yes, that’s why I expect I shall never get a wife.... Really must go,

Gilbert? I had tea with Claudia and the long-legged Patricia yesterday.

We wished you could have been with us.”

“Teas are not in my line. I suppose I shall see you again soon?”

“Well, I’m going away, you know.”

Gilbert turned back in surprise.

“What, at the beginning of the season!” exclaimed Lady Currey.

“Going out to the Argentine for a while. A friend of mine is going out

on a political mission and wants an assistant. I’ve decided to accompany

him. Never been there, and it must be an interesting country.”

Gilbert raised his eyebrows. Why on earth didn’t Paton stop in one place

and make a name for himself? He had often advised him to do so.

“Sudden isn’t it? I thought you said the other night that you were

remaining in town until the end of July.”

Paton nodded. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I want a change. I shall

only be away six months or so, perhaps a year.”

Gilbert’s thoughts had raced ahead. “Then if we’re married at the end of

July, as is probable, you’ll be away? That’s too bad. I had relied on you

for being best man.”

“You’ll be married so soon? No, I am afraid I can’t assist to give you

away.”

Gilbert again expressed his regrets, which were quite genuine, and left

his mother with Paton. Colin did not make the mistake of rushing in where

angels fear to tread, but waited for Lady Currey’s comments.

“What do you think of this engagement, Mr. Paton? I know I can speak to

you quite frankly. I think it is a great mistake. Weren’t you surprised?”

“Yes,” returned Paton truthfully, “I was very surprised. Gilbert did not

confide his hopes in me. I didn’t see any wooing going on, and he never

talked about her to me. He must have made the running quickly.” Then he

added, half to himself, “He can’t have seen a great deal of her.”

“Of course not, or he wouldn’t have done it. Gilbert, for once in his

life, has lost his head over a pretty woman. Why, you are much more of a

friend than Gilbert.”

A slight shadow crossed her companion’s face and he dropped his eyelids.

“Well, I thought I was. But then friend—oh! it’s the _veni, vidi,

vici_ trick. She’s a charming girl, Lady Currey, with all sorts of

possibilities.”

Lady Currey pursed up her thin lips that had never bestowed or received

a kiss of passion. “She is handsome, certainly. But is she the wife

for Gilbert? I have lived long enough to know that looks are a poor

foundation for matrimony.”

“She has quite a good deal of character,” said her companion quietly,

without any annoying enthusiasm. “I am sure she will develop into a

splendid woman with the man she loves. She isn’t the usual pretty society

doll, you know.”

“Does it strike you that Gilbert wants a woman of character?” asked his

mother with unexpected acuteness. “Clever men are usually better mated

to stupid wives. Look at Carlyle and Jane Welsh! Much too clever for one

another.” Then irrelevantly, “There are too many clever girls nowadays.

I don’t believe they make any the better wives and mothers for being so

clever. I am sure I never wanted such a daughter-in-law.”

Paton found himself at a loss for conversation. He knew he could do

Claudia no good by praising her warmly to her future mother-in-law,

he might even make matters worse. Yet to hear Claudia belittled made

something leap within him into fierce flame. It seemed disloyal to listen

to Lady Currey’s sneers. Yet he knew that Claudia must storm the citadel

of Lady Currey’s heart herself. As an advance agent his labours would be

wasted. But Paton, looking across the table into the light, offended eyes

of the woman, was sorry for the girl. It was rather odd. His mother, a

confirmed invalid, and Lady Currey had been close friends in their youth.

Yet his mother had warmly liked Claudia when she had once met her for

a few minutes. He was startled to find that his current of thought had

communicated itself to Lady Currey.

“Your mother always did like pretty things—I know she admires Claudia—but

she was always unduly swayed by good looks, even at school. I know how

deceptive they are. A man told me the other day that his wife had left

him and been through the Divorce Court, and he attributed it entirely

to her good looks. ‘A very pretty woman is difficult to live with,’ he

said; ‘she gets a great deal of adulation and flattery in Society, and

naturally the husband at home falls rather flat.’ There is a lot of truth

in that, Mr. Paton.”

“Perhaps he was the typical English husband who, as soon as he has won a

wife, forgets to be her lover,” replied Paton. “You are very careful and

precious of your rare china, Lady Currey.”

His _vis-à-vis_ stared. She wondered that Paton, who was usually so

smooth in conversation, should make such a sudden jump. But it served to

divert her mind from Claudia.

“I had such luck last week. I was walking along the High Street in

Moulton and I caught sight of a pair of vases. I thought that powder blue

could be nothing less than Chinese. They had blue and white reserves on

them. _You_ know what that means. I got them for a mere song, and they’re

beauties. Since I last saw you I have bought....”

Still talking china, Paton saw her into a taxi.

He strolled away from the restaurant. It was warm and sunny, and the

pedestrians seemed all in a good humour. Paton often wandered for hours

through the streets of London, finding in that wonderful panorama food

for eyes and brain and heart. He loved the feeling that he was part of

the crowd, and his mind was stored with many observations and memories.

The romance of the streets was no idle journalistic phrase to him. He

felt it around him on all sides, plucking at him with alluring fingers

leading him into the land of dreams. Often at night he would give himself

wholly up to its enchantment, wandering along mile after mile through

quaint byways and on misty commons, through silent Suburbia and the

noisy, restless East-end slums. London was to him a book of unending

pages with countless illustrations.

This afternoon he mingled with the crowd, but he did not heed it, so that

he did not see a woman in a motor energetically waving her hand to him

and directing the chauffeur to stop.

“Mr. Paton—oh! Mr. Paton, what a day-dream!”

It was Claudia herself, looking altogether charming in light summer

attire. There were waving, greeny-blue ostrich feathers in her Leghorn

hat and around her neck. The softness of the feathers and the peculiar

shade of blue accentuated the creamy tint of her skin and the brightness

of her eyes. Her happiness shone through the envelope of the flesh like

a flame through clear glass. A heavy-eyed woman of the lower classes

who was passing marked her and muttered, “She has a good time, I’ll be

bound,” then, wrapped in her own bad one, passed on.

Paton went up to the car and held out his hand.

“Mr. Paton, you’re just the man I want. Do come and see some pictures

with me. Jujubes hates pictures, don’t you, Jujubes?” She turned to the

faded, amiable woman beside her in the car.

“I don’t hate them, but they all look so alike,” said Jujubes mildly.

“When you’ve seen one, it seems to me you’ve seen the lot.”

“There, listen to this awful heathen who rejoices in her darkness! Leave

me not to her tender mercies. Jujubes can do some shopping for me.” She

looked entreatingly at him with her fresh young mouth smiling at herself,

Jujubes, Paton and the whole world.

He hesitated for the fraction of a second. Then he said cheerily: “Of

course I’ll come, if only out of kindness to Miss Jujubes. And I shan’t

be seeing any more English pictures for a long time, I suppose.” Then he

told her of his intended visit to the Argentine.

“Oh!” said Claudia blankly. “Oh! I wish you weren’t going away. I shall

miss you so much—we shall all miss you.” She said it quite naturally as

the thought came to her mind. One could always do that with Colin Paton.

“Thank you,” he said smilingly, as he helped Jujubes to alight. “It’s

very good of you to say so.” He seated himself beside Claudia.

“Don’t. You needn’t be formal and polite. Why are you going? Is it the

_wanderlust_ again? Or is it to help you in your career?”

Gilbert had taught her to think of careers.

“Oh! I shall never have a career,” said Paton lightly, aware of the

soft, dark eyes on his face questioning him. But he did not meet them.

Somehow they held a look in them to-day that he could not bear. “I don’t

concentrate, you know. I’m just ‘a blooming amateur.’ Gilbert was reading

me a solemn lecture the other day, but—I go on the same old way. I’m

glad, however, that Gilbert is getting on so well. But then, he does

concentrate.”

“He works very hard,” said Claudia thoughtfully, “I had no idea how hard.

He does too much, I think.” Then she looked at the rather fine lines of

the face beside her. “But I don’t believe you are afraid of hard work. I

remember how hard you worked when you were on that Hospital Committee.”

“No, I don’t think it’s that,” said Paton quietly. “Let’s say it’s lack

of ambition and driving power.”

Was there something in his tone that sent a vague shadow of distrust over

Claudia’s expression, or was it the echo of some secret misgiving in

herself?

“Does that mean you think ambition—the ordinary

get-to-the-top-of-the-tree ambition—rather commonplace?”

“Not a bit,” he said heartily. “After all, we live on a commonplace

earth. Gilbert is right and I am wrong, and when Gilbert is Lord Chief

Justice and I’m an obscure old bore of a bachelor, I shall, no doubt,

fully realize my wrongness. But do ask me to dinner sometimes.”

“But you mustn’t remain a bachelor,” said Claudia, with all the

enthusiasm of the newly-engaged woman, “because your life will be

incomplete. That sounds like sex conceit, but you said it yourself to me,

and then I began to believe it. And now——” she completed the sentence

with a charming blush.

“Can you imagine any modern woman wanting a man without worldly ambition,

a man she will never be proud of, a man who is nothing and does nothing?”

The tone was light enough, and the girl, engrossed in her own happiness,

did not detect an unusual note of bitterness. For Colin Paton was never

bitter. He could be sarcastic and even scathing when roused, but he never

indulged in the refuge of cowardly souls.

Claudia took him quite seriously, for happiness, just as sorrow, may

temporarily obscure a sense of humour. “I forbid you to say such things

of yourself,” she said, with an engaging air of motherliness. “You’re

awfully clever—_awfully_ clever. Why, you are one of the best-read and

best-informed men in London.” Suddenly she realized how often she had

turned to him for information or advice. And she could never remember

an occasion on which he had failed her, or an opinion that her critical

faculty on reflection deemed unsound.

“No market value, dear lady.”

She paused a moment thoughtfully. “Is that true?” she said slowly.

“Gilbert said that the other day when I asked him if he had read

something. He says he has no time for books, it’s as much as he can do to

read the newspapers.... Somehow it seems all wrong.” She looked away with

a puzzled expression at the trees of the Park.

He cast a quick glance at her profile and the beautiful lines of her

throat. He seemed about to say something with unusual impetuosity, and

then he resolutely locked his lips. He allowed her to go on speaking.

“Ambition gets in the way of—of a lot of other things, doesn’t it? It

seems a voracious dragon, swallowing up everything: friends, books,

pictures—all the beautiful, graceful things of life. Isn’t it a pity?”

“I think so; but then I’m in the minority.”

“And that’s why you are not ambitious,” she flashed out with sudden

insight. “Yes, I see. I wonder if you are right.” Her voice was a little

wistful.

“No,” he said, with resolute reassurance. “No. I’m wrong, and Gilbert is

right. Wife of the Lord Chief Justice—what greater honour could you wish?”

“Now you are making fun of me,” she replied, with a tiny frown, “and

I was quite serious. It’s difficult to explain. But—well, I hate the

usual sort of man who does nothing except wear his clothes well, don’t

you? Look at Jack. He sets off his uniform beautifully, but he just

footles his life away. There doesn’t seem anything between that and great

strenuosity—except you. I can’t place you. Somehow you always make me

see things in a different perspective from anyone else. I wonder why it

is. Sometimes you make things seem better and sometimes you make them

seem worse.”

He drew in his breath a little and his hand in its thin suède covering

clenched itself on his knee. “Claudia, you mustn’t let me make things

seem worse or any different from—what they are. I’d be content if my

mission in life were to make things better, not worse, for you. Not that

you want that now,” he added hastily, pulling himself in. “I know, from

things you have left unsaid, that your home life hasn’t been all you

wanted and ought to have had, but now—now you are going to be very happy.

Gilbert is a splendid fellow.”

She turned to him, her face glowing, her eyes deep and dark with emotion.

“Yes, I think I am going to be very happy. Somehow you have always

understood. I have never had to tell you things. You see, nobody ever

wanted me very much, and I—I wanted somebody to want me and to rely on

me and care for my companionship. It is so wonderful to think that our

interests are one, that what interests me interests him, that I can tell

him my good news and bad news and be always sure that I don’t bore him.

I’ve always had to bottle up things. I’ve had one or two girl friends,

but it isn’t the same. And even then they get engaged and married and you

fall in the background. But when I’ve got a husband of my own it will be

different, won’t it?”

He hesitated the fraction of a second. “Yes, Claudia, it will be

different. You know how glad I am that you have found happiness, don’t

you? I wanted that so much for my—friend.”

“And isn’t it nice that I am marrying _your_ friend?” she exclaimed

joyfully. “Because you might not have liked my husband, or my husband

might not have liked you. Oh, I know,” sagely. “I have heard from my

friends who got married, that it is sometimes very difficult. But you and

Gilbert are friends, and you and I are friends. It’s quite ideal, isn’t

it?”

“Yes,” he said cryptically, “quite ideal. The ideal is always the

unattainable.”

“But you must marry too,” she persisted, “because I am sure I should like

your wife. There are some men that one knows and likes that one feels

doubtful about their choice of a wife, and there are others—like you—one

is sure it will be all right.” She laughed gaily. “Won’t you get married

to please me?”

No one could have guessed there was any effort in his laughing reply.

“I know. You are planning to get rid of some obnoxious wedding-present

on me, something especially hideous in the way of rose-bowls or

tea-services. No, I absolutely refuse to accommodate you.”

“Well, at least promise me to come back soon,” she smiled as the motor

stopped before the entrance to the galleries. “I shall want to discuss a

thousand things with you long before you’ve got to the Argentine. I think

I shall keep a little book and call it ‘The Paton Diary.’ In it I shall

enter all sorts of queries and the names of books and pictures and music

that I want to discuss with you.”

“Heavens! I shall never come back!” Her hand rested in his as he helped

her to alight, and she gave him a mischievous squeeze.

“No, but really.”

“Really, I will come back as—soon as I can, and I shall be grateful

if the ‘Paton Diary’ will keep my memory green.... I hear there is

a wonderful Giorgione here. You remember those two we saw here last

year....”

CHAPTER VI

A MOTHERS’ MEETING

“Our respected mother has what you would call a tarnished reputation.”

Pat said it in a mild and thoughtful manner, as she and Claudia exercised

Billie in the Park to try and keep his figure within reasonable bounds.

“Pat!” exclaimed Claudia, abruptly recalled from her own thoughts. “You

have no right to say such things.” Sisters who are not yet out and three

years one’s junior must be kept in order.

“Why not? It’s true, I suppose. I was sitting here among a lot of people

yesterday and mother drove by. The two women at the back began to talk.

At first, I didn’t know they were discussing mother, till they mentioned

you. When they said ‘Her daughter Claudia has just got engaged to Gilbert

Currey, it’s to be hoped she won’t follow in her mother’s footsteps,’ I

twigged.”

“You shouldn’t have listened,” rebuked Claudia indignantly.

“Well, I was hedged in, and I should have had to plough my way over such

a lot of feet to get away, and I couldn’t turn round and say ‘Excuse me,

you’re discussing my mother and sister,’ could I?”

“I should have got up, feet or no feet,” returned her sister.

“Mother seems to have had a pretty good time, according to these two

women. They rattled off mother’s amours with great gusto. They were

alternately shocked and envious—the combination was funny.”

“Nasty-minded gossips!”

“I should have liked to turn round and say ‘Sour grapes.’ I suppose

mother _has_ gone the pace. She’s been a sort of Helen of Troy, hasn’t

she? Notorious for her temperament and beauty.”

“Women like that always invent a lot of scandal.” Claudia shrugged her

shoulders. “It’s a sort of convention with them to think that all women

in society live immoral lives.... Billie, no, you mustn’t bite little

boys’ legs. I know it’s only in play, but they don’t like it.”

“Mother must have been stunning when she was young, in the days of the

portrait,” continued Pat reflectively. “If I had been a man I should have

fallen in love with her. Nothing mild and namby-pamby for me, thank you.

I’ve a good deal of sympathy with her, for father is a bore. Only I can’t

see how she could have been in love with so many men. Most men are so

deadly uninspiring. I expect falling in love became a habit with mother.”

“Really, Pat, I don’t think we ought to discuss her.”

“Why? Because she is our mother? But she doesn’t feel like our mother—she

told me so the other day—and she wouldn’t mind our discussing her a

bit, just as though she were next-door neighbour.” Claudia could not

contradict this, for Mrs. Iverson had never tried or wanted to be a

mother to her children. The children had “happened” and been promptly

relegated to the nursery. As soon as she was well she forgot them just as

she forgot an annoying attack of influenza.

“Claudia, do you feel you could fall in love with a lot of men?”

“Pat! what awful questions you ask. I should think that——” She stopped

herself. She was going to add, “No nice woman could fall in love with a

lot of men,” but this would reflect on her mother, and out of loyalty

and decency she could not say it, rather for what her mother might have

been to her than what she was. So she said instead, “I haven’t thought

about it, and if I were you, I shouldn’t. You’re too young to worry about

sex problems. The little I have thought about them has only confused me;

it seems such an enormous subject. One would have to be a Methuselah to

have time enough to study it. I am sure threescore years and ten is too

little.”

“I suppose it is all a question of experience,” said Pat slowly. “If only

mother would tell us all she had learned! That would be better than all

the silly morals and maxims that surround you like a barbed wire fence.”

Claudia stole a glance at Pat as she strode along, her skin flushed by

the warmth of the sun, her corn-coloured hair glowing under her big

white hat. How much did Pat know of the things she discussed so lightly?

How much did she herself know, for that matter. And yet, quietly and

earnestly, she had been watching men and women since her _début_ a year

since. She had seen the fair surface and some of the dark undercurrent,

she had kept her ears and her eyes open and her mind as far as possible

unbiased, but what was the harvest? How much did she really _know_? She

did not make the mistake of thinking men angels or devils, she tried, on

Paton’s advice, not to generalize—the temptation of youth—she knew that,

on the whole, she liked the masculine sex better than her own, but what

did she know that she could impart to a younger sister? As she looked

at Pat, she wondered if she ought to try and find out where Pat stood.

Ought she to try and influence her sister in any way? Pat was such a

queer mixture. Sometimes she talked like an overgrown, slangy schoolgirl,

and the next minute she would speak with the callous knowledge of a

woman of forty; sometimes she showed signs of deep affection and strong

emotions, which again would give place to a curious aloofness and

independence.

Lady Currey was coming to lunch that day with the Iversons, an event

which Claudia dreaded. Mrs. Iverson had lazily decided that, under the

circumstances, she ought to offer her some hospitality, and Lady Currey

had felt it only right and fitting to accept. Her husband was confined to

their house in the country with an attack of gout. Gilbert had pleaded

that he was too busy to accompany her.

Punctually at half-past one—the clock was striking—Lady Currey arrived.

Mrs. Iverson was not down yet, but she was never punctual, except when

her clock was fast. Claudia had to receive Gilbert’s mother.

She wanted to like her, but her heart sank a little at Lady Currey’s

formal greeting. Sometimes she had hoped—before she had considered

Gilbert in the light of a possible husband—that when she married,

her husband’s mother might be someone to whom she could, and would

be allowed to, feel daughterly. She knew it was rare, but she would

meet a nice mother-in-law more than half way, for there was no holy of

holies occupied by a real mother. One could ask Mrs. Iverson’s advice

on dress—not too often, because it bored her to give advice on any

subject—but Claudia felt she had room in her heart for a nice cosy

elderly woman, who might be a guide, philosopher and friend.

“Mother will be down directly,” said Claudia, with a heightened colour.

“Will you not take this chair? It is more comfortable than that one.”

“Thank you, but I do not care for those low, padded chairs. They induce

habits of indulgence. I was brought up to sit on hard, straight-backed

chairs, so I never acquired the habit of lolling.”

She looked critically round the drawing-room, which was full of graceful

and beautiful things. At one end, looking down insolently upon her, was

the famous Circe picture. It dominated the whole room. The only other

pictures were landscapes, a couple of Olssons, an exquisite Whistler,

which the artist had himself given to Mrs. Iverson, a Sisley and a

small Cézanne. But they were all subservient to the glowing Circe in

her wonderful clinging blue robes. The whole room had apparently been

designed as a frame for the portrait, for it was a harmony of dull

blues and faded pinks. A case of miniatures at her elbow contained

some exquisite Cosway beauties and some rare scraps of old Venetian

goldsmiths’ work. Lady Currey caught sight of a Vernis Martin cabinet

full of priceless Sèvres and some Chelsea figures that made the

collector’s mouth water. It was annoying to think that Sybil owned such

china, for Lady Currey was sure she did not value it.

“You have some beautiful pieces here,” she said to Claudia, crossing to

look at the cabinet.

“Yes, I believe they are considered very fine. I am afraid I don’t know

much about china myself.” If Claudia had only known it, her last chance

was gone. Lady Currey’s eyebrows went up in contempt. But the china was

exquisite and avenged Claudia’s slip.

Lady Currey turned away and glanced at the clock. Twenty to two! Where

was her hostess?

The door opened, but it was only Patricia with Billie at her heels.

“Billie was crying for you, Claudia. I let him loose. I thought you had

forgotten him.”

Claudia had instinctively felt that Lady Currey was the type of woman

who disapproved of dogs in the house, so she had tied him up.

Pat surveyed the visitor with her clear blue eyes. Very precise and a

little dowdy did Lady Currey look that day. Her grey silk was a dull

shade, her ornaments were valuable, but belonged to the day when diamonds

were deeply embedded in gold, her toque was as near to a bonnet as she

could buy. Pat took it all in and her lips said “prunes and prism” behind

their visitor’s back.

“Ripping day, isn’t it?” she said affably. “Doesn’t it make you feel

as if you’d like to turn somersaults on the grass and yell like a wild

Indian every time you come right side up?”

Claudia stifled a laugh at Lady Currey’s expression.

Of course, Sybil’s children would be terrible and lawless. She disliked

anything so large and athletic as Pat, and privately thought that so much

flesh and bone inclined to coarseness. She was of the small and tidy type

herself.

“There’s no way of letting off steam nowadays, is there?” continued

Pat, unabashed by Lady Currey’s stare, and crossing her legs so as to

display a large expanse of silk-covered calf. “That’s why people get into

mischief. They boil up inside, sometimes you can _feel_ the bubbles!”

“That’s because you’re a very young kettle,” interposed Claudia hastily.

But at that moment—five minutes to two—Sybil Iverson glided into the

room. Her figure was still wonderful, willowy and most seductive in

its lissomness. She was wearing a dress that showed every curve of it,

and the transparent guimpe of her bodice showed the gleam of her neck

in a manner that Lady Currey found very indecent. Her hair, burnished

and waved in a carefully negligent fashion, matched her slightly tinted

complexion. The whole effect was pleasingly artificial, like that of

some rare orchid. She was still Circe—after a careful toilette.

“Ah! Marian, what a long time since we met! But you are just the same.”

“We are both considerably older,” said the companion of her girlhood with

emphasis.

“Are we really? I have ceased to be a body, I am now only a spirit, and

spirits know no age.” She let her heavy lids drop over her eyes, a trick

which Lady Currey had always disliked. “I have learned to project the

soul into space and leave the body behind. Have you ever pierced through

the intangible walls of the Unseen, Marian?”

“I attend regularly to my religious duties,” said her visitor shortly,

rather nonplussed by Circe’s new attitude. Her flippancies she knew and

could meet, but this was something that verged on her own preserves.

“Ah! that is not quite the same.” The hostess smiled sweetly upon her.

“But now we will go in to lunch. Gilbert is not coming, I think?”

“He has his work,” said his mother. “You cannot expect such a man to

dance attendance on a woman.”

“Oh! I quite understand,” interjected Claudia. “I did not expect he would

come.”

“He has the aura of a successful man.” said Circe dreamily. “I saw it

quite distinctly last night. But there was something mingled with it—I

saw a vivid streak of purple——” She shook her head mysteriously and broke

off the sentence.

“I shouldn’t say there were any purple patches about Gilbert,” smiled

Claudia, across the rose-bowl.

“I do not understand the phrase,” said Lady Currey acidly. “Will you

explain it to me?”

Patricia gave an audible chuckle, and Claudia looked imploringly at her

mother.

“Purple patches,” said Circe vaguely, “stand for all the wonderful

emotions and sensations that make this life a thing of magic and mystery.

A purple patch—what is it? It may be a minute, a second even—the look

from someone’s eyes caught in a crowd—a chord of music—a whiff of

perfume—an hour of passion—a day of memories—the song of a bird—anything

rare and evanescent. Purple patches are moments of crystallization, of

ecstasy, of poetry, of life; patches that glow in your heart for years

and I think, even when you are dead shroud it in royal mourning.”

She came out of her dream and took the salmon mayonnaise that the butler

had been patiently holding.

“I am glad to think there are no purple patches on my son,” said his

mother dryly, dubbing her hostess “a mass of affectation.”

“No, I don’t think a successful barrister would be likely to stray into

Wonderland. Documents of the law, blue paper and crude red tape do not

harmonize with purple, do they? Claudia, will you remember that when I

die I want to be buried in purple silk and the coffin must be lined with

a deep shade of crimson. I think I might select the colours when I have

time. The wrong crimson would be so fatal to my hair.”

Billie suddenly gave a little howl from his seat on the sofa as though

the conversation depressed him. Lady Currey looked her disapproval of

him, and Claudia shushed him.

Then she tried to change the subject in deference to the dachshund’s

tender feelings.

“Isn’t it delightful, Lady Currey? I had a letter from father’s old

friend, the Countess Ravogli, this morning, sending her congratulations

and offering us her beautiful villa on the Lake of Como for the

honeymoon. I have seen photographs of it, and it is too sweet for words.”

“Does Gilbert like the idea?”

“I haven’t told him yet, but he is sure to like it. It is a sort of fairy

castle with an enchanted garden full of wonderful sculpture and strange

flowers. There is a terrace of white marble brought from Greece and a

fountain of coloured waters. It must be perfectly delicious. I have

always dreamed of it as an ideal honeymoon place.”

“One must be very young to look well in such a place,” said her mother.

“The Countess tried to get me to visit her, but I declined. White marble

is only suitable to the eternal youth of gods and goddesses and it is

so chilly! A marble terrace always sounds delightful, but as a matter

of fact it generally gives you cold feet and you have to fly in and

demand hot-water bottles, and there is nothing romantic about a hot-water

bottle.”

“The drinking-water is so bad in Italy,” remarked Lady Currey. “I do hope

you will be careful.”

After luncheon, Mrs. Iverson carried off Lady Currey to her boudoir on

the plea of reviving old memories. Claudia was relieved, but surprised,

for her mother seldom took any but her very special cronies into her

private apartments.

Circe lit a cigarette—the room was already heavy with some Oriental

perfume which made Lady Currey sniff—and made herself thoroughly

comfortable and picturesque on a low divan. Lady Currey told herself that

it was exactly like a room in a harem, never having been in one.

“It is strange your boy should be marrying my girl,” commenced Mrs.

Iverson, watching the pearly grey smoke rise in the air. “I confess I

thought Claudia would have married quite differently.” Her voice was

dangerously sweet.

“Indeed,” said Lady Currey. The perfume irritated her, and she felt a

desire to sneeze.

“Yes, quite differently. But neither her father nor I would try to

interfere with her choice. I have always allowed my children full

liberty of action. And though Claudia would have had an enviable position

as the Duchess of Swansea, I recognize her right to choose as her heart

dictates. I saw the Duke last night, and he was very downcast. He thought

Claudia might relent. Charming fellow, isn’t he?”

She opened her eyes blandly upon her visitor, and nothing but good will

to men and contempt for women shone from them.

Lady Currey, who moved very little in London society now, did not

personally know Swansea, but knew him to be one of the most eligible

_partis_ of the day. She had heard a vague rumour of Swansea’s attentions

to Claudia from another quarter and saw no reason to doubt Circe’s news.

She was nettled, and felt she was being placed in a false position. It

revived old memories. Circe had possessed this trick as a young girl.

“Gilbert is bound to do well,” she said hastily.

“Of course.” Circe lit another cigarette. “But the future—well, it is

the future! Futures are like horses—you can never count on them! If they

could only invent automatic horses and automatic futures! Still, I have

no doubt he will arrive one day, if Claudia is patient. Personally, I

should have no patience to wait for a future.”

“Gilbert will make an excellent husband.” Lady Currey, to her great

amazement, perceived that she was actually holding a brief for Gilbert.

The thing was absurd.

“Oh, yes!” murmured her old friend vaguely. “But all the old-fashioned

virtues are so out of date now, like four-wheelers and stage-coaches. The

modern excellent husband is such a different article from what we called

an excellent husband fifty years ago. I often think what a dreadful bore

that good, old-fashioned husband must have been. I am sure those Early

Victorian wives must have died of their partners’ excellences. Have you

noticed how sad they always look in their portraits?”

“In my young days marriage was considered a sacrament,” remarked Lady

Currey stiffly, glancing out of the corner of her eye at a notable array

of masculine portraits. “I consider the interpretation and shortening of

the marriage service nowadays scandalous. The Bishop of Dorminster quite

agrees with me.”

“I am sure he would. If you sell patent medicines, you must believe in

patent medicines.... Why don’t you start a campaign against it? I can

see you at the head of a flourishing Anti society. I would join it with

pleasure, Marian.”

Lady Currey stiffened. “Gilbert has very nice ideas about women.”

“What are nice ideas about women, Marian?”

“He treats women with respect and proper deference.”

“How dull!” murmured Circe, looking at the portrait of a man who had not

treated her with undue respect.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said how delightful. But I hope he can—er—offer Claudia something more

than respect. I hope he appreciates her and can offer a good deal of love

and admiration. Some people set a great store by love—I fancy Claudia

does. You see, that would be the one thing—you will forgive my speaking

frankly like an old friend—that would compensate her father and me for a

less good match than we had the right to expect. We want her to be happy,

but Claudia is very much admired. She has had many good offers—I know,

though she hasn’t told me—and I should feel a little sad if I thought

Gilbert did not adore her. She is really rather a dear. I quite admire

her myself, and I admire very few women.”

There was a short pause while Lady Currey struggled for words.

“I—I believe he is very much in love with her,” she said at last,

flushing angrily.

“Ah! that is what I brought you up here to know. Love compensates for

any worldly loss, does it not?... Dear Marian, I am afraid I must go out

now, but it is charming to think that your son is going to marry Claudia.

It reunites us again in the bonds of friendship. I am sure Gilbert is

charming. Claudia is a lucky girl.”

Lady Currey was not to be outdone. She rose primly in her grey silk.

“Claudia is very handsome. It is Gilbert who is lucky.”

Thus ended a little Mothers’ Meeting.

CHAPTER VII

“LOVE IS THE ONLY CONVENTION”

Claudia was spending the week-end out of town at Holme Court, Wargrave,

where one of her aunts, Mrs. Armesby Croft, always spent a good part of

the summer. Gilbert had also been invited and her brother Jack, but Jack

had refused to go.

She was coming down the stairs on the Friday morning and heard a familiar

whistling. Jack’s door was open, and the musical-comedy tune—rather

flat—proceeded from his room.

“Jack, I do wish you wouldn’t whistle so flat. Can’t you get your whistle

manicured, or something?”

“Hallo! Claud, that you? Come in, I’m nearly all there.”

The late hours he habitually kept had not yet left any mark on Jack

Iverson. This morning he looked wonderfully young and fresh, although

he had not tumbled into bed until past three. Youth has a magnificent

elasticity, and he looked like a modern god that has tubbed and shaved

and is ready for a good breakfast.

“Why aren’t you coming down to Wargrave?” inquired Claudia, sauntering

into his apartment. “It’s just the week-end for the river.”

“Maybe I _am_ going on the river,” said Jack, with a knowing air,

settling his tie in the mirror. “I’ve had on seven ties this morning.

How’s this one?”

“Looks all right. I don’t notice anything wrong, so I suppose it’s all

right. That’s the test of men’s dressing, isn’t it? Why not Wargrave?”

“Because, though Aunt Margaret is a clinking good sort and keeps a jolly

good table, she is not a ravishing companion. You’re only my sister,

and—’nuff said.”

Claudia looked at him, and her lip curled. “That means you are going up

the river with a ravishing companion, I suppose?”

“Thou supposeth rightly, oh, wise one! She’s just the most fascinating

thing you ever struck.”

“Which musical comedy?” queried Claudia, running her eyes over the

collection of invitation cards and pretty women on his mantelshelf. The

portraits had inscriptions on them of considerable fervour, and she

noticed a family resemblance in the handwritings, which were either

sprawly or very dashing, with huge flourishes at the end like a stockwhip

in action.

“Never you mind. But she’s a duck, the very thing for a steam-launch. Got

the neatest thing in ankles you ever saw. Beastly taking a woman with

thick ankles on the river. They’re best hidden under a dinner-table.”

“Can she talk about anything?” asked Claudia curiously, picking up a

photograph of a smile and a shoulder.

“She can talk well enough when she wants to. Oh! I know you, Claudia,

we’ve had this discussion before. I’ve told you I don’t like clever

women. I hate a girl who wants to impress you and talks like a smart

novel. Give me a nice, affectionate little thing who’s got a string of

funny stories and doesn’t make too many demands on a fellow. She’s worth

a hundred clever women, with their soaring nonsense.”

“Is she?” Claudia looked at him thoughtfully as he put his watch in his

waistcoat. “I often wonder why you and men like you prefer to spend

your time with—well, affectionate little things, rather than with girls

in your own set. Personally, I can’t understand your taste. I am sure

these girls have common ways and petty thoughts. I couldn’t stand a

musical-comedy man for five minutes.”

“Oh! that’s different. The men are awful bounders; you’re quite right.

I’d like to see one of them make up to you!”

“Why is it so different?”

“Well, it is. I can’t explain things like that to you, but it is. You’re

brainy, old girl, and I don’t pretend to be brainy. A lot of good brains

do a woman, unless she’s a schoolmistress. Not that Ruby is stupid.

She’s—well, she’s bright, if you know what I mean. She knows how to get

what she wants, and knows her way about.”

“The cleverness of the gamin,” observed Claudia coolly.

“Well, anyway, she’s clever enough for me. You can be easy and

comfortable with her, and she’s an amusing companion. Doesn’t go in for

moods and all that nonsense. I like ’em bright and chirpy, I confess. If

you girls only knew how your confounded moods and fancies bore a fellow.

Why, look at _you_. You’re full of whims and fancies. You can be an

awfully good companion if you like—none better; but one never knows what

you will want the next moment. You women expect us to transpose ourselves

to your key every few minutes. It’s a damned nuisance, Claudia. Take my

advice, don’t try too many moods on with Gilbert.”

“You think there is much in common between you and Gilbert?” Claudia’s

voice was sarcastic.

“Yes more than you think,” flashed out Jack unexpectedly. “Oh! I know all

about his brains, but otherwise he’s much the same as me. He doesn’t care

enough about women generally to make a study of ’em.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“He’s too indifferent, and I’m too lazy,” continued young Iverson, bent

on pursuing his train of thought. “I daresay women are nice to me

because I’ve got plenty of money—you are right in some cases—but as long

as they are nice, what matters?”

“From your point of view, not at all, if you only want a woman as a mere

plaything, to smile automatically the moment you appear, and produce a

funny story when you turn a handle. You want a doll, Jack, not a woman, a

pretty, jointed doll, that squeaks ‘darling’ when you come up to it, and

which you can pick up when you like and drop when you like.”

“My dear girl,” said Jack, with a condescending smile “you can’t

understand. Women never do understand these things. They talk a lot about

sex nowadays, but it’s all talk. The proposition is quite a simple one,

if you women wouldn’t wrap it up with complexities.”

“Well, I’m glad I don’t understand,” she returned warmly. “And if I were

a man I don’t think I should understand either. I hope I should be more

fastidious.” She pounced on a jeweller’s morocco case. “Hallo! May I

look, Jack?”

Jack nodded. He rather liked Claudia when she was not too brainy and

analytical.

She opened the case with a click. It contained a very handsome pendant

with pearl drop and a big ruby in the centre.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” said Jack complacently. “The ruby was my own idea—her

name—d’yer see?”

“Quite subtle,” said Claudia gravely; “but I daresay, if you explain it,

she’ll see the point.”

“Eh? Oh, well! they like a little present occasionally. And if you saw

her pleasure at anything you give her—well, you feel you want to go and

buy her the whole shopfull at once.”

“H’m. I think I was wrong in suggesting she was not clever. Let’s go down

to breakfast, Jacky.”

“You see,” said Jack confidentially, as they went down the stairs, “a

fellow likes to be appreciated. You remember that, my dear, now you are

going to be married. Don’t have any moods, and always be appreciative and

bright. That does the trick every time. Take my advice.”

“Thank you. I’ll be sure and remember. Appreciative and bright. I might

have it framed.”

“Don’t you fancy I don’t know anything about women. You’re a nut,

Claudia, I admire you no end, but really you make too great demands on a

chap. Come on, I could eat a tin can this morning.”

Later that day Claudia was lying very comfortably in a big wicker chair

under an old elm-tree at Holme Court, when Gilbert arrived. He looked

noticeably tired and fagged, for the week had been a very hot one, and

he had been hard at it. He did not specially remark the pretty picture

she made in her cool white linen against the green background, but he

appreciated the shade of the elm. His chambers were abominably stuffy.

“Poor boy!” said Claudia softly. “You’re tired, I can see. I’ll be

soothing. You don’t want me to tell funny stories, do you?”

Gilbert’s eyes opened in blank surprise, but he caught the twinkle in

her eyes, and the smouldering laugh in the corners of her mouth as she

watched him. He knew there was a joke somewhere, but he was much too hot

and tired to worry it out. Instead he looked at Claudia’s mouth, which

was soft and red, with a most provocative pout.

“It’s too warm even to laugh. But it’s nice and cool here.” He dropped

into a chair with a huge sigh of content.

“We are all alone here,” said Claudia happily. “The others have gone on

the river, but I waited for you.” There was no one in sight except a

couple of birds hopping about in search of a worm. “I am going to give

you some tea out here, and then we will go down and get one of the

boats out.” She dropped a kiss on his hair, which already had several

silver threads in it. “I thought I’d stop and mother a poor tired boy!

Somehow—wasn’t it ridiculous of me?—I fancied you would like to have

me all to yourself.” She laughed a little. “It’s rather nice to have

someone to pet and fuss over. I’ve never had anyone who would let me do

it. Mother hates us even to kiss her—we do it once a year, at Christmas,

when we thank her for her present—and Pat is too tom-boyish to like being

petted. I had to fall back on Billie. He can stand any amount of it, but

still—well, he’s only a dog.”

“Does that mean I have cut out Billie,” said Gilbert lazily. Her hands,

with their soft, rather mesmeric finger-tips, gave him agreeable

sensations in keeping with idle hours and summer days.

“No, it doesn’t. As a matter of fact I feel so happy that I could pet the

whole world!”

“A tall order! But, I say, I’d rather you didn’t do it to the masculine

half. They might misunderstand your mothering instinct.”

She laughed and dropped another kiss on his hair before she went back

to her seat among the cushions. Involuntarily he put up his hand and

smoothed his hair, which was in no way disturbed. It was thick and

straight, and spoke of his abundant energy.

“Gilbert! Don’t brush my kisses off. You are ungallant.”

“Sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to brush them off, but a man hates the idea

that his hair has got ruffled.”

“That’s because you are afraid of looking ridiculous! Men are very

dignified animals, aren’t they? I believe you’re a particularly

dignified, conventional specimen!”

The maid was approaching with the tea-tray. As she came across the lawn,

the silver caught the rays of the sun and threw them back in radiant

shafts of light. The maid’s cap and apron seemed dazzlingly white against

the green and blue of the sky and garden.

“Of course, I’m conventional,” responded Gilbert. “Haven’t you discovered

that before? Only weak people are unconventional.”

Claudia pondered this saying as she watched the maid arrange the table.

“I don’t believe that is altogether true,” she said at length, taking

hold of the teapot.

“Of course not. Nothing is altogether true and nothing is altogether

false. Plenty of milk, please.”

“I don’t believe I have a conventional, tidy mind. I can imagine myself

doing quite unconventional things, and I don’t believe I should realize

they were unconventional till I looked back.”

“That’s having no mind at all.” He looked at her teasingly. “The little

pink abominations out of the cake-basket, please.”

“And then you’d be terribly shocked and put on your barrister air, and

say ‘Didn’t you know that ...?’ You don’t altogether hold a brief for

conventionality, do you?”

“It’s the safest and most convenient path,” he said, stirring his tea.

“Personally, I have no quarrel with convention.”

“Don’t you believe that circumstances may sometimes force you to do

unconventional things when convention means death to the spirit?”

“I make allowances for weakness, because weakness is the rule and

strength the exception. The world gets weaker-willed and more neurotic

every day. That’s why one hears so much talk of ‘individuality,’

‘independence,’ et cetera. More cake, please.”

Claudia shook her head, not at the request for more cake, but at his

dicta.

“That’s not right. You are making no allowance for temperament. Sometimes

it’s really brave to be unconventional.”

“More often weak and cowardly,” retorted Gilbert, “and the unconventional

people usually put other people in a hopeless mess.”

“I don’t believe you were ever tempted to do anything unconventional.”

Claudia looked at him, and it crossed her mind that he was very unlike

her mother’s friends.

“No, I don’t pretend to have withstood great temptations in that line.

‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ doesn’t enrage me. I put the same

notice-board on my own property, and am content.”

“I see. Will that notice-board cover—your wife?” She was smiling at him,

but there was a hint of earnest in the dark eyes.

“Most certainly, madam. The rest of the world may admire you—from a safe

distance.” He found her looking very pretty behind the silver, the sun

through the green branches just flecking her hair. “I warn you I should

not make a complaisant husband if I found someone trespassing.” He

laughed as he said it, but there was a decided champ of his jaws, which

she noticed and secretly admired.

“And I shouldn’t be marrying you if I thought you would,” she replied,

with a sudden touch of fire in her voice. “One sees so much of that and

it is so—so horrible. One despises the husband more than the wife.”

Then she went on more slowly. “I think most women feel the same about

it, although they say they want perfect freedom in such matters. Women

are playing a game of bluff nowadays. They don’t want a husband to be

complaisant.”

He looked across at her, and his mother’s warnings came back to him.

Claudia like her mother? Why, she had just naively acknowledged that

she only wanted to be dominated by a strong man. Geoffrey Iverson had

always been a slackster. A weak man makes a Circe. If a man cannot hold

a woman, he deserves and must expect to lose her. Life to-day is not so

far removed from savagery after all. The strong man always wins. And

had he not won so far all along the line? Had he not taken and kept all

that he needed? His mother did not understand that there was no cause to

fear. A palmist had once told him that he possessed an indomitable will.

He knew that she was right. His thoughts flew back, induced by the peace

and quiet, to the last few years at the Bar. He had out-distanced all his

rivals. Men who had eaten their dinners at the same time as he were still

unknown, briefless. And some of them had shown brilliant promise, some

of them had worked hard, too. He knew that already, although he was so

young, there was a rumour that he might shortly be taking silk.

Claudia, her chin propped on the palm of her hand, had been watching him,

and with a woman’s swift uncanny intuition she knew that he had ceased to

think of her, that she had lost touch with him. With a touch of jealousy

she cried:

“Gilbert, come back to me. Of what were you thinking?”

He came back at once, but without the faintest comprehension that she had

felt left out in the cold, had divined that she had a serious rival.

“Suppose I say I was thinking of nothing in particular?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be true. You were thinking of something

that pleased you and—and interested you enormously. Your eyes were dark

with thought, and there was a glint in them—— Ah! you were back in your

chambers with your briefs?”

He laughed.

“Yes, I was right. You had deliberately left this sweet, sunny garden

and—and me, and gone back to those stuffy chambers. We haven’t seen one

another for four days, and you’d gone back to your work.”

There was an edge to her voice that roused him.

“Claudia, dear, I am very happy here with you, but one can’t control

one’s thoughts or shut watertight doors on one’s affairs. A woman’s

life is different. Men cannot help mingling their business with their

pleasure.”

“You mean we have nothing else to think of but you?” She threw up her

head at an angle which was particularly becoming, and showed the softness

and whiteness of her throat in the collarless dress.

“No,” he said, “but you haven’t any big objective in life. My dear

Claudia, if you understood the keen competition nowadays, you wouldn’t

mind a man’s thoughts straying back to the fray. You don’t really, you

are much too clever to want a stupid, love-sick swain who can talk or

think of nothing else but love. You have said many times that you are in

complete sympathy with my ambitions. Don’t be feminine and illogical. I

was flattering myself”—he put his hand on hers with his most engaging

smile—“that I had won a super-feminine and logical wife.”

“I am in sympathy with you Gilbert.” She carefully kept her eyes from

his face, as though that would break the chain of her thoughts. “And I

don’t want you to be a stupid, love-sick swain, but——” How could she make

him understand without seeming petty and unreasonable? “Gilbert,” she

went on quickly, determined to say frankly what she was thinking, “is

everything in your life subservient to your work? Sometimes you talk as

if everything else—as though we were the rungs upon which you mounted the

ladder. When you talk of wasting time—things being trivial and not worth

while—your face becomes so contemptuous and hard and engrossed it makes

me frightened. I want you to have a career; I wouldn’t have married an

idle man. I will help you in every way I can; I shan’t expect impossible

attention—but, Gilbert, I want our marriage to mean something to you, a

big something.”

She paused for breath, and he opened his lips to speak, but she signed to

him to be silent.

“Let me finish. I couldn’t bear to think that your work was everything

to you, and that I—I was merely the _Hausfrau_ that bore your name and

sat at your table. It might be enough for some women, but it wouldn’t

be enough for me. I warn you that if you ever let me drop into the

background of life I—I don’t know what I might not do. I told you just

now that I wasn’t conventional. Love is the only convention that I own.

Gilbert, tell me something quite truthfully. If I am asking things you

can’t give me, let us break off the engagement before it is too late. I

want”—her voice broke a little and her eyes were dimmed with feeling—“I

want a great deal of love. I’ve never had it, you know, and I—I’m so

hungry. If I didn’t love you, I shouldn’t be talking like this. You know

I love you; but you—you—Gilbert——”

She had risen from her seat and faced him. She was very much in earnest,

and her mouth trembled like a child’s. Her full, rounded bosoms under

the linen and lace heaved with her quick heart-beats; her eyes asked

piteously for love.

She was very beautiful in that moment. She was young and fresh and

fragrant, with not a touch of artifice about her. There was no man alive

that would not have been touched by her beautiful, pleading eyes. She

promised so much. The hint of passion in her eyes and colouring would

have allured any man, and Gilbert was by nature a passionate animal.

Passion and ambition had warred from his youth, and he had deliberately

crushed out his warm human instincts. Until he met Claudia they had been

absolutely under control. Now, as on the night he had proposed to her,

something swept over him like a huge wave and swamped his brain. He only

knew that he desired this girl and that he had never been thwarted in

anything he had set his heart upon. He did love her; what more could

she want? She was young and immature; she did not understand that man’s

feelings may be the deeper for not finding constant expression. Later,

when they were married, she would understand better.

He forgot they were in the garden of Holme Court—in his cooler moments he

was desperately afraid of any demonstrations of affection—and he sprang

to his feet and caught her in his strong arms. He showered kisses on her

passionate, trembling lips, kisses that sent a wild thrill of fearful

joy through her, that made the placid, sunny garden rock and reel before

her eyes, and gave her a vivid glimpse of what marriage might mean. And

no man had ever roused her passions before. This man had always had the

power to do so since the dinner-party when he had held her hand in his

and asked if he might claim the privileges of old friendship and call her

Claudia. Something had stirred uneasily then.

“If—if he has this power over me, if he can rouse the woman in me,” she

reasoned, “he must be the right man, the man I should marry.” It was the

simple, true mating of Nature. Surely, surely all would be well?

“You do—you do love me very much, don’t you? I am more to you than your

work?”

Her lips had intoxicated him so that he would have told her any lie so

that she did not elude him. But he really thought he was speaking the

truth, that there was something more than mere sex attraction between

them.

“Yes, yes,” he cried fiercely, with the conquering note of the male;

“can’t you feel?—don’t you know?—kiss me, kiss me——”

It was several minutes before they went back to the pink abominations and

the more sober discussion of their wedding.

PART II

CHAPTER I

EN ROUTE

Yes, Mrs. Currey was “at home,” the butler admitted, opening the doors

hospitably.

By the hats and overcoats lying about the spacious hall of their flat in

Albert Hall Mansions, Carey Image knew he was not the only man who had

hastened to congratulate Claudia on her husband’s latest honour. He had

seen the announcement in the papers that morning. Gilbert Currey had been

made a K.C. Image immediately sent a wire to his chambers, and now in

person was giving himself the pleasure of calling on his “god-daughter by

marriage,” as he called her.

The honour was no surprise to anyone; for the last year or more rumour

had marked him out for this distinction. There had even been vague

whispers of coming glory in the church at his wedding, eighteen months

before. But now Gilbert had stepped into the vacancy left by the death

of Howard Barnes, that blunt and sarcastic personality who, under a

forbidding exterior, had hidden the heart of a child.

Image had seen very little of the pair since their marriage, for he who

has once roamed in the Orient never settles down for long in the dull,

tidy lands of the West, and though Cary Image had fully intended to stop

in England, he had broken his resolve a few weeks after the ceremony.

Japan with her slender golden fingers had beckoned him and he had gone

back to the land of almond blossom and universal courtesy.

The room overlooking the Park which he entered, unusually large and lofty

for a London flat, seemed crowded to his near-sighted eyes. There was an

animated chatter of voices, for Claudia had already gathered around her

an amusing and socially attractive set, who talked well and easily, and

required but little “managing.” Image’s bright eyes peered out through

his eyeglasses in search of his hostess.

She soon came towards him with her most hospitable and welcoming smile.

She was always pleased to see him or receive one of his long, descriptive

letters. She liked him and she liked his life-story. Gilbert generally

spoke of him a little slightingly.

“Welcome, godfather; I’m delighted to see you. You’ve neglected me

shamefully of late. From what part of the world have you come?”

“Last of all from Paris, _chère madame_, and this morning I saw the

announcement in the paper. Gilbert is forging ahead. My heartiest

congratulations to his charming partner. What could one not hope to do

with such a one!”

She listened with a conventional smile, but her eyes did not warm to

any enthusiasm as she said lightly, “Thank you, but I have had nothing

to do with it. Such a _partner_ as I”—there was a slight emphasis on the

word—“is not entitled to claim any share in the congratulations.”

“That is not true,” said Image warmly; “a wife is the closest and best

partner a man can have; and I am sure, if the truth were known, that

most of our famous men owed much of their success to their wives’

co-operation. The partner in the house is often far more important than

the partner in the office.”

“Mr. Image, you really are the most refreshing person,” said a studiously

lazy voice from under an enormous mass of lancer plumes at his left.

“Isn’t he, Claudia? You are the one faithful appreciative soul in a

multitude of scoffers howling in the wilderness. You almost induce a

woman to believe in herself.”

Image laughed and peered under the feathery erection to discover that it

was Rhoda Carnegie, a cousin of Claudia’s and a woman he had known in

Society for many years. She was married to an unsuccessful playwright,

a “one play” man, who on the strength of a singleton had induced her to

marry him, to their mutual regret. Some people raved about her beauty

in superlatives, while others merely dubbed her “queer-looking.” No one

refrained from expressing an opinion about her. Her looks and manners

were of the arrogant “I-must-be-obeyed” order, and she had a reputation

for being irresistible where she chose to charm.

“Ah! Mrs. Carnegie, I could not see who it was. How do you do? I am so

glad you agree with me.”

“I don’t in the least,” she responded languidly, through half-shut eyes.

“It’s only bad women who play a big part in men’s lives; that’s why I

gave up being good. The nice, virtuous, sympathetic wife is—just a super

most of the time, unnoticed in the wings. And who wants to be super?”

With a careless laugh Claudia moved away to greet a new arrival. Rhoda

Carnegie watched her with a sort of detached, cold-blooded speculation.

“Claudia was never cut out to be a super. I see signs that she will

shortly get beyond that stage, for Gilbert gives no one a chance to

distinguish himself. He always plays lead. But Claudia is not her

mother’s daughter for nothing,” she drawled, playing with a set of golden

baubles in her lap. She had but a small income of her own and her husband

had less, but Rhoda Carnegie was noted for her extravagance. How she got

her very handsome toilettes was a mystery. At least, perhaps it was not

an insolvable one to those who knew her well; but a mystery is always

more decent than a scandal.

Image listened, rather startled. Then he remembered the type of woman to

whom he was speaking. It was said that she made an art of demolishing

reputations in as few words as possible.

“I find her looking exceedingly well,” he said, trying to change the

subject; “and you, also,” he added courteously.

She looked up at him through her narrow slits of eyes, a trick which some

men found fascinating.

“Claudia is the type that goes on getting better-looking until she

arrives at the age of fifty, then she remains handsome and distinguished,

especially when her hair gets white. It’s a good job our styles don’t

clash, or I should have to avoid her. But we are quite different. She is

the charming, sympathetic, give-all type which has its admirers, and I—I

hold men with a whip, which I don’t hesitate to use. You know the play

_Doormats_? Well, I am the boot.” She laughed insolently. “Now _you_ like

the Claudia type. So does Frank Hamilton.”

“Frank Hamilton? Is that the new artist that——”

“Yes, Claudia has made a success of him. She first introduced him

socially, and they say he is deluged with commissions for portraits.

He isn’t as strong as Sargent or Lavery, and I shouldn’t wonder if he

fizzles out, but he has a trick of pleasing his sitters and doing very

graceful work. I believe he is doing a portrait of Claudia. That is he

over there.”

She pointed quite openly with her fingers to a young man who stood at

Claudia’s elbow, holding some cigarettes. There was something in his very

attitude that suggested his admiration for his hostess.

Image saw a tall, broad-shouldered, but loose-jointed figure, that

spoke more of the studio than the cricket-field. His features were good,

graceful rather than strong, and the whole face, he could see, would be

one that would please women. His hazel eyes had an appealing, rather

wistful look in them, and his mouth, if rather weak, spoke of a taste for

and appreciation of beauty and luxury.

“Claudia should prove a good subject for his brush,” said Image,

exchanging a nod with a foreign diplomatist whom he knew. “I have heard

people speak of him and predict great things for his future.”

“Mostly women, I suppose? Women like him and men—are not keen about him.

But then he’s not keen on them. Women fill the bill. A good many of them

are taking him up, and I don’t think his head can stand it. He hates me

like poison. He loves to talk about himself, and I love and intend to

talk about myself. He told a dear friend of mine, who never loses an

opportunity of repeating the nasty things that are said about me, that I

had the eyes of a Lucretia Borgia.”

“I have always wondered what colour they really are,” said Image, playing

up to her obvious lead.

She smiled. “Continue—to wonder! That is the way to make men think about

you. An ounce of conjecture is worth a hundredweight of knowledge where

women are concerned.... Good gracious, Patricia, is there any more of you

to unwind? I thought it was a boa-constrictor standing on his hind legs.

Haven’t you stopped growing?”

“In stature—yes.” She was more of an Amazon than ever as she rose from

somewhere behind the piano. She gripped Image by the hand, and it was a

real grip.

“How about goodness?” queried Rhoda.

“A non-starter—the handicap frightens me. We are not a good family, you

know.... What a lot of people and congratulations! I should have thought

Gilbert might have got home early to have relieved his wife’s blushes,

and given himself a sort of holiday treat.”

“Working as hard as ever?”

“Harder. I annoyed him the other day by predicting a nerve-breakdown—he

was playing golf so badly—in a couple of years. And that same night at

dinner he was so dead tired or cross that he hardly said a word, and I

was left to talk to a boy I’d refused the night before. He was sulky and

devoted himself to his food. I had a beastly time. I told Gilbert that

he fancied he was an indestructible machine, and that he would find he

wasn’t. Anyway, he hates dinner-parties, and he begins to show it in his

manners.”

“If I were Claudia I should leave him at home,” said Rhoda coolly. “I

always leave mine at home. I tell people not to invite him. A husband is

always the skeleton at the feast.”

“Why have a husband at all?” said Pat lightly, who knew her Rhoda.

“It’s a bad habit we shall outgrow in time, like needle-work and charity.

A husband is like your appendix. When you don’t know it’s there, it’s no

use, and when you do, it’s a nuisance.”

“Had any tea?” inquired Patricia of Image.

“No, will you take me and give me some?” They walked together to the next

room. “Dear me, would you mind hobbling on your knees, or providing me

with stilts? After the miniature women of Japan you take my breath away.

The modern Englishwoman is really a glorious creature.”

Pat laughed amiably. “I’m a sort of yard-measure, aren’t I? It’s a

nuisance really, except when you get in a crowd. Mother winces every time

she sees me, and father says my feet are larger than his.”

But Image looked admiringly at her over the edge of his tea-cup. To

him this fine young girl, so amazingly fresh and healthy, Saxon in

colouring, with the limbs of an athlete, was most attractive, though he

knew she made his own lack of inches more conspicuous.

“I suppose we shall have you getting married soon?” he said, beaming on

her through his glasses.

Patricia shrugged her broad shoulders and nibbled at a sandwich. “Didn’t

you hear Rhoda say that we women are getting out of the habit?”

“She talks a lot of nonsense. Don’t listen to it. You are much too fresh

and sweet to repeat such horrible cynicism.”

“We are all cynical nowadays. How is it you have escaped? How have you

managed to keep on believing in people and things?”

Image answered quite simply and directly. “By loving a woman, my dear.

To love a woman well keeps the core of a man’s heart from withering and

getting old. My blessings on all your sex, even a Rhoda Carnegie, because

of _her_.”

It was said so naturally that Patricia, who, like all young things,

recoiled from any display of sentiment, could not find any fault with

the frankness with which he had replied to her question. She became a

little graver, and whether by accident or the prompting of some hidden

association of ideas, she glanced up at the opposite wall, where hung a

portrait of Gilbert, a wedding-present from the tenants on his father’s

estate.

“Ah!” she said impulsively, “but why, then, do so many marriages go

wrong? They seem so right beforehand, and then——” She checked herself

suddenly and shot a sideways look at the little man beside her, like a

child who fears she has betrayed a cherished secret. But though Image’s

mind was full of alarm at what he felt lay between the lines, he gave no

sign that Pat could have had any personal implication in her mind. To

Pat’s relief, Frank Hamilton came in for some tea, and she seized upon

him and made him known to Carey Image.

“I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” said Image, with his

old-world formality. “I have heard your praises sung, but never found

myself in your company before. I saw one of your portraits photographed

for an illustrated paper I found in Japan. I understand you are engaged

on a portrait of our hostess?”

Hamilton’s face, which had been full of pleased attention—Rhoda said

he swallowed praise as a baby swallows milk—clouded a little. Then he

replied with an engaging air of frankness.

“To tell you the truth, I have not been successful so far. She is a most

difficult subject, though a delightful one. I have already destroyed one

portrait and several studies. I think she is tired of my efforts, for I

cannot persuade her to come to the studio for sittings. And I want _so

much_ to get a good portrait of her.”

Image nodded understandingly. “Yes, I should say Mrs. Currey would be a

difficult subject. Her greatest charm is in her animation and spirit,

and those qualities are always difficult to transfer to canvas. And

such people always appear different to each of their friends, so that a

popular success is, I should say, almost impossible. It is before the

cow-like, plaster-of-paris woman that people throw up their hands and say

‘How like!’”

“I see you know something about the art of portrait-painting,” said

Hamilton, looking pleased.

“He knows something about everything,” exclaimed Pat. “He’s a walking

index and encyclopædia, a Who’s Who and a Dictionary of National

Biography all combined.”

Claudia came up and caught the last words.

“He’s nothing so dull and uninteresting. It’s a deadly insult, godfather.

Up, sir, and at Patricia.”

“How can I?” said Image humorously. “Just look at us! I shall have to

get some of the mushroom that Alice nibbled before I fight your sister.”

“Oh! but the pen is mightier than the sword! Annihilate her with an

epigram; that’s much more deadly, because your enemies go round repeating

it,” said Claudia gaily. Image noticed that Hamilton was feasting his

eyes on her face and that Claudia seemed rather to avoid looking at him.

Image received the impression that she was used to his homage and did not

either actively encourage or resent it.

“Such bad form,” jeered Pat. “Everyone epigrammates nowadays, and you

never have the least idea what anyone is talking about. You answer in the

same strain, and you wonder what on earth you yourself are talking about.

Anyone can get a reputation for being clever, if he’s only vague and wild

enough in his conversation.”

In the general laugh at Patricia the group shifted, and Image found

himself alone with Claudia. She smiled upon him frankly and said with

obvious sincerity:

“It’s so nice to see you again. Don’t run away for a while. By and by, I

expect another friend back from ‘furrin parts abroad.’ You remember Colin

Paton?”

“Indeed, yes, and shall be glad to see him again.”

“So shall I. He’s such an excellent and satisfying companion. A

‘collectable’ person, you know. At least,” she added, with a slight

change of tone, “I used to find him so.”

“That sounds a little like granny, with her ‘When I was young, my dear, I

used to——’”

Claudia laughed. “Oh well! friends change, even in eighteen months, or

else it is that one changes one’s self, and friends seem different,

judged by different standards. Eighteen months may be a day—or an

eternity. He went away just before our wedding, you know. He has written

me some most delightful letters at intervals since. He is one of the few

men who can write something more than a telegram.”

Although he did not appear to be doing so, the keen eyes of her companion

were scrutinizing her face as she talked. In middle-age or its borderland

lines tell their tale for all to read, massage she ever so assiduously,

but the changes in a young face are much more subtle and difficult to

classify. But to a student of physiognomy like Carey Image there is

sometimes a hint conveyed in the softest curve, a suggestion in an

apparently sunny smile, a warning in the glance of brilliantly youthful

eyes, such as were now confronting him.

She was not satisfied, she was not happy. The eyes had lost a little

of the eager, questioning softness he had noticed in the photograph in

Gilbert’s room two years ago, and the mouth had acquired a little more

decisiveness and an inclination toward sarcasm rather than smiles. Her

whole bearing was much more assured, much more the woman of the world,

the woman who has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. But Image knew that she

had not found that fruit altogether sweet. And he was profoundly sorry.

He would have been sorry to have read that information on any young man

or woman’s face for he always wanted the world to be a more joyful place,

but he particularly liked his young hostess. He saw in Claudia the bud

that has blossomed but has never been warmed by the good red sun, so that

the petals at the heart are still cold and unopened. And with the kindly

wisdom of his fifty-four years, Image knew that this spelt danger ahead.

They chatted on, Claudia questioning him about his wanderings abroad,

until they were interrupted by one of the servants.

“The master has just rung up, madam, to say that he cannot get back this

evening in time to accompany you out to Hampstead to-night, and will you

please make his apologies to Mrs. Rivington.”

Claudia listened with a curious compression of her lips, like someone who

listens with irritation to a too frequently told tale. Then she made a

quick movement towards the door.

“I must speak to him myself. It’s too bad. Mrs. Rivington——”

Then she stopped short, as though second thoughts had put a check on her

impulse. She came back to Image with a resigned shrug of her shoulders.

“It really is too bad of Gilbert. I spend half my time making apologies

for him and meekly bearing the ill-temper of my hostess whose table has

been disarranged.” Yet she looked anything but meek as she said it. “I

am sure people will soon cease to ask us, because it _is_ annoying to

have your table upset at the last minute. It would try the patience of

a hostess in heaven. Mrs. Rivington will be furious. She has asked us

several times and we’ve refused.... Oh, well! I must go and telephone at

once. That’s the only peace-offering and oblation I can make.”

“Let me go, Claud,” said Patricia; “you can’t leave your guests, and as

she is a stranger to me, her wrath will pass harmlessly over my head.”

Claudia accepted the offer with relief. “You’ll find the number under

Major-General Rivington, Newcombe Avenue. I say, Pat, suggest that, as

Gilbert can’t come, I shall absent myself also.” Hopefully. “Perhaps

she’ll let me off, as they are Gilbert’s friends rather than mine. Get me

a reprieve if you can. It’s in the wilds of West Hampstead, and it’s such

a long drive for a bad dinner.”

“Right-o! I’ll be a perfect Machiavelli on the telephone,” sang out Pat

as she departed.

Dr. Fritz Neeburg, who was sitting near by, looked up as Pat went. “Is

Gilbert in the habit of working in the evening, Mrs Currey?” he asked

quietly.

“Yes, pretty often, Dr. Neeburg. Do you approve of it? You are his

doctor, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but he hasn’t been to see me for ages, so I suppose he keeps pretty

fit. All the same, I don’t approve of it.”

“He’s looking very tired,” said Claudia lightly. “Last night he did go

out with me to a party at the ‘Ritz,’ but he was too tired to talk. I am

sure the woman who sat next to him must be going about saying that the

new K.C. is the dullest man in London.”

“I must talk to him,” said Neeburg decidedly. “He’s just the sort of

a man who has a splendid constitution and takes that as an excuse for

overwork. When a man gets into the habit of thinking of himself as a

machine Nature has a little way of avenging such slights.”

“Mrs. Currey, give him a curtain lecture,” said Image.

Claudia’s lip curled a little and she raised her eyebrows. “You can’t

curtain-lecture a man who listens in silence and then says, like putting

in the cork, ‘You don’t understand. Women never do. A man who wants to

make his way nowadays must devote himself whole-heartedly to his work.

The world is strewn with the wreckage of men who have relaxed too soon or

“taken holidays.”’”

Patricia has returned.

“Claudia, I did my best, and even spoke quite plainly; but I couldn’t

get you off. She was very cross indeed. Her voice through the telephone

was like that of an angry mosquito. She says _you_, at least, must come,

and she wants you to bring a substitute. She suggested that Mr. Hamilton

should come out with you, as she wants to make his acquaintance.”

Claudia spoke coldly. “I can’t ask Mr. Hamilton, or anyone, to take

Gilbert’s place at a couple of hours’ notice.”

“No, I told her that, but she seemed to think you ought to get her out of

the difficulty with the table.”

She did not tell her sister that Lorna Rivington’s rather sharp reply

had been, “Your sister and he are such great friends that I am sure he

would do it if she asked him.” Instead she whispered in her sister’s ear,

“Why don’t you ask Mr. Image? He is such a nice, obliging dear.”

Because her feelings were divided between an unreasonable anger that Mrs.

Rivington should make such a suggestion and a pleasurable relief that

her long drive might not be so boresome after all, she seized on the

alternative suggestion.

“Mr. Image, you have heard of my dilemma. Would you earn the martyr’s

crown and take me out to Hampstead? It’s too bad to ask you at such short

notice, but——”

“I should have been only too pleased,” returned Image, with a note of

sincere regret, “but it is the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I

always spend the evening quite quietly. At any other time, if such a

situation occurs and I can fill the bill, ring me up and just give me

time to dress. But you must give me an hour—I can’t do it in less.” It

was well known that Carey Image took an age to attire himself. His neat,

precise personal habits and leisurely methods of dressing were a constant

amusement to his friends and a handle to his—very few—enemies.

Several people came up to make their adieux, among them Frank Hamilton.

“Why are you going so soon?” asked Claudia of him, for he had lately

slipped into the habit of outstaying other visitors and waiting for a

talk with her.

“I promised to go to Ealing to-night,” he said with a self-pitying sigh.

“Ealing,” said Claudia vaguely. “Where is that? Then it’s no good

asking you to come out with me this evening? My husband is detained at

his chambers and I want a substitute.” She was conscious of a slight

sense of disappointment, though she had fully made up her mind a minute

previously not to ask Hamilton.

“Yes, it is,” he said eagerly. “I can send a wire.”

“But your engagement?”

“Of no importance. I can easily go some other night. Old friends.... If

you will have me I am entirely at your service.”

He looked into her eyes with his, over which he had not troubled to

draw the blinds of conventionality. They underlined and emphasized the

spoken words so that no woman could fail to understand. And she felt a

pleasing sensation of power as she parried his devotion. She did not

acknowledge it to herself, but she was subtly aware that they were both

on the brink of deep waters. His eyes had spoken words of love for many

weeks. His very _naïveté_ and boyishness had its attraction for her. He

was just as easy to move as Gilbert was difficult. She could colour his

thoughts, deflect his mind, bring him instantly inside the circle of her

mood. He took his colour from her like a chameleon, and she did not stop

to consider whether she alone had this power, or if Frank Hamilton were

always so influenced by attractive women.

“Very well, then,” she said, holding out her hand, “You are bidden to

take dinner at the house of one Major-General Rivington, who served Her

Majesty Queen Victoria with great distinction, and is now resting on his

laurels in the wilds of West Hampstead. Come for me at half-past seven.”