"JAWKINS'S JOLLITIES."
When Geoffrey entered that evening the great drawing-rooms of his old
home he found that they had been transformed from shabby and musty
apartments into beautiful modern salons, which had the air of having
been long lived in by people of refinement. There was even a certain
feminine touch about the disposition of the bric-a-brac. The handsome
pieces of old furniture, which seemed like friends of his boyhood, were
still there, retained by the true artistic sense of Jawkins, who knew
that no modern cabinetmaker could produce their like; still everything
seemed brightened, as if the old rooms had been touched with sunshine.
The walls were hung with good modern paintings and old tapestries; the
tables and mantelpieces were covered thick with curios. To fill a great
house with the rare objects of art and luxury that are found in the
abodes of those families which have held wealth for generations is an
impossibility to the newly rich. Their brand-new mansions, left to
upholsterers, resemble great caravansaries, bare, gilded and raw with
primary colors. But Jawkins was an artist; he not only made the houses
which he arranged beautiful, but he gave them the air of having been
lived in for years, so that the strangers within the gates, who had been
taught to judge of men's characters by their dwellings and surroundings,
could not but be pleasantly impressed. Miss Windsor was standing alone,
in a corner of the room, by a little round-backed sofa, and smiled a
greeting at Geoffrey. After exchanging a few words with his host he
walked over to her, and she stretched out her pretty gloved hand in
welcome.
"Well met again, Lord Brompton; but you are not wearing your sword."
"'The Knights are dust,' I fear," he quoted with a smile. "I was loath
to wear it with modern evening dress. I crave your forgiveness, fair
lady."
"As long as you do not have it turned into a ploughshare, or a railway
share, which would be more modern," laughed Maggie, "I will forgive
you."
"Have all your guests arrived?"
"Of course; you are the last one, as usual. It has been rather an ordeal
you may believe. Papa was in a dreadful state about it. The Duke and the
Duchess of Bayswater he was especially in awe of. Dear old souls! You
see them over there, looking like Mr. and Mrs. Marius in the ruins of
Carthage."
Geoffrey, turning, saw a fine-looking old couple. The Duke still wore
the blue ribbon of the Garter across his breast. He was a mild-looking
gentleman, who seemed to be plunged in deep melancholy. His head was
bald and highly polished, his gray side-whiskers were brushed carefully
forward, and his nose was aquiline. Her Grace the Duchess surveyed the
company with a haughty stare, which seemed to be a matter of habit
rather than of present feeling.
"They were very kind to me when I was a boy," said Geoffrey, with a
sigh. "But it is so long since they have seen me that they must have
forgotten me. You have a large party."
"Oh, yes; they have been coming in all the afternoon. I think that it
will be very pleasant when we get well shaken together. You see your old
friend, Sir John Dacre, over there, do you not? away over at the end of
the other rooms. The fine-looking girl to whom he is talking is Richard
Lincoln's daughter."
Geoffrey looked in the direction, and saw the back of Sir John Dacre's
head as he bent over to speak to Miss Lincoln.
He made a little start to go over to greet his friend. Miss Windsor saw
it, and said: "You will see Sir John after dinner, Lord Brompton; you
would interrupt a pleasant conversation now by being that wretched third
who makes a 'company' a crowd; and at the same time, you would destroy
all the proportion of the party by leaving me alone. You must sit on the
sofa here by my side, and I will point out all the people to you. You
will not sit anywhere near me, you know, at dinner, as you will take in
Mrs. Oswald Carey, as I told you this morning."
Geoffrey sat down on the sofa by her and looked about the room.
"I do not see the great professional beauty in this room, Miss Windsor,"
he said, after he had finished his inspection of the people present, who
seemed plunged in the depths of that gloom which always hangs over a
party before a dinner.
Richard Lincoln, who had been touched by her Grace's melancholy, stood
talking to her. In the opposite corner of the room sat Mr. James
Sydney, the celebrated wit, his pasty face wearing an air of settled
melancholy, while he gazed vacantly at a curious old Turner, which
glowed like an American sunset against the stamped-leather hangings of
the room.
"Poor fellow, he looks like the clown before he is painted," whispered
Miss Windsor.
Mr. Prouty, the _Saturday Reviewer_, sat on a "conversazione" with Lady
Carringford, a commonplace, faded-out-looking woman of forty, with
bleached hair. She did not seem much pleased by the conversation of the
journalist, and looked furtively across the room as if to hint that she
ought to be relieved, but Herr Diddlej and Sydney did not see her
signals of distress.
Lord Carringford, her husband, a tall, keen-faced man with blue-black
side-whiskers and a furtive eye, was talking with Mr. Windsor, and
though he saw his wife's signals, of course, did not pay any attention
to them. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in rusty clerical garb, smiled
benignly at the whole company.
"Mrs. Oswald Carey is far too clever to stay in the glare of a great
room like this," said Miss Windsor to Geoffrey. "She is one of those
women who seek a corner and quiet and flourish there--not, however,
alone. She is in the smaller room beyond, with Colonel Featherstone, who
must have nearly pulled his great mustaches out by this time. You know
how he twirls and twitches them when he thinks he is being quite
irresistible, just as you are doing now, Lord Brompton."
Geoffrey dropped his hand from his mustache impatiently.
"Ah, you are always chaffing me, Miss Windsor," he pleaded.
"I knew very well what you were thinking, sir. That you could cut
Colonel Featherstone out in no time. Now, were you not?"
"Not at all. I was thinking of you. Were not my languishing glances
turned toward you?"
"Yes, but the languish was all for Mrs. Oswald, and not for me. But it
is time to go to dinner now, Lord Brompton. You are permitted to disturb
the _tete-a-tete_ and Mrs. Carey's peace of mind."
"If you send me away, I suppose that I must obey. A hostess is a despot
whom no one may defy."
Miss Windsor smiled pleasantly at the Duke of Bayswater, who just then
offered her his arm with great solemnity. Geoffrey bowed to her and the
Duke, and walked slowly into the adjoining room.
In a dimly-lighted corner he saw a tall, heavily-built man, with a long
red mustache, talking to a remarkably beautiful woman.
"Mrs. Carey and old Charlie Featherstone?" he said to himself, as he
stopped to look at them and to await a pause in their conversation
before he interrupted them.
"Why, it is Eleanor Leigh!" he exclaimed a moment later, as she turned
her head from the shadow of a great Japanese screen, behind which the
pair had sought shelter from prying eyes.
"Eleanor Leigh, my old sweetheart, to whom I bade farewell in the dark
library of my old tutor's home, seven years ago."
She did not look in his direction, and he had a few moments to observe
her carefully.
The slender girl whom he remembered had grown into a superb woman. Her
head was poised upon her shoulders like that of a Greek goddess, and
around her white throat gleamed a collar of brilliants. A
tightly-fitting black gown made by contrast her bosom and arms dazzling
in whiteness. Her hair was rolled into a large round knot at the back of
her head, and its coils shone red-brown in the soft glow of the candles.
Her face seemed cold and calm to him as he looked at her, a faint,
mocking smile played upon her full, red lips, and her delicate eyebrows
were slightly raised. All of a sudden she turned toward him, and their
eyes met in a flash of recognition. He remembered those eyes well, but
here was something in them which was not there when his brain last
thrilled with their magnetic glances--a something which he could not
understand, but which repelled him. She raised her hand and seemed to
beckon to him, and he obeyed her command.
"You remember me, then, Lord Brompton," she said coldly, as she gave him
her hand.
"Remember you!" he exclaimed, and was at a loss for words. Featherstone,
who had withdrawn a step or two, seemed to see his confusion, and after
welcoming his old friend back to England went away.
Mrs. Carey looked up at Geoffrey with a mocking smile, as if deriding
his embarrassment. "So we meet again after all these years, Geoffrey?"
He looked down at the floor, confused and shame-faced, as he thought of
the time when he had gone up to Oxford from her father's house with her
image in his heart. She, too, was thinking of those days of fresh
spring-time. "He is not much changed," she thought, "save that he looks
tired and discouraged; then his eyes were bright, looking, as they were,
into a world where everything seemed easy and full of pleasure to him."
"We are both thinking of the old days," she said to him, as she pulled a
rose from her belt, and nervously crumpled its petals between her
fingers. "Ah, how I wept when you ceased writing to me!"
"I do not imagine that you ever wept any bitter tears on my account,"
remonstrated Geoffrey. "I was a mere boy then; and a girl of eighteen
can hold her own with a man of any age, while a boy of eighteen can no
more look after himself in a love affair than a--"
"Boy of any other age," interrupted Mrs. Carey. "Ah, Geoffrey, I did
weep then more than you can imagine. But I have always remembered you as
a dear boy, who loved me a little and forgot me when he was away. Men
are deceivers ever, and I fancy that I am not the last woman whom you
have loved a little and forgotten since. But the others are going in to
dinner. It is a motley party, is it not? Just fancy Richard Lincoln's
being here, and the old Duke, and John Dacre, too. Why is he here? Do
you know?"
"I haven't seen him since I first went to Paris," answered Geoffrey, as
he offered her his arm.
The pair walked in to dinner in their proper place in the procession.
"What a beautiful old room this is!" exclaimed Mrs. Carey as they
entered the dining-hall. "Jawkins does this sort of thing so well! How
perfectly he reproduces the courtly state of the last century when he
re-establishes a house!"
Geoffrey had not been in this room since the day when he had been called
from Oxford by a telegram announcing his father's sudden death. Then the
room had been dark and there was a hush over it, and the servants had
moved stealthily over the oaken floor, and he had sat by the window
listening to the slow words of the family lawyer, which told him that he
was the heir of a ruined estate.
He winced as he seated himself by Mrs. Carey's side, a guest at the
great table at which his forebears had broken bread as almost princely
hosts. The party had entered, and sat down in silence, and, after
unfolding their napkins, looked rather gloomily at each other for a
while, but Mr. Jawkins soon broke into an easy conversational canter,
and the rest of the party by the time that the champagne appeared with
the fish found that their tongues were loosened. The old Duke, who
always loved a pretty face and brilliant eyes, got on capitally with
Miss Windsor, and seemed to forget his fallen dignity and the mournful
face of his consort, as he said pretty things to the beautiful American.
"I had a great curiosity to see Mr. Windsor before I came here,"
whispered Mrs. Carey to Geoffrey. "He has a strong face, has he not?
They say that he is so rich that he does not know how much he is worth,
and that he has made all his money himself."
"I suppose that somebody has got all the money that we people in England
have lost or spent," she continued, with a woman's idea of political
economy. "Isn't it all dreadful? I suppose that you are a--What shall I
say, a guest?"
"Why should you not say a guest, since we certainly are at Mr. Windsor's
table?" he asked, as if innocently.
"Ah, you must know what I mean; one of Mr. Jawkins's list. Just think of
the poor Duke and Duchess being on it--the proudest family in England.
Did you ever hear of such a thing?"
"The aristocrats during the French Revolution were reduced to as
desperate shifts," answered Geoffrey. "We, at least, are not banished
from our country and can earn our living, if we choose, in the
old-fashioned way, by the sweat of our brows. I have been digging in my
vegetable garden this summer; you know that I have five acres left, and
what with fishing--and don't mention it, pray--a little poaching, I have
got along pretty well. I knew Mr. Windsor in Paris, when I was on the
Legation there."
"And you were put out of the service by that old brute, Bagshaw. What an
odious thing this Republican form of government is! You know poor Oswald
was in the Stamp and Sealing-wax Office. Oswald is a Legitimist, of
course, and would not pay the assessment which was levied upon him by
the Radical party, and he was ousted last spring."
"Is your husband here?"
"Oh, dear, no! They do not wish me if I take Oswald along with me. He is
in our lodgings in London. He quite misses the office in the daytime, as
he cannot sleep nearly so well at home. Poor Oswald! Mr. Sydney," she
said, turning to that gentleman, who had sat in silence at her side, "I
thought that you always kept the table in a roar?"
"How can a man do that when he is expected to," answered Sydney,
gloomily. "I am always saddest at dinner, for I know that I have been
asked because there is a tradition in society that I am a wit. If I
speak of the gloomiest subjects people snicker; if I am eloquent or
pathetic, they roar. I am by nature rather a lyric poet than a wit--ah,
you are laughing, Mrs. Carey, you are laughing. What did I tell you?"
"But, my dear Mr. Sydney, you are funny, really you are."
"I am funny because I mean to be serious," said Mr. Sydney. "In these
days of the decadence of civilization if a man is in earnest, terribly
in earnest, people think that he is vastly amusing. I shall try to be
funny soon, to earn my wage, and people will think me dull enough then."
The poor man drank a large glass of wine and pointing at the _entree_
upon his plate asked:
"Mrs. Carey, can a man who expects daily to be gathered to his fathers
eat a _vol-au-vent_ of pigeons _a la financiere_? How can it be
expected? They should not tempt me with such dishes. I know that I ought
not to eat them, but I cannot resist. I partake of them and I do not
sleep. I have not closed my eyes for three nights."
He began to eat his _vol-au-vent_ with the appetite of a boy of
fourteen.
"Poor old fellow," whispered Mrs. Carey to Geoffrey. "He knows that he
must be amusing on this visit else Jawkins will strike him off his list.
It is lucky that I only have to look beautiful. It is no exertion
whatever. While poor old Sydney knows that something is expected of him,
and as he naturally likes to talk about statistics and his physical
ailments, and as he gained his reputation as a wit from a single
repartee made at a dinner twenty years ago, he finds it hard to fulfil
his part. He is simply funny because he isn't. It's a strange paradox."
"It must, indeed, be a hard task, making one's self a brick without
straw," answered Geoffrey. "Think of not having the luxury of being
disagreeable--to be always on the rack to perpetrate a joke, Mrs.
Carey."
"You did not call me Mrs. Carey when we last met," she said,
reproachfully.
"But you were not Mrs. Carey then, and, not being a prophet, I could not
very well call you so."
"Do not be flippant. But if we were prophets what a dreadful thing life
would be! It did not seem possible seven years ago that Eleanor Leigh
would become a professional beauty, a hired guest, who lived upon the
royalty from the sale of her photographs."
"You can congratulate yourself that yours is the only 'royalty' left in
the country, Eleanor." He lowered his voice as he spoke her name.
"I will not talk about myself," she said, in a cold, hard tone. "That's
a man's prerogative. But I wish you, when we are alone, to tell me all
about your life. The lines of our lives, which once bade fair to run
along together, have diverged; but fate is strong. We are thrown
together again. I know not whether it matters to you that we have met
again, but it does very much to me. I wish to know what you have been
doing all these years. To-morrow, surely, we shall have a chance to see
each other, and till then let us change the subject, for if the walls
have not ears, Mr. Sydney certainly has, and very large and ugly ones,
too, like a lop-eared rabbit's."
Geoffrey looked with a smile at poor Mr. Sydney's villified ears, and
said to himself that the unfortunate wit never could live in much
comfort upon the royalties from the sale of his picture. Mrs. Carey
looked around the table searchingly. Her quick wit was tickled by the
curious incongruities of the scene; by Richard Lincoln talking small
nothings to the Duchess of Bayswater across the rich American; by the
genial and smirking Jawkins, seated between Sir John Dacre and that
pink of fashion, Colonel Featherstone; by Lady Carringford, who was
between the indifferent Colonel and the Duke; by the three members of
the artiste class, Prouty, Diddlej and Sydney, whom Mr. Jawkins had
placed together with delicate discrimination. Mrs. Carey gave a little
shrug at perceiving that she, too, was put in the same neighborhood.
Lord Carringford and the Duchess seemed to be getting along uncommonly
well together. Sir John Dacre ignored his dapper neighbor, Jawkins, and
was absorbed in conversation with beautiful Mary Lincoln, who blushed
whenever she caught her father's eye looking questioningly at her. Mrs.
Carey's glance over the table was at first cursory; she had been so much
interested in meeting Geoffrey that the tide of old feelings, surging
back through her brain, had driven out all thought of the other people,
for in the heart of this woman of the world, who had lived in ball-rooms
and in the maddest whirl of that most mad and material of all things,
modern society, where love is a plaything and an excitement only, there
had lingered a fond remembrance of the ardent young lover, whose boyish
affection for her, absence had so quickly cooled. Through all his
wanderings she had managed to trace him. The world of society is small.
She had heard of his affair with Miss Windsor in Paris two years before;
so her eyes, after wandering over the table, fixed themselves upon her.
With a woman's instinct, Mrs. Carey had known that Geoffrey would not
have been so indifferent to her if he had been fancy free; when she
first saw him, before dinner, her heart throbbed with passion, and she
determined to wind around him again the chain of flowers which he had
snapped so easily when the great god of modern love, "Juxtaposition,"
deserted her. But now she saw that he had long since ceased to care for
her. He had called her "Eleanor" once, to be sure; but it was only after
she had forced his hand.
She picked up the large bouquet of roses which lay by her plate, and
raising them to her face as if to inhale their fragrance, she
attentively observed Miss Windsor, for she felt that there must be
something between her and Geoffrey; some tie stronger than the memory of
a dead flirtation. Her masked battery served her purpose well, for
Maggie, presently, after smiling faintly at some remark of Mr. Prouty's,
looked quickly over toward Lord Brompton, who was at the time listening
attentively to a political conversation between Mr. Lincoln and Mr.
Windsor. Maggie only looked at him for a moment, but Mrs. Carey saw that
she looked at him with that fondness with which a woman gazes at the man
she loves when she thinks that she is unobserved. Mrs. Carey put down
her bouquet and turned to Geoffrey.
"Miss Windsor is not a bad-looking girl, is she?" she asked.
"You put me in an awkward dilemma, Mrs. Carey," replied Geoffrey, a
little nervously, "in the alternative of criticising my hostess
unfavorably or praising the looks of one woman to another. Is that quite
fair?"
"Her features are not regular, yet she seems attractive in a way," she
continued, not waiting for his answer or answering his question. "You
knew her before, did you not?"
"Yes, slightly."
"That is to say, you had a desperate affair with her?"
"It seems to me that you jump at conclusions."
"Not at all. She is interested in you; I have eyes in my head."
"I should think that you had," laughed Geoffrey, as their glances met.
"And I have noticed that she has been continually looking over toward
us. The old Duke has not been lively, you see, and that _Saturday
Reviewer_ is a disagreeable thing. How she has longed to have you next
to her!"
"You flatter me, Mrs. Carey," answered Geoffrey, who was annoyed, as all
men are, when they are accused of being too fascinating. "Miss Windsor
and I were great friends, nothing more."
"Why, my dear boy, of course you were nothing more. To be great friends
is enough; so you own up to the serious affair? You think that she isn't
watching you--look."
Geoffrey glanced up and caught Miss Windsor's eye. She colored, turned
away, and said something to the _Saturday Reviewer,_ who had before
found his satirical remarks thrown away on his _distraite_ hostess.
"See that fine color mounting to her cheeks," said Mrs. Carey.
"She sees that we are talking about her and feels a little
self-consciousness. The Americans are not so self-possessed as we are."
"Why do you not marry her?" she continued, not heeding him. "She has
money, is not at all bad-looking. There is nothing else for you to do,
and you cannot long go on as you are now, I fancy."
Geoffrey grew red and confused. He tried to make a clever answer. She
had such an air of graceful badinage, as she asked the question, that it
did not seem to him that he had a right to be angry, and yet he did
feel so. It annoyed him very much to be chaffed about Miss Windsor; to
have this cold woman of the world suggest to him that he should marry
the young American girl for her money.
Mrs. Carey laughed slightly, and seeing that she had pressed her
advantage too far, turned to a congenial diversion with Sydney, who had
by this time dined well and thoughtfully. She clinked his glass of
Burgundy lightly with him in a quaint, old-fashioned way, and Sydney's
eyes sparkled; he drained his glass.
Sir John Dacre had seen Geoffrey when the party sat down at the table;
but it so chanced that he did not catch his eye until just now. The two
men had not met for years, and even now the conventions of society and
six feet of mahogany kept them separated more effectually than miles of
country. They smiled and nodded, however, and Dacre raised his glass of
wine, and the two pledged each other's health in some old comet claret
of 1912.
"Who is the man who just smiled at you, Mr. Dacre?" asked Miss Lincoln.
"My dear old friend, Lord Brompton--Geoffrey Ripon you would call him,
perhaps. I am downright glad to see him here to-night. Indeed, I came
down to this part of the country to see him."
Miss Lincoln seemed chagrined.
"You must be very much attached to him, then, Mr. Dacre."
"Yes, of course I am; and I have not seen him for some years. He has not
changed much."
"If he is Geoffrey Ripon, Earl of Brompton, it is to him that this
estate used to belong, then?"
"Yes, Miss Lincoln, in his father's day it was a beautiful place; there
were none of these modern gewgaws here. The old earl would have starved
to death rather than have dined in a room lighted by the electric light.
I used to stay here as a boy; indeed, I am a kinsman of the family. I
was here last some years before the old gentleman's death. He lived on
here for years without hearing from the outside world. He even gave up
the _Times_, and would not have anything in the house which was written
since the abdication. He refused to acknowledge the existence of a
country which had exiled his king."
Miss Lincoln blushed a little as she said:
"Do we not owe our allegiance to our country, Mr. Dacre, as it is? It
seems to me that it is our duty to do what we can for it."
"Ah, Miss Lincoln, I am afraid that we are treading on dangerous ground.
Your father and I respect each other as foes, whose swords have crossed,
always do; but it is not fitting that his daughter and I should discuss
this matter. Do you notice how intently Mrs. Oswald Carey watches Miss
Windsor? I wonder why?"
"I have noticed it, Mr. Dacre," answered Miss Lincoln. "Just now she
guarded her face with her bunch of roses, that Miss Windsor might not
perceive her scrutiny, and her look is not a friendly one."
"She is a beautiful tiger," said Sir John, "not a domestic cat, as many
women are; and she means mischief when her eyes fix upon any one in that
way."
Miss Lincoln looked at him in surprise, for he spoke earnestly, more
earnestly than he knew himself; for something told him that the
beautiful woman with the black gown and gleaming shoulders, sitting
opposite to him, was dangerous to him and his friends.
The dinner was over; the ladies swept from the room, Mrs. Carey
following close at Miss Windsor's side.
When the men had returned to sole possession of the dining-room the
company separated into little groups. Jawkins fastened upon the Duke,
whom Mr. Windsor relinquished with ill-concealed delight. Herr Diddlej
sat turning a lump of sugar with brandy in his coffee spoon, and smoking
cigarettes, which he rapidly rolled with his yellow-stained damp
fingers. Mr. Lincoln sat with Sydney, who forgot his hypochondria over
his cigar and became quite amusing, as the smile upon Lincoln's shrewd,
kindly face testified, for Richard Lincoln was a flint upon which all
intellectual steel struck fire.
Sir John Dacre and Geoffrey grasped each other's hand with a firm grip,
and looked into each other's eyes in silence for a moment.
"I came down here to see you, Geoffrey, because I need you.
"You know, John, that I am at your service, now and always."
"It is not my service, Geoffrey," said Dacre. "But later for this. Here
comes old Featherstone; we have come down here together. Here, let us
get on the sofa; it is the same one we used to sit on when we came here
in the hunting season in your father's day."
"I did not have a chance to say anything to you while the ladies were
present," said Featherstone, sitting down between his friends. "I am
very glad to see you. I had heard nothing about you since you left
Paris. They tell me that you are living in the neighborhood."
"Yes, just over there," indicated Geoffrey with his thumb. "You are to
stop three days, I hear. You must both come to see me. You will be my
first guests since I came back to my estate."
"You look as well as ever," said Featherstone. "But how we have made the
running the wrong way, to be sure, since I last saw you."
Featherstone made a gesture with his left hand, and looked inquiringly
at his friends; but Geoffrey, though he noticed the gesture, did not
attach any significance to it.
He raised his glass of port over a carafe of water. "The King," he said.
All three drank, and Dacre whispered, "No more of this, Featherstone. I
shall see Geoffrey this evening; he is not one of us yet."
"What an attractive woman Mrs. Oswald Carey is!" exclaimed Featherstone.
"You knew her before, did you not, Geoffrey?"
"I was her father's pupil before I went to Oxford."
"And knew the goddess when she was budding into womanhood. I can see it
all. You fell in love with her, of course, cherished a locket in your
left-hand waistcoat pocket for some weeks after you left her father's
tutelage. I don't blame you. I never saw a woman who made one's blood
course faster."
Featherstone stretched out his long legs and arms and pulled away at his
cigar, a queer smile playing over his mouth.
"She is a woman whom it is delightful to have been or be in love with,"
he continued; "but to marry--ah! I do not envy Oswald Carey. He simply
gives his name up to have a Mrs. put before it. By the way, our hostess
is an interesting girl. I like the old man, too. It is refreshing to see
a man who has opened his oyster after living among such a broken-down
lot as we all are. I wish that he could give me a point or two; they say
that he can make a million by turning over his hand. Think of it. There
are a lot of fellows who can lose one by the same simple process."
Geoffrey did not answer; he felt silent and depressed since the ladies
had left the room, and his cigar seemed to him to be altogether too
long. It is a bad sign when a man's cigar seems too long to him, and
when he tells you that he never knew until lately how offensive the odor
of tobacco was to a refined woman you may know that all is up with him.
Featherstone, on the other hand, smoked his cigar, slowly and
reverently, like a liberty-loving and untrammelled gentleman.
Geoffrey walked out to the great hall, where he found the ladies
gathered around the fireplace. Mrs. Oswald Carey sat near the Duchess,
and was talking with her. The old lady did not seem pleased with her new
companion, and smiled pleasantly at Geoffrey, when she saw him approach.
Miss Windsor was sitting in a low chair somewhat removed from the other
two. Geoffrey, after a few words of greeting to the Duchess, approached
Miss Windsor.
"You did not linger over your cigar like the rest, I see," she said to
him, as he sat down by her. "Tobacco is a woman's most formidable rival,
but the charms of Mrs. Oswald Carey are strong enough to draw you in
here! Perhaps you will have a cup of coffee to make up for your
deprivation."
"Thank you, Miss Windsor; one lump. But I did not come in to see Mrs.
Oswald Carey. I had the pleasure of sitting next her at dinner."
"We are going to-morrow on a drive to the ruins of Chichester Cathedral.
If you have nothing to prevent you, will you not join us?"
Geoffrey accepted the invitation.
"It is a pity that there are so few ladies," continued Miss Windsor; "we
can make up a coach-load, however, and you may drive, if you wish it. Of
course, you can then have Mrs. Oswald on the box-seat with you, and then
you will be sure to have a good time."
"Oh, Featherstone can drive much better than I," answered Geoffrey; "I
have not driven four-in-hand since I lived in this house. I should much
prefer to be upon one of the seats with you."
The men trailed into the hall awkwardly, bringing a fine perfume of
tobacco along with them. They stood around for a moment, getting
themselves into the position of the social soldier.
Herr Diddlej seated himself before the piano, ran his fingers through
his long hair, and was soon weeping over a sonata of his own
composition.
Dacre, who was standing apart from the others, before a picture, in a
dark recess of the hall, was approached by a footman, who made a quick
sign to him, a sign such as Featherstone had made to Geoffrey a few
moments before.
Sir John answered, and the servant, in handing him a cup of coffee,
slipped a note into his hand. The footman went on handing the coffee,
calm and unmoved.
Dacre, after glancing at the letter, thrust it into his waistcoat
pocket, and furtively glanced at Geoffrey. The latter excused himself to
Miss Windsor.
"I wish to have a long and private conversation with you," said Dacre to
him, "and when you take your leave I will walk over with you to your
house, where we can talk together."
Mrs. Carey, before the party broke up, excused herself on the grounds of
a severe headache and retired to her room. She sat there for some time
looking out upon the ocean and the moon-glade, glistening and twisting
over the waves like a great serpent. Of a sudden she threw over her
shoulders a thick cloak, and, by a dark back passage of the old house,
stole out into the moonlight. She felt a desire to walk along the cliff
and to soothe her nerves with the deep booming of the waves along its
base. And, perhaps, she might meet Geoffrey on his way home, she
thought, not forgetting the potency of moonlight and the great Love God,
"Juxtaposition."