“THE brougham is at the door, my lady.”
“Tell his lordship.”
The butler went out, and Lady Holme’s maid put a long black cloak
carefully over her mistress’s shoulders. While she did this Lady Holme
stood quite still gazing into vacancy. They were in the now deserted
yellow drawing-room, which was still brilliantly lit, and full of the
already weary-looking flowers which had been arranged for the reception.
The last guest had gone and the carriage was waiting to take the Holmes
to Arkell House.
The maid did something to the diamonds in Lady Holme’s hair with deft
fingers, and the light touch seemed to wake Lady Holme from a reverie.
She went to a mirror and looked into it steadily. The maid stood behind.
After a moment Lady Holme lifted her hand suddenly to her head, as
if she were going to take off her tiara. The maid could not repress
a slight movement of startled astonishment. Lady Holme saw it in the
glass, dropped her hand, and said:
“C’est tout, Josephine. Vous pouvez vous en aller.”
“Merci, miladi.”
She went out quietly.
Two or three minutes passed. Then Lord Holme’s deep bass voice was
audible, humming vigorously:
“Ina, Ina, oh, you should have seen her!
Seen her with her eyes cast down.
She looked upon the floor,
And all the Johnnies swore
That Ina, Ina--oh, you should have seen her!--
That Ina was the _chic_-est girl in town.”
Lady Holme frowned.
“Fritz!” she called rather sharply.
Lord Holme appeared with a coat thrown over his arm and a hat in his
hand. His brown face was beaming with self-satisfaction.
“Well, old girl, ready? What’s up now?”
“I wish you wouldn’t sing those horrible music-hall songs. You know I
hate them.”
“Music-hall! I like that. Why, it’s the best thing in _The Chick from
the Army and Navy_ at the Blue Theatre.”
“It’s disgustingly vulgar.”
“What next? Why, I saw the Lord Chan--”
“I daresay you did. Vulgarity will appeal to the Saints of Heaven next
season if things go on as they’re going now. Come along.”
She went out of the room, walking more quickly than she usually walked,
and holding herself very upright. Lord Holme followed, forming the words
of his favourite song with his lips, and screwing up his eyes as if he
were looking at an improper peepshow. When they were in the electric
brougham, which spun along with scarcely any noise, he began:
“I say, Vi, how long’ve you known Miss Schley?”
“I don’t know. Some weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did. I said I had met her at Mrs. Wolfstein’s lunch.”
“No, but why didn’t you tell me how like you she was?”
There was complete silence in the brougham for a minute. Then Lady Holme
said:
“I had no idea she was like me.”
“Then you’re blind, old girl. She’s like you if you’d been a chorus-girl
and known a lot of things you don’t know.”
“Really. Perhaps she has been a chorus-girl.”
“I’ll bet she has, whether she says so or not.”
He gave a deep chuckle. Lady Holme’s gown rustled as she leaned back in
her corner.
“And she’s goin’ to Arkell House. Americans are the very devil for
gettin’ on. Laycock was tellin’ me to-night that--”
“I don’t wish to hear Mr. Laycock’s stories, Fritz. They don’t amuse
me.”
“Well, p’r’aps they’re hardly the thing for you, Vi. But they’re deuced
amusin’ for all that.”
He chuckled again. Lady Holme felt an intense desire to commit some
act of physical violence. She shut her eyes. In a minute she heard her
husband once more beginning to hum the refrain about Ina. How utterly
careless he was of her desires and requests. There was something animal
in his forgetfulness and indifference. She had loved the animal in him.
She did love it. Something deep down in her nature answered eagerly to
its call. But at moments she hated it almost with fury. She hated it now
and longed to use the whip, as the tamer in a menagerie uses it when one
of his beasts shows its teeth, or sulkily refuses to perform one of its
tricks.
Lord Holme went on calmly humming till the brougham stopped in the long
line of carriages that stretched away into the night from the great
portico of Arkell House.
People were already going in to supper when the Holmes arrived. The
Duke, upon whom a painful malady was beginning to creep, was bravely
welcoming his innumerable guests. He found it already impossible to go
unaided up and down stairs, and sat in a large armchair close to the
ball-room, with one of his pretty daughters near him, talking brightly,
and occasionally stealing wistful glances at the dancers, who were
visible through a high archway to his left. He was a thin, middle-aged
man, with a curious, transparent look in his face--something crystalline
that was nearly beautiful.
The Duchess was swarthy and masterful, very intelligent and _grande
dame_. Vivacity was easy to her. People said she had been a good hostess
in her cradle, and that she had presided over the ceremony of her own
baptism in a most autocratic and successful manner. It was quite likely.
After a word with the Duke, Lady Holme went slowly towards the ballroom
with her husband. She did not mean to dance, and began to refuse the
requests of would-be partners with charming protestations of fatigue.
Lord Holme was scanning the ballroom with his big brown eyes.
“Are you going to dance, Fritz?” asked Lady Holme, nodding to Robin
Pierce, whom she had just seen standing at a little distance with Rupert
Carey.
The latter had not seen her yet, but as Robin returned her nod he looked
hastily round.
“Yes, I promised Miss Schley to struggle through a waltz with her.
Wonder if she’s dancin’?”
Lady Holme bowed, a little ostentatiously, to Rupert Carey. Her husband
saw it and began at once to look pugilistic. He could not say anything,
for at this moment two or three men strolled up to speak to Lady Holme.
While she was talking to them, Pimpernel Schley came in sight waltzing
with Mr. Laycock, one of those abnormally thin, narrow-featured, smart
men, with bold, inexpressive ayes, in whom London abounds.
Lord Holme’s under-jaw resumed its natural position, and he walked away
and was lost in the crowd, following the two dancers.
“Take me in to supper, Robin. I’m tired.”
“This way. I thought you were never coming.”
“People stayed so late. I can’t think why. I’m sure it was dreadfully
dull and foolish. How odd Mr. Carey’s looking! When I bowed to him just
now he didn’t return it, but only stared at me as if I were a stranger.”
Robin Pierce made no rejoinder. They descended the great staircase and
went towards the picture-gallery.
“Find a corner where we can really talk.”
“Yes, yes.”
He spoke eagerly.
“Here--this is perfect.”
They sat down at a table for two that was placed in an angle of the
great room. Upon the walls above them looked down a Murillo and a
Velasquez. Lady Holme was under the Murillo, which represented three
Spanish street boys playing a game in the dust with pieces of money.
“A table for two,” said Robin Pierce. “I have always said that the
Duchess understands the art of entertaining better than anyone in
London, except you--when you choose.”
“To-night I really couldn’t choose. Later on, I’m going to give two or
three concerts. Is anything the matter with Mr. Carey?”
“Do you think so?”
“Well, I hope it isn’t true what people are saying.”
“What are they saying?”
“That’s he’s not very judicious in one way.”
A footman poured champagne into her glass. Robin Pierce touched the
glass.
“That way?”
“Yes. It would be too sad.”
“Let us hope it isn’t true, then.”
“You know him well. Is it true?”
“Would you care if it was?”
He looked at her earnestly.
“Yes. I like Mr. Carey.”
There was a rather unusual sound of sincerity in her voice.
“And what is it that you like in him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He talks shocking nonsense, of course, and is down on
people and things. And he’s absurdly unsophisticated at moments, though
he knows the world so well. He’s not like you--not a diplomat. But I
believe if he had a chance he might do something great.”
Robin felt as if the hidden woman had suddenly begun to speak. Why did
she speak about Rupert Carey?
“Do you like a man to do something great?” he said.
“Oh, yes. All women do.”
“But I perpetually hear you laughing at the big people--the Premiers,
the Chancellors, the Archbishops, the Generals of the world.”
“Because I’ve always known them. And really they are so often quite
absurd and tiresome.”
“And--Rupert Carey?”
“Oh, he’s nothing at all, poor fellow! Still there’s something in his
face that makes me think he could do an extraordinary thing if he had
the chance. I saw it there to-night when he didn’t bow to me. There’s
Sir Donald’s son. And what a dreadful-looking woman just behind him.”
Leo Ulford was coming down the gallery with a gaunt, aristocratic,
harsh-featured girl. Behind him walked Mr. Bry, conducting a very young
old woman, immensely smart, immensely vivacious, and immensely pink, who
moved with an unnecessary alertness that was birdlike, and turned her
head about sharply on a long, thin neck decorated with a large diamond
dog-collar. Slung at her side there was a tiny jewelled tube.
“That’s Mrs. Leo.”
“She must be over sixty.”
“She is.”
The quartet sat down at the next table. Leo Ulford did not see Lady
Holme at once. When he caught sight of her, he got up, came to her,
stood over her and pressed her hand.
“Been away,” he explained. “Only back to-night.”
“I’ve been complaining to your father about you.”
A slow smile overspread his chubby face.
“May I see you again after supper?”
“If you can find me.”
“I can always manage to find what I want,” he returned, still smiling.
When he had gone back to his table Robin Pierce said:
“How insolent Englishmen are allowed to be in Society! It always strikes
me after I’ve been a long time abroad. Doesn’t anybody mind it?”
“Do you mean that you consider Mr. Ulford insolent?”
“In manner. Yes, I do.”
“Well, I think there’s something like Fritz about him.”
Robin Pierce could not tell from the way this was said what would be a
safe remark to make. He therefore changed the subject.
“Do you know what Sir Donald’s been doing?” he said.
“No. What?”
“Buying a Campo Santo.”
“A Campo Santo! Is he going to bury himself, then? What do you mean,
Robin?”
“He called it a Campo Santo to Carey. It’s really a wonderful house in
Italy, on Como. Casa Felice is the name of it. I know it well.”
“Casa Felice. How delicious! But is it the place for Sir Donald?”
“Why not?”
“For an old, tired man. Casa Felice. Won’t the name seem an irony to him
when he’s there?”
“You think an old man can’t be happy anywhere?”
“I can’t imagine being happy old.”
“Why not?”
“Oh!”--she lowered her voice--“if you want to know, look at Mrs.
Ulford.”
“Your husk theory again. A question of looks. But you will grow old
gracefully--some day in the far future.”
“I don’t think I shall grow old at all.”
“Then--?”
“I think I shall die before that comes--say at forty-five. I couldn’t
live with wrinkles all over my face. No, Robin, I couldn’t. And--look at
Mrs. Ulford!--perhaps an ear-trumpet set with opals.”
“What do the wrinkles matter? But some day you’ll find I’m right. You’ll
tell me so. You’ll acknowledge that your charm comes from within, and
has survived the mutilation of the husk.”
“Mutilation! What a hideous sound that word has. Why don’t all mutilated
people commit suicide at once? I should. Is Sir Donald going to live in
his happy house?”
“Naturally. He’ll be there this August. He’s invited Rupert Carey to
stay there with him.”
“And you?”
“Not yet.”
“I suppose he will. Everybody always asks you everywhere. Diplomacy is
so universally--”
She broke off. Far away, at the end of the gallery, she had caught sight
of Miss Schley coming in with her husband. They sat down at a table near
the door. Robin Pierce followed her eyes and understood her silence.
“Are you going on the first?” he asked.
“What to?”
“Miss Schley’s first night.”
“Is it on the first? I didn’t know. We can’t. We’re dining at Brayley
House that evening.”
“What a pity!” he said, with a light touch of half playful malice. “You
would have seen her as she really is--from all accounts.”
“And what is Miss Schley really?”
“The secret enemy of censors.”
“Oh!”
“You dislike her. Why?”
“I don’t dislike her at all.”
“Do you like her?”
“No. I like very few women. I don’t understand them.”
“At any rate you understand--say Miss Schley--better than a man would.”
“Oh--a man!”
“I believe all women think all men fools.”
Lady Holme laughed, not very gaily.
“Don’t they?” he insisted.
“In certain ways, in certain relations of life, I suppose most men
are--rather short-sighted.”
“Like Mr. Bry.”
“Mr. Bry is the least short-sighted man I know. That’s why he always
wears an eyeglass.”
“To create an illusion?”
“Who knows?”
She looked down the long room. Between the heads of innumerable men and
women she could see Miss Schley. Her husband was hidden. She would have
preferred to see him. Miss Schley’s head was by no means expressive of
the naked truth. It merely looked cool, self-possessed, and--so Lady
Holme said to herself--extremely American. What she meant by that she
could, perhaps, hardly have explained.
“Do you admire Miss Schley’s appearance?”
Robin Pierce spoke again with a touch of humorous malice. He knew Lady
Holme so well that he had no objection to seem wanting in tact to her
when he had a secret end to gain. She looked at him sharply; leaning
forward over the table and opening her eyes very wide.
“Why are you forgetting your manners to-night and bombarding me with
questions?”
“The usual reason--devouring curiosity.”
She hesitated, looking at him. Then suddenly her face changed.
Something, some imp of adorable frankness, peeped out of it at him, and
her whole body seemed confiding.
“Miss Schley is going about London imitating me. Now, isn’t that true?
Isn’t she?”
“I believe she is. Damned impertinence!”
He muttered the last words under his breath.
“How can I admire her?”
There was something in the way she said that which touched him. He
leaned forward to her.
“Why not punish her for it?”
“How?”
“Reveal what she can’t imitate.”
“What’s that?”
“All you hide and I divine.”
“Go on.”
“She mimics the husk. She couldn’t mimic the kernel.”
“Ice, my lady?”
Lady Holme started. Till the footman spoke she had not quite realised
how deeply interested she was in the conversation. She helped herself to
some ice.
“You can go on, Mr. Pierce,” she said when the man had gone.
“But you understand.”
She shook her head, smiling. Her body still looked soft and attractive,
and deliciously feminine.
“Miss Schley happens to have some vague resemblance to you in height and
colouring. She is a clever mimic. She used to be a professional mimic.”
“Really!”
“That was how she first became known.”
“In America?”
“Yes.”
“Why should she imitate me?”
“Have you been nice to her?”
“I don’t know. Yes. Nice enough.”
Robin shook his head.
“You think she dislikes me then?”
“Do women want definite reasons for half the things they do? Miss Schley
may not say to herself that she dislikes you, any more than you say to
yourself that you dislike her. Nevertheless--”
“We should never get on. No.”
“Consider yourselves enemies--for no reasons, or secret woman’s reasons.
It’s safer.”
Lady Holme looked down the gallery again. Miss Schley’s fair head was
bending forward to some invisible person.
“And the mimicry?” she asked, turning again to Robin.
“Can only be applied to mannerisms, to the ninety-ninth part, the
inconsiderable fraction of your charm. Miss Schley could never imitate
the hidden woman, the woman who sings, the woman who laughs at, denies
herself when she is not singing.”
“But no one cares for her--if she exists.”
There was a hint of secret bitterness in her voice when she said that.
“Give her a chance--and find out. But you know already that numbers do.”
He tried to look into her eyes, but she avoided his gaze and got up.
“Take me back to the ballroom.”
“You are going to dance?”
“I want to see who’s here.”
As they passed the next table Lady Holme nodded to Leo Ulford. He bowed
in return and indicated that he was following almost immediately. Mrs.
Ulford put down her ear-trumpet, turned her head sharply, and looked at
Lady Holme sideways, fluttering her pink eyelids.
“How exactly like a bird she is,” murmured Lady Holme.
“Exactly--moulting.”
Lady Holme meant as she walked down the gallery; to stop and speak a
few gay words to Miss Schley and her husband, but when she drew near to
their table Lord Holme was holding forth with such unusual volubility,
and Miss Schley was listening with such profound attention, that it did
not seem worth while, and she went quietly on, thinking they did not see
her. Lord Holme did not. But the American smiled faintly as Lady Holme
and Robin disappeared into the hall. Then she said, in reply to her
animated companion:
“I’m sure if I am like Lady Holme I ought to say _Te Deum_ and think
myself a lucky girl. I ought, indeed.”
Lady Holme had not been in the ballroom five minutes before Leo Ulford
came up smiling.
“Here I am,” he remarked, as if the statement were certain to give
universal satisfaction.
Robin looked black and moved a step closer to Lady Holme.
“Thank you, Mr. Pierce,” she said.
She took Leo Ulford’s arm, nodded to Robin, and walked away.
Robin stood looking after her. He started when he heard Carey’s voice
saying:
“Why d’you let her dance with that blackguard?”
“Hulloa, Carey?”
“Come to the supper-room. I want to have a yarn with you. And
all this”--he made a wavering, yet violent, gesture towards the
dancers--“might be a Holbein.”
“A dance of death? What nonsense you talk!”
“Come to the supper-room.”
Robin looked at his friend narrowly.
“You’re bored. Let’s go and take a stroll down Park Lane.”
“No. Well, then, if you won’t--”
“I’ll come.”
He put his arm through Carey’s, and they went out together.
Lady Holme was generally agreeable to men. She was particularly charming
to Leo Ulford that night. He was not an interesting man, but he seemed
to interest her very much. They sat out together for a long time in the
corner of a small drawing-room, far away from the music. She had said to
Robin Pierce that she thought there was something about Leo Ulford
that was like her husband, and when she talked to him she found the
resemblance even greater than she had supposed.
Lord Holme and Leo Ulford were of a similar type. Both were strong,
healthy, sensual, slangy, audacious in a dull kind of fashion--Lady
Holme did not call it dull--serenely and perpetually intent upon having
everything their own way in life. Both lived for the body and ignored
the soul, as they would have ignored a man with a fine brain, a
passionate heart, a narrow chest and undeveloped muscles. Such a man
they would have summed up as “a rotter.” If they ever thought of the
soul at all, it was probably under some such comprehensive name. Both
had the same simple and blatant aim in life, an aim which governed all
their actions and was the generator of most of their thoughts. This
aim, expressed in their own terse language, was “to do themselves
jolly well.” Both had, so far, succeeded in their ambition. Both were,
consequently, profoundly convinced of their own cleverness. Intellectual
conceit--the conceit of the brain--is as nothing to physical
conceit--the conceit of the body. Acute intelligence is always
capable of uneasiness, can always make room for a doubt. But the
self-satisfaction of the little-brained and big-muscled man who has
never had a rebuff or a day’s illness is cased in triple brass. Lady
Holme knew this self-satisfaction well. She had seen it staring out of
her husband’s big brown eyes. She saw it now in the boyish eyes of Leo
Ulford. She was at home with it and rather liked it. In truth, it had
at least one merit--from the woman’s point of view--it was decisively
masculine.
Whether Leo Ulford was, or was not, a blackguard; as Mrs. Trent had
declared, did not matter to her. Three-quarters of the men she knew were
blackguards according to the pinched ideas of Little Peddlington; and
Mrs. Trent might originally have issued from there.
She got on easily with Leo Ulford because she was experienced in the
treatment of his type. She knew exactly what to do with it; how to lead
it on, how to fend it off, how to throw cold water on its enterprise
without dashing it too greatly, how to banish any little, sulky
cloud that might appear on the brassy horizon without seeming to be
solicitous.
The type is amazingly familiar to the woman of the London world. She can
recognize it at a glance, and can send it in its armchair canter round
the circus with scarce a crack of the ring-mistress’s whip.
To-night Lady Holme enjoyed governing it more than usual, and for a
subtle reason.
In testing her power upon Leo Ulford she was secretly practising her
siren’s art, with a view that would have surprised and disgusted him,
still more amazed him, had he known it. She was firing at the dummy
in order that later she might make sure of hitting the living man. Leo
Ulford was the dummy. The living man would be Fritz.
Both dummy and living man were profoundly ignorant of her moving
principle. The one was radiant with self-satisfaction under her
fusillade. The other, ignorant of it so far, would have been furious in
the knowledge of it.
She knew-and laughed at the men.
Presently she turned the conversation, which was getting a little too
personal--on Leo Ulford’s side--to a subject very present in her mind
that night.
“Did you have a talk with Miss Schley the other day after I left?”
she asked. “I ran away on purpose to give you a chance. Wasn’t it
good-natured of me, when I was really longing to stay?”
Leo Ulford stretched out his long legs slowly, his type’s way of
purring.
“I’d rather have gone on yarning with you.”
“Then you did have a talk! She was at my house to-night, looking quite
delicious. You know she’s conquered London?”
“That sort’s up to every move on the board.”
“What do you mean? What board?”
She looked at him with innocent inquiry.
“I wish men didn’t know so much,” she added; with a sort of soft
vexation. “You have so many opportunities of acquiring knowledge and we
so few--if we respect the _convenances_.”
“Miss Schley wouldn’t respect ‘em.”
He chuckled, and again drew up and then stretched out his legs, slowly
and luxuriously.
“How can you know?”
“She’s not the sort that does. She’s the sort that’s always kicking over
the traces and keeping it dark. I know ‘em.”
“I think you’re rather unkind. Miss Schley’s mother arrives to-morrow.”
Leo Ulford put up his hands to his baby moustache and shook with
laughter.
“That’s the only thing she wanted to set her up in business,” he
ejaculated. “A marmar. I do love those Americans!”
“But you speak as if Mrs. Schley were a stage property!”
“I’ll bet she is. Wait till you see her. Why, it’s a regular profession
in the States, being a marmar. I tell you what--”
He leaned forward and fixed his blue eyes on Lady Holme, with an air of
profound acuteness.
“Are you going to see her?”
“Mrs. Schley? I daresay.”
“Well, you remember what I tell you. She’ll be as dry as a dog-biscuit,
wear a cap and spectacles with gold rims, and say nothing but ‘Oh,
my, yes indeed!’ to everything that’s said to her. Does she come from
Susanville?”
“How extraordinary! I believe she does.”
Leo Ulford’s laugh was triumphant and prolonged.
“That’s where they breed marmars!” he exclaimed, when he was able to
speak. “Women are stunning.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Lady Holme, preserving a
quiet air of pupilage. “But perhaps it’s better I shouldn’t. Anyhow, I
am quite sure Miss Schley’s mother will be worthy of her daughter.”
“You may bet your bottom dollar on that. She’ll be what they call ‘a
sootable marmar.’ I must get my wife to shoot a card on her.”
“I hope you’ll introduce me to Mrs. Ulford. I should like to know her.”
“Yours isn’t the voice to talk down a trumpet,” said Leo Ulford, with a
sudden air of surliness.
“I should like to know her now I know you and your father.”
At the mention of his father Leo Ulford’s discontented expression
increased.
“My father’s a rotter,” he said. “Never cared for anything. No shot to
speak of. He can sit on a horse all right. Had to, in South America
and Morocco and all those places. But he never really cared about it,
I don’t believe. Why, he’d rather look at a picture than a thoroughbred
any day!”
At this moment Sir Donald wandered into the room, with his hands behind
his thin back, and his eyes searching the walls. The Duke possessed a
splendid collection of pictures.
“There he is!” said Leo, gruffly.
“He doesn’t see us. Go and tell him I’m here.”
“Why? he might go out again if we keep mum.”
“But I want to speak to him. Sir Donald! Sir Donald!”
Sir Donald turned round at the second summons and came towards them,
looking rather embarrassed.
“Hulloa, pater!” said Leo.
Sir Donald nodded to his son with a conscientious effort to seem
familiar and genial.
“Hulloa!” he rejoined in a hollow voice.
“Your boy has been instructing me in American mysteries,” said Lady
Holme. “Do take me to the ballroom, Sir Donald.”
Leo Ulford’s good humour returned as abruptly as it had departed.
Her glance at him, as she spoke, had seemed to hint at a secret
understanding between them in which no one--certainly not his
father--was included.
“Pater can tell you all about the pictures,” he said, with a comfortable
assurance, which he did not strive to disguise, that she would be
supremely bored.
He stared at her hard, gave a short laugh, and lounged away.
When he had gone, Sir Donald still seemed embarrassed. He looked at Lady
Holme apologetically, and in his faded eyes she saw an expression
that reminded her of Lady Cardington. It was surely old age asking
forgiveness for its existence.
She did not feel much pity for it, but with the woman of the world’s
natural instinct to smooth rough places--especially for a man--she began
to devote herself to cheering Sir Donald up, as they slowly made their
way through room after room towards the distant sound of the music.
“I hear you’ve been plunging!” she began gaily.
Sir Donald looked vague.
“I’m afraid I scarcely--”
“Forgive me. I catch slang from my husband. He’s ruining my English. I
mean that I hear you’ve been investing--shall I say your romance?--in
a wonderful place abroad, with a fascinating name. I hope you’ll get
enormous interest.”
A faint colour, it was like the ghost of a blush, rose in Sir Donald’s
withered cheeks.
“Ah, Mr. Carey--”
He checked himself abruptly, remembering whet he had heard from Robin
Pierce.
“No, Mr. Pierce was my informant. He knows your place and says it’s too
wonderful. I adore the name.”
“Casa Felice. You would not advise me to change it, then?”
“Change it! Why?”
“Well, I--one should not, perhaps, insist beforehand that one is going
to have happiness, which must always lie on the knees of the gods.”
“Oh, I believe in defiance.”
There was an audacious sound in her voice. Her long talk with Leo Ulford
had given her back her belief in herself, her confidence in her beauty,
her reliance on her youth.
“You have a right to believe in it. But Casa Felice is mine.”
“Even to buy it was a defiance--in a way.”
“Perhaps so. But then--”
“But then you have set out and you must not turn back, Sir Donald.
Baptise your wonderful house yourself by filling it with happiness.
Another gave it its name. Give it yourself the reason for the name.”
Happiness seemed to shine suddenly in the sound of her speaking voice,
as it shone in her singing voice when the theme of her song was joy. Sir
Donald’s manner lost its self-consciousness, its furtive diffidence.
“You--you come and give my house its real baptism,” he said, with a
flash of ardour that, issuing from him, was like fire bursting out of a
dreary marsh land. “Will you? This August?”
“But,” she hesitated. “Isn’t Mr. Carey coming?”
At this moment they came into a big drawing-room that immediately
preceded the ballroom, with which it communicated by an immense doorway
hung with curtains of white velvet. They could see in the distance the
dancers moving rather indifferently in a lancers. Lord Holme and Miss
Schley were dancing in the set nearest to the doorway, and on the side
that faced the drawing-room. Directly Lady Holme saw the ballroom she
saw them. A sudden sense of revolt, the defiance of joy carried on into
the defiance of anger, rose up in her.
“If Mr. Carey is coming I’ll come too, and baptise your house,” she
said.
Sir Donald looked surprised, but he answered, with a swiftness that did
not seem to belong to old age:
“That is a bargain, Lady Holme. I regard that as a bargain.”
“I’ll not go back on it.”
There was a hard sound in her voice.
They entered the ballroom just as the band played the closing bars
of the lancers, and the many sets began to break up and melt into a
formless crowd which dispersed in various directions. The largest
number of people moved towards the archway near which the Duke was still
sitting, bravely exerting himself to be cheerful. Lady Holme and Sir
Donald became involved in this section of the crowd, and naturally
followed in its direction. Lord Holme and Miss Schley were at a short
distance behind them, and Lady Holme was aware of this. The double
defiance was still alive in her, and was strengthened by a clear sound
which reached her ears for a moment, then was swallowed up by the hum of
conversation from many intervening voices--the sound of the American’s
drawling tones raised to say something she could not catch. As she
came out into the hall, close to the Duke’s chair, she saw Rupert Carey
trying to make his way into the ballroom against the stream of dancers.
His face was flushed. There were drops of perspiration on his forehead,
and the violent expression that was perpetually visible in his red-brown
eyes, lighting them up as with a flame, seemed partially obscured as if
by a haze. The violence of them was no longer vivid but glassy.
Lady Holme did not notice all this. The crowd was round her, and she was
secretly preoccupied. She merely saw that Rupert Carey was close to her,
and she knew who was following behind her. A strong impulse came upon
her and she yielded to it without hesitation. As she reached Rupert
Carey she stopped and held out her hand.
“Mr. Carey,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to speak to you all the
evening. Why didn’t you ask me to dance?”
She spoke very distinctly. Carey stood still and stared at her, and now
she noticed the flush on his face and the unnatural expression in his
eyes. She understood at once what was the matter and repented of her
action. But it was too late to draw back. Carey stared dully for an
instant, as if he scarcely knew who she was. Then, with a lurch, he came
closer to her, and, with a wavering movement, tried to find her hand,
which she had withdrawn.
“Where is it?” he muttered in a thick voice. “Where is it?”
He groped frantically.
“Sir Donald!” Lady Holme whispered sharply, while the people nearest to
them began to exchange glances of surprise or of amusement.
She pressed his arm and he tried to draw her on. But Carey was exactly
in front of her. It was impossible for her to escape. He found her hand
at last, took it limply in his, bent down and began to kiss it, mumbling
some loud but incoherent words.
The Duke, who from his chair, was a witness of the scene, tried to raise
himself up, and a vivid spot of scarlet burned in his almost transparent
cheeks. His daughter hastened forward to stop his effort. Lady Holme
dragged her hand away violently, and Carey suddenly burst into tears.
Sir Donald hurried Lady Holme on, and Carey tried to follow, but was
forcibly prevented by two men.
When at length Lady Holme found herself at the other end of the great
hall, she turned and saw her husband coming towards her with a look of
fury on his face.
“I wish to go home,” she said to him in a low voice.
She withdrew her hand from Sir Donald’s arm and quietly bade him
good-bye. Lord Holme did not say a word.
“Where is the Duchess?” Lady Holme added. “Ah, there she is!”
She saw the Duchess hurriedly going towards the place where the Duke was
sitting, intercepted her swiftly, and bade her good-night.
“Now, Fritz!” she said.
She was conscious that a number of people were watching her, and her
voice and manner were absolutely unembarrassed. A footman took the
number of her cloak from Lord Holme and fetched the cloak. A voice cried
in the distance, “Lord Holme’s carriage!” Another, and nearer voice,
echoed the call. She passed slowly between two lines of men over a broad
strip of carpet to the portico, and stepped into the brougham.
As it glided away into the night she heard her husband’s loud breathing.
He did not speak for two or three minutes, but breathed like a man who
had been running, and moved violently in the carriage as if to keep
still were intolerable to him. The window next to him was up. He let it
down. Then he turned right round to his wife, who was leaning back in
her corner wrapped up in her black cloak.
“With the Duke sittin’ there!” he said in a loud voice. “With the Duke
sittin’ there!”
There was a sound of outrage in the voice.
“Didn’t I kick that sweep out of the house?” he added. “Didn’t I?”
“I believe you asked Mr. Carey not to call anymore.”
Lady Holme’s voice had no excitement in it.
“Asked him! I--”
“Don’t make such a noise, Fritz. The men will hear you.”
“I told him if he ever came again I’d have him put out.”
“Well, he never has come again.”
“What d’you mean by speakin’ to him? What d’you mean by it?”
Lady Holme knew that her husband was a thoroughly conventional man, and,
like all conventional men, had a horror of a public scene in which any
woman belonging to him was mixed up. Such a scene alone was quite enough
to rouse his wrath. But there was in his present anger something deeper,
more brutal, than any rage caused by a breach of the conventions. His
jealousy was stirred.
“He didn’t speak to you. You spoke to him.”
Lady Holme did not deny it.
“I heard every word you said,” continued Lord Holme, beginning to
breathe hard again. “I--I--”
Lady Holme felt that he was longing to strike her, that if he had been
the same man, but a collier or a labourer, born in another class of
life, he would not have hesitated to beat her. The tradition in which he
had been brought up controlled him. But she knew that if he could have
beaten her he would have hated her less, that his sense of bitter wrong
would have at once diminished. In self-control it grew. The spark rose
to a flame.
“You’re a damned shameful woman!” he said.
The brougham drew up softly before their house. Lord Holme, who was
seated on the side next the house, got out first. He did not wait on the
pavement to assist his wife, but walked up the steps, opened the door,
and went into the hall. Lady Holme followed. She saw her husband, with
the light behind him, standing with his hand on the handle of the hall
door. For an instant she thought that he was going to shut her out. He
actually pushed the door till the light was almost hidden. Then he flung
it open with a bang, threw down his hat and strode upstairs.
If he had shut her out! She found herself wondering what would have
become of her, where she would have gone. She would have had to go to
the Coburg, or to Claridge’s, without a maid, without luggage. As she
slowly came upstairs she heard her husband go into the drawing-room. Was
he waiting for her there? or did he wish to avoid her? When she
reached the broad landing she hesitated. She was half inclined to go in
audaciously, to laugh in his face; turn his fury into ridicule, tell him
she was the sort of woman who is born to do as she likes, to live as she
chooses, to think of nothing but her own will, consult nothing but her
whims of the moment. But she went on and into her bedroom.
Josephine was there and began to take the diamonds out of her hair. Lady
Holme did not say a word. She was listening intently for the sound of
any movement below. She heard nothing. When she was undressed, and there
was nothing more for the maid to do, she began to feel uneasy, as if
she would rather not dismiss the girl. But it was very late. Josephine
strangled her yawns with difficulty. There was no excuse for keeping her
up any longer.
“You can go.”
The maid went out, leaving Lady Holme standing in the middle of the big
bedroom. Next to it on one side was Lord Holme’s dressing-room. On the
other side there was a door leading into Lady Holme’s boudoir. Almost
directly after Josephine had gone Lady Holme heard the outer door of
this room opened, and the heavy step of her husband. It moved about
the room, stopped, moved about again. What could he be doing? She stood
where she was, listening. Suddenly the door between the rooms was thrown
open and Lord Holme appeared.
“Where’s the red book?” he said.
“The red book!”
“Where is it? D’you hear?”
“What do you want it for?”
“That sweep’s address.”
“What are you going to do? Write to him?”
“Write to him!” said Lord Holme, with bitter contempt. “I’m goin’ to
thrash him. Where is it?”
“You are going now?”
“I’ve not come up to answer questions. I’ve come for the red book. Where
is it?”
“The little drawer at the top on the right hand of the writing-table.”
Lord Holme turned back into the boudoir, went to the writing-table,
found the book, opened it, found the address and wrote it down on a bit
of paper. He folded the paper up anyhow and thrust it into his waistcoat
pocket. Then, without saying another word to his wife, or looking at
her, he went out and down the staircase.
She followed him on to the landing, and stood there till she heard the
hall door shut with a bang.
A clock below struck four. She went back into the bedroom and sank into
an armchair.
A slight sense of confusion floated over her mind for a moment, like a
cloud. She was not accustomed to scenes. There had been one certainly
when Rupert Carey was forbidden to come to the house any more, but it
had been brief, and she had not been present at it. She had only heard
of it afterwards. Lord Holme had been angry then, and she had rather
liked his anger. She took it as, in some degree, a measure of his
attachment to her. And then she had had no feeling of being in the wrong
or of humiliation. She had been charming to Carey, as she was charming
to all men. He had lost his head. He had mistaken the relations existing
between her and her husband, and imagined that such a woman as she was
must be unhappily mated with such a man as Lord Holme. The passionate
desire to console a perfectly-contented woman had caused him to go too
far, and bring down upon himself a fiat of exile, which he could not
defy since Lady Holme permitted it to go forth, and evidently was not
rendered miserable by it. So the acquaintance with Rupert Carey had
ceased, and life had slipped along once more on wheels covered with
india-rubber tyres.
And now she had renewed the acquaintance publicly and with disastrous
results.
As she sat there she began to wonder at herself, at the strength of her
temper, the secret violence of her nature. She had yielded like a
child to a sudden impulse. She had not thought of consequences. She had
ignored her worldly knowledge. She had considered nothing, but had acted
abruptly, as any ignorant, uneducated woman might have acted. She had
been the slave of a mood. Or had she been the slave of another woman--of
a woman whom she despised?
Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme
had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was
immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at
that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with
the more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman’s
successful impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed
to rise up against the selfish tyrannies of men. As she had walked
in the crowd, and heard for an instant Miss Schley’s drawlling voice
speaking to her husband, she had felt as if the forbidding of the
acquaintance between herself and Rupert Carey had been an act of
tyranny, as if the acquaintance between Miss Schley and her husband were
a worse act of tyranny. The feeling was wholly unreasonable, of course.
How could Lord Holme know that she wished to impose a veto, even as
he had? And what reason was there for such a veto? That lay deep down
within her as woman’s instinct. No man could have understood it.
And now Lord Holme had gone out in the dead of the night to thrash
Carey.
She began to think about Carey.
How disgusting he had been. A drunken man must be one of two
things--either terrible or absurd. Carey had been absurd--disgusting
and absurd. It had been better for him if he had been terrible. But
mumblings and tears! She remembered what she had said of Carey to Robin
Pierce--that something in his eyes, one of those expressions which are
the children of the eyes, or of the lines about the eyes, told her that
he was capable of doing something great. What an irony that her remark
to Robin had been succeeded by such a scene! And she heard again the
ugly sound of Carey’s incoherent exclamations, and felt again the limp
clasp of his hot, weak hand, and saw again the tears running over his
flushed, damp face. It was all very nauseous. And yet--had she been
wrong in what she had said of him? Did she even think that she had been
wrong now, after what had passed?
What kind of great action had she thought he would be capable of if a
chance to do something great were thrown in his way? She said to herself
that she had spoken at random, as one perpetually speaks in Society. And
then she remembered Carey’s eyes. They were ugly eyes. She had always
thought them ugly. Yet, now and then, there was something in them,
something to hold a woman--no, perhaps not that--but something to
startle a woman, to make her think, wonder, even to make her trust. And
the scene which had just occurred, with all its weakness, its fatuity,
its maundering display of degradation and the inability of any
self-government, had not somehow destroyed the impression made upon
Lady Holme by that something in Carey’s eyes. What she had said to Robin
Pierce she might not choose ever to say again. She would not choose
ever to say it again--of that she was certain--but she had not ceased to
think it.
A conviction based upon no evidence that could be brought forward to
convince anyone is the last thing that can be destroyed in a woman’s
heart.
It was nearly six o’clock when Lady Holme heard a step coming up the
stairs. She was still sitting in the deep chair, and had scarcely moved.
The step startled her. She put her hands on the arms of the chair and
leaned forward. The step passed her bedroom. She heard the door of the
dressing-room opened and then someone moving about.
“Fritz!” she called. “Fritz!”
There was no answer. She got up and went quickly to the dressing-room.
Her husband was there in his shirt sleeves. His evening coat and
waistcoat were lying half on a chair, half on the floor, and he was in
the act of unfastening his collar. She looked into his face, trying to
read it.
“Well?” she said. “Well?”
“Go to bed!” he said brutally.
“What have you done?”
“That’s my business. Go to bed. D’you hear?”
She hesitated. Then she said:
“How dare you speak to me like that? Have you seen Mr. Carey?”
Lord Holme suddenly took his wife by the shoulders; pushed her out of
the room, shut the door, and locked it.
They always slept in the same bedroom. Was he not going to bed at all?
What had happened? Lady Holme could not tell from his face or manner
anything of what had occurred. She looked at her clock and saw her
husband had been out of the house for two hours. Indignation and
curiosity fought within her; and she became conscious of an excitement
such as she had never felt before. Sleep was impossible, but she got
into bed and lay there listening to the noises made by her husband in
his dressing-room. She could just hear them faintly through the door.
Presently they ceased. A profound silence reigned. There was a sofa
in the dressing-room. Could he be trying to sleep on it? Such a thing
seemed incredible to her. For Lord Holme, although he could rough it
when he was shooting or hunting, at home or abroad, and cared little for
inconvenience when there was anything to kill, was devoted to comfort in
ordinary life, and extremely exigent in his own houses. For nothing, for
nobody, had Lady Holme ever known him to allow himself to be put out.
She strained her ears as she lay in bed. For a long time the silence
lasted. She began to think her husband must have left the dressing-room,
when she heard a noise as if something--some piece of furniture--had
been kicked, and then a stentorian “Damn!”
Suddenly she burst out laughing. She shook against the pillows. She
laughed and laughed weakly; helplessly, till the tears ran down her
cheeks. And with those tears ran away her anger, the hot, strained
sensation that had been within her even since the scene at Arkell House.
If she had womanly pride it melted ignominiously. If she had feminine
dignity--that pure and sacred panoply which man ignores at his own
proper peril--it disappeared. The “poor old Fritz” feeling, which was
the most human, simple, happy thing in her heart, started into vivacity
as she realised the long legs flowing into air over the edge of the
short sofa, the pent-up fury--fury of the too large body on the
too small resting-place--which found a partial vent in the hallowed
objurgation of the British Philistine.
With every moment that she lay in the big bed she was punishing
Fritz. She nestled down among the pillows. She stretched out her limbs
luxuriously. How easy it was to punish a man! Lying there she recalled
her husband’s words, each detail of his treatment of her since she had
spoken to Carey. He had called her “a damned shameful woman.” That was
of all the worst offence. She told herself that she ought to, that
she must, for that expression alone, hate Fritz for ever. And then,
immediately, she knew that she had forgiven it already, without effort,
without thought.
She understood the type with which she had to deal, the absurd
boyishness that was linked with the brutality of it, the lack of mind
to give words their true, their inmost meaning. Words are instruments of
torture, or the pattering confetti of a carnival, not by themselves but
by the mind that sends them forth. Fritz’s exclamation might have roused
eternal enmity in her if it had been uttered by another man. Coming from
Fritz it won its pardon easily by having a brother, “Damn.”
She wondered how long her husband would be ruled by his sense of
outrage.
Towards seven she heard another movement; another indignant exclamation,
then the creak of furniture, a step, a rattling at the door. She turned
on her side towards the wall, shut her eyes and breathed lightly and
regularly. The key revolved, the door opened and closed, and she heard
feet shuffling cautiously over the carpet. A moment and Fritz was in
bed. Another moment, a long sigh, and he was asleep.
Lady Holme still lay awake. Now that her attention was no longer fixed
upon her husband’s immediate proceedings she began to wonder again what
had happened between him and Rupert Carey. She would find out in the
morning.
And presently she too slept.