It was Lady Wilmot’s at-home day, but so early in the afternoon that
she could still indulge in the _tête-à-tête_ gossip with the
friend who had lunched with her, a branch of her life’s occupation in
which she excelled.
She was a woman who supported well her fifty-five years. A little
portly, her gray crinkled hair arranged _à la Marquise_, her
ample skirts further suggesting the era of powder and patches,
her bright eyes full of rather malicious humor, Lady Wilmot was a
somewhat striking figure. That she was more feared than loved probably
flattered the vanity which was not the least of her characteristics.
The circumstance certainly did not affect her. Possessed of an income
sufficiently large to make the exercise of life’s amenities a matter
of inclination rather than of necessity, her inclination was naturally
capricious, and she not infrequently smiled to hear herself described
with a nervous laugh as “so delightfully uncommon.”
“Uncommon rude, my dear,” had been her reply in one instance, “as you
would have discovered if I had happened to be Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith,
or Mrs. Robinson.”
As it was, Lady Wilmot’s parties were attended by as heterogeneous a
throng as any private house in London. In search of possible amusement,
she cast her net wide, and, in company with men and women of her own
sort, drew into the Onslow Square drawing-room, journalists who wrote
fashion articles, novelists who went into many editions, painters
whose imposing canvases appeared every year on the sacred walls of the
Academy, as well as those who worked in Chelsea garrets. Then there
were the faddists.
“I have the best collection in London,” Lady Wilmot was wont to boast.
“I have several excellent antique Vegetarians, a very good color,
considering; a complete set of Mystics, only slightly cracked; any
number of women athletes in a fairly good state of preservation, as
well as one or two interesting oddments.”
Lady Wilmot’s present guest was her niece, a sharp-faced little woman,
who for two or three years had been living quietly in the country on
account of her health. This fact at least was stimulating. It meant
arrears of gossip to be retailed respecting the life-history of their
common acquaintances, and since half-past one Lady Wilmot’s tongue had
not been idle.
The doings of the immediate family lasted through a protracted and
hilarious lunch, and when, somewhat maimed and damaged, its members
had been dismissed, there still remained the concentric circles of
acquaintances. Lady Wilmot began at the inner rings.
“You know Rose Summers is home?” she said, settling the fat cushions at
her back with a view to lengthy comfort. “No, dear, _without_ her
gaby of a husband. She’s left him out there to get into mischief. Oh,
yes, my dear, he’s not too great a fool for that. None of them are. Did
you never meet Jack Summers? A huge imbecile, you know. Over life-size,
all body and no brains. The ideal man for a soldier.”
“Rose had enough brains for two,” returned Mrs. Carruthers.
“Yes, but no looks. Most unfortunate arrangement for a woman. She has
to marry a man stupid enough not to know she’s got them. She’s staying
with Cecily Kingslake.”
“Oh, tell me about the Kingslakes,” asked Mrs. Carruthers, with
interest. “They were just married the last time I met them. I used
to think Cecily so pretty. _What_ a mistake to make such a poor
match!”
“You should see her now,” returned Lady Wilmot, composedly.
“Gone off?”
“Gone under. Buried beneath honeysuckle and green stuff. The worst of
love in a cottage is that love doesn’t last, and the cottage does.”
“But I thought Robert was getting on? Some one was talking about his
last book the other day, and saying----”
“Yes, quite lately he’s been making money. There was always a popular
streak in Robert which only needed working. Some woman’s shown him
where it lies, and he’s got it in full swing now, so the guineas are
beginning to roll in.”
“Why some woman?”
Lady Wilmot chuckled. “Don’t you know our Robert? A clever woman laughs
when she sees him coming.”
“Susceptible?”
“That’s putting it mildly. All men can take flattery in gigantic doses.
Robert lives on it entirely. He dined here last night. Incidentally
he ate his dinner, but his true meal was provided by the girl he took
down, who flung at him _pounds_ of the best butter,--solid pounds.
I blushed for her and trembled for him, but I might have spared myself
the trouble. She’s too clever, and he has too good a digestion.”
“Didn’t his wife come?”
“No. He comes up to town ‘to read,’ if one may believe him. And I
happened to have asked Philippa Burton and young Nevern in to dine last
night--not a dinner-party--so I invited Robert too.”
“Perhaps she’s the lady who inspires the new style of writing?”
observed Mrs. Carruthers, building better than she knew.
“She’s quite capable of it,” returned Lady Wilmot, “but they only met
last night. She has designs on Nevern, I think, temporarily abandoned
for Robert. She’s coming this afternoon, by the way.” Lady Wilmot
laughed again. “I asked her on purpose to meet Dick Mayne. I thought
they’d be so quaint together.”
“Why?” inquired her niece.
“You haven’t seen Philippa? She’s one of the most interesting objects
in my collection.”
“Where did you find her?”
“Don’t you remember Major Burton, that seedy-looking man at Cheltenham?
Retired, you know, on half-pay. Used to be in your father’s regiment.
Well, she’s his daughter. He died some five or six years ago, leaving
her next to nothing, and now she potters about. You know the sort of
thing such girls do; tinkering with copper, messing about with furnaces
to make enamel hat-pins, designing horrible, bleak-looking furniture,
and so on.”
“Does she get a living at that?”
“My dear, don’t ask me to probe the mysteries of a woman’s income,”
exclaimed her hostess with a laugh. “She’s pretty, and evidently she
finds sandals and mystic gowns useful. When a woman’s not sufficiently
original to get money or notoriety by her brains, she often achieves
both through her fads. Philippa is one of those young women who will
always be ‘taken up’ by some one. Silly spinsters of uncertain age
have a habit of doing it. She’s just been living with one of them who
adored her--thought her a transcendent genius instead of a clever
little humbug. Now the smash has come. If you mention Miss Wetherby
to Philippa, she looks pained and sighs: ‘It is so sad to lose one’s
illusions. Miss Wetherby is not _quite_ the fine woman I thought
her.’ What Miss Wetherby says about Philippa, I don’t know--I’m not
acquainted with the lady--but I can guess. There used to be a man
about. What’s become of him now I don’t know. Another illusion gone,
possibly. Philippa’s mysterious in more ways than one. But there, my
dear, what does it matter? If you begin to be moral, you lose half the
fun of life. I’m strictly _un_moral on principle--unmoral’s such a
good word, isn’t it? Anyhow I’m looking forward to the meeting between
Philippa and Dick Mayne. He doesn’t know the type, and she’ll embarrass
him so beautifully. I hope she’ll try to flirt with him. I think I
shall scream with joy if she does. It will be too funny.”
“You know Mr. Mayne is going to stay with the Kingslakes?” gasped Mrs.
Carruthers, placing edgeways with difficulty her little contribution to
“the news.”
“_No!_” It was a piece of information that had hitherto escaped
her aunt, whose manner of receiving it caused Mrs. Carruthers to bridle
with importance.
“Yes, I happened to meet him yesterday at the Vezeys’, and he told me
so. Why shouldn’t he?”
“Why, you know how desperately in love he was with Cecily.”
“But that was years ago.”
“When they were engaged? Yes. My dear, if you’d heard Robert’s ravings
at the time! Heavens! how funny it was! He and Cecily nearly came to
grief over it, because Cecily said Mayne was an old friend, and she
couldn’t refuse to see him, which was, I believe, what the lunatic
wanted her to promise. Robert’s my godson, and he’s good-looking enough
to make me quite fond of him, but he’s a heaven-born fool for all
that. Have you ever heard his rhetoric when he’s excited? You should.
It’s worthy of a successful melodrama. He used to do the romantic
hero-in-love to perfection. His feeling for Cecily was such that it
was a profanation for any other man to touch her hand, and did I
think a woman who allowed a rejected suitor to have tea in the same
drawing-room with her, _could_ possess that burning, white-souled
adoration for her affianced husband which he required from the woman
who was to bear his name? I offered him the impossible advice of not
being a fool, and Mayne went away to catch tigers and fevers--and the
public ear.”
“Yes, he’s done that,” returned Mrs. Carruthers. “He’s quite a great
man now--the papers are full of him.”
“Mr. Mayne,” announced the footman at the door.
“We were talking about you,” said Lady Wilmot, rising graciously.
“I was unconscious of my danger,” returned Mayne, with an audacious
smile which met its friendly response. Mayne was, with Lady Wilmot,
a privileged person, chiefly because he took her maliciousness for
granted.
“You’ve grown,” she remarked, regarding with critical attention his
bronzed face and tall, well-knit figure.
“What did you expect? I was but a lad of thirty when I left you.” He
had shaken hands with Mrs. Carruthers, and seated himself on the end of
a divan by this time--very much at his ease.
“You’re much better looking,” was Lady Wilmot’s next comment.
“I can bear it,” he returned, imperturbably. “If I say _you_
haven’t altered at all it’s the best compliment I can pay you.”
“I will ignore its lack of truthfulness, and give you some tea,” she
said, crossing to the tea-table. “Are you going to read any more papers
this time? Why didn’t you come to see me when you were home two years
ago?”
“Because, dear lady, _you_ were abroad.”
“Was I? So I was. Who did you see then? Did you see the Kingslakes?”
She shot a glance at him as he rose to take the cup she offered, but
his face was immovable.
“I didn’t see any one. After reading an exceedingly dull paper before
the Royal Society, I fled to the shelter of the paternal roof in
Ireland, desperately ashamed of myself.”
“You don’t want me to ask you about your travels and explorings, do
you? It would bore me a great deal to hear them. Sugar?”
“Thanks, no. Not half so much, I’m sure, as it would bore me to tell
them. I came to hear all the latest scandal. Won’t you begin before the
actors arrive?”
“Miss Burton,” said the man at the door.
“Too late!” ejaculated Lady Wilmot, as she went forward to meet her new
guest.
“Ah, how do you do, Philippa, my dear? Did you bring an escort of
police?--or is the untutored savage getting used to sandals? My dear,
where will your hair stop? You look like Mélisande. Can’t you throw
some of it out of the window? Mr. Mayne will run down and climb up.
He’s used to athletic exercises. By the way, Mr. Mayne--Miss Burton.
Now you can go and talk lions and things. He’s an explorer, you know.
Here’s Mr. Nevern. He’ll have to put up with me. How do you do, Mr.
Nevern?”
During these somewhat incoherent remarks Miss Burton had adopted the
simple expedient of doing nothing, and, as Mayne was constrained to
admit, doing it rather well.
She stood with a faint, dreamy smile just touching her lips, and
waited till there was an opportunity of offering her hand to Mayne.
This she did with a slow movement, according to the state of mind
of its recipient, subtly graceful, or somewhat affected. Rather
characteristically Mayne inclined to the least flattering of these
strictures. He did not like “that kind of thing,” even though in this
instance it was the act of a woman by many people considered beautiful.
Philippa Burton’s tall figure was of the sinuous type, and she clothed
it in trailing garments, cut on the latest hygienic principle,
combining conspicuousness with impracticability. The robe she now wore
was of some coarse white material, a little soiled at the hem where it
trailed, and a little too low at the neck, where several necklaces of
beads were wound about a full white throat. Her hat, of that peculiar
make which flies from the head, and is restrained by ribbons tied under
the ear, revealed, rather than covered, quantities of dark, rippling
hair of the Rossetti texture.
Her dark eyes, full of a cultivated mystery, very effectively lit a
pale face, whose excessive spirituality was redeemed by full red lips.
“You are _the_ Mr. Mayne?” she began, with an elusive smile. “I
read your travel-book. It is wonderful. A book that sets the blood
racing in one’s veins. _You_ are one of the strong men. I worship
strength in men.”
Mayne felt uncomfortable. He had been out of the civilized world for
some time, and was new to the fashion of emotional conversation in
drawing-rooms and omnibuses.
“Oh--my little book!” he answered, carelessly. “I can’t write a bit,
you know. It was awful stuff. At least, the way it was put together.
The material was all right.”
“But indeed you do yourself injustice,” Philippa returned, in her
peculiar low voice, as always, surcharged with feeling. “Mr. Kingslake
was saying only the other night how wonderfully vivid is your style.
So much color--so much----”
“You know Robert Kingslake?” interrupted Mayne, with interest.
“We met here the other night, at dinner,” she said, fixing her
wonderful eyes upon his face in an abstracted way. “What a charming
man! He has a beautiful soul, I’m sure. There is poetry in his work,
idealism----”
“He’s made a lot of money over this last novel of his,” remarked Mayne,
a little brutally.
“Yes. Doesn’t that _show_ that the world is waiting for a message?
The poor sad world that longs to be shown the beauty it is missing.”
“I hadn’t noticed it,” returned Mayne. “But then I haven’t seen much of
the paying world lately.”
“One must have faith,” said Philippa, softly. “The faith that removes
mountains.”
“And brings in the shekels,” laughed Mayne. “Kingslake’s has been
justified, anyway. I’m going down there next week,” he added, for the
sake of changing the rarefied atmosphere of the conversation. “To
Sheepcote, you know, with the Kingslakes.”
“Yes, so Mr. Macdonald told me--Mr. Kingslake, I mean. I knew his work
first through his _nom de guerre_, and I can scarcely think of him
yet as Mr. Kingslake. We shall meet again, then,” she went on. “I’m
going to Sheepcote too.”
“What’s that?” asked Lady Wilmot, who, as Mayne rightly surmised, had
been keeping one amused ear upon the conversation, while she failed to
listen to Mr. Nevern with the other. “What’s that? _You_ going
down to Sheepcote, Philippa? What for?”
“So strange!” returned Philippa, absolutely undisconcerted by the
brusque impertinence of the question, and she recounted the information
she had written to Cecily. “And do you know, dear Lady Wilmot, that
I went to school with Mrs. Kingslake--Cecily Merivale? Wasn’t it a
charming discovery to make? I’m longing to meet her again. Dear Cecily!
I haven’t seen her since she was about seventeen. She was _so_
pretty.”
“Well, if it’s her looks you care about, you’ll be disappointed. She’s
lost them. I’ve no patience with a woman who loses her looks. It’s so
careless.”
“But, dear Lady Wilmot,” began Philippa, with a tender smile, “after
all, do looks matter?”
“Don’t be a humbug, my dear. You know they do,” returned her hostess
with finality.
Mayne rose. “Don’t go, I haven’t spoken to you,” Lady Wilmot commanded.
“Now, Mr. Nevern, you can talk to Philippa. So you are going to stay
with the Kingslakes?”
“Kingslake asked me to go down--yes.”
“I thought you and he were not the best of friends?”
Mayne shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “I have no recollection of
any quarrel.”
“_Quarrel?_ No, but----” She paused. It was difficult even for
Lady Wilmot to continue, before the impassivity of his face.
“I’m sorry Cecily is not looking well,” he said, deliberately
mentioning the name he knew trembled on her tongue. “Diana told me.
I went to see her yesterday. _Diana’s_ grown,” he added, with a
broad smile.
“Grown up. How do you like Philippa?” she inquired, in a slightly lower
tone, as she walked with him to the door.
“There are questions of yours which I have always resolutely refused to
answer.”
Lady Wilmot laughed with evident enjoyment.
“You felt what a little boy feels when some one sings a hymn in the
drawing-room on week-days,” she declared. “Turn round. She’s telling
Nevern what a beautiful soul he’s got.”
Involuntarily, Mayne followed the direction of her eyes. Mr. Nevern, a
round-faced young poet, was leaning towards Miss Burton, and regarding
her with an expression in which flattered vanity struggled with boyish
admiration, and it was with difficulty that Mayne checked the laugh his
hostess had been anxious to provoke.
“Good-bye,” he said. “I meant what I told you. You haven’t altered a
bit--in any way.”