“My dear!” said Lady Wilmot, as her motor-car stopped in Dover Street
before her club. “Who’d have thought of seeing you?” The man opened the
door, and she descended with a rustle of silks to shake hands with Rose
Summers, who was passing. “What are you doing away from your country
cottage? I thought you never left off holding your children’s hands for
a minute. Come in and have some tea,” she exclaimed in one breath.
Rose hesitated. “I succumb to tea,” she said, after a second’s pause,
“though I’ve enough shopping to do to last a week.”
They entered the club, and Lady Wilmot bore down upon the tea-room like
a ship in full sail, Rose following in her wake with an expression
of anticipated amusement. It was to the prospect of gossip she had
succumbed, rather than to the offer of tea, with the prescience that to
one who had fallen a little behind the times, half an hour with Lady
Wilmot would be a godsend. “I shall learn more than I could pick up in
three months, otherwise,” was her smiling reflection as she settled
herself opposite her hostess at one of the tables of colored marble, in
the embrasure of a window.
“We’re early, or we shouldn’t get a table,” pursued Lady Wilmot.
“Always a hideous crush here. Well, my dear, I hope the babies are
better? What an untold nuisance children must be! Measles is part of
them, I suppose? How do you like your cottage? And when is Jack coming
home? Tea and cake and muffins”--this to the waiter, in parenthesis.
“Do you see that woman coming in? The one with the painted gauze
scarf--not the only paint about her, by the way. Well, remind me to
tell you something in connection with her, presently. Quite amusing.
And how long are you going to be in town, my dear? And where are you
staying?”
Rose selected the last two questions to answer.
“I’m only up for the day,” she said. “I’m afraid to leave the children
longer. They develop a fresh infectious disease the moment my eye is
not upon them.” She laughed, drawing off her gloves. It was the laugh
of a woman contented with life, as for her it had resolved itself into
the normal fate of motherhood, with its anxieties, its pleasures, its
anticipations.
Seated in the angle of the window, the light falling on her sunburnt
face, her erect figure well suited by a successfully cut cloth gown,
she was not only pleasant to look at, but she struck a curiously
different note from the majority of the other women who now began
to crowd the tea-room--women whose distinctive feature was their
aimlessness.
“You’ve improved a great deal, my dear!” remarked Lady Wilmot, after
a critical stare. “I always said you were the type that improved with
age. You’ll be a good-looking woman at forty, when all this sort of
thing”--she included the room with a sweep of her hand--“is done for.”
Mrs. Summers laughed again. “How encouraging of you!”
“You’ve seen the Kingslakes, I suppose?” was Lady Wilmot’s next query.
“No, scarcely once since they got into their flat last November. Just
as they came to town, I moved out, and the children have kept me bound
hand and foot ever since. I’m going to rush in between five and six on
my way to Victoria.”
“My dear, you won’t know Cecily!”
“Why not?” asked Rose, almost sharply.
“So pretty. So well dressed. Curious what a man can do, isn’t it?
No wonder they’re vain.” Lady Wilmot smiled broadly as she raised a
superfluously buttered muffin to her lips.
“What man?” asked Rose, brusquely.
“Mayne, my dear; Dick Mayne, The Uncommercial Traveller, or Patience
Rewarded. It would make a nice little modern tract. But the result
is admirable as far as Cecily is concerned. I saw her about eighteen
months ago. She came up to a lunch-party with Robert. She was
positively dowdy, and like the lady--who was it?--who had no more
spirit in her. Never saw such a collapse in my life, and every one
agreed with me. But now! As pretty as ever--prettier. There’s something
different about her, too. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps it’s a touch
of dignity about my lady. No, it’s more than that. It’s something
a little sphinx-like. Anyhow, it’s a most effective pose. Every
one’s talking, of course; but, as I tell them, when the result is so
admirable why inquire too closely about the means?” She chuckled a
little. Rose looked at her calmly.
“Every one’s talking?” she said. “That means what you so aptly describe
as ‘this sort of thing.’” She let her eyes wander round the room, which
was now filled with chattering women. “Does it matter? Cecily’s friends
know as well as you do that what you insinuate is a--is not true.”
Lady Wilmot’s expression wavered. She had crossed swords with Rose
Summers before, and always found the exercise a little exhausting.
Reluctantly she determined to be amicable, so with a laugh she shrugged
her shoulders. “Of course, my dear. What a literal mind you have! You
know Robert’s got a secretary?” she added, with apparent innocence.
“So I hear. Philippa Burton,” returned Rose, with composure.
Lady Wilmot’s eyes lit up. “Do you know her?”
“I met her long ago in Germany. She was a school-fellow of Cecily’s. I
dare say you know that.”
There was a pause. Lady Wilmot determined on a new move.
“Cecily’s a fool,” she said, gravely,--“that is, if she wants to keep
her husband.” She glanced sharply at Rose, who was sipping her tea with
exasperating indifference. “She had driven Robert to try reprisals,
I suppose.” There was a slight pause, during which Rose took some
more tea-cake. “That’s what every one imagines, anyhow,” continued
Lady Wilmot, with a distinct access of sharpness. “It’s a dangerous
game.” She shook her head as a virtuous matron might have done, and
Rose struggled with a smile. “I’ve no patience with wives who allow
attractive women to enter their homes under the pretext of work which
they ought to be doing themselves,” she concluded, in an exasperated
tone, as she glanced at her neighbor’s blank face. “Why on earth
doesn’t Cecily act as secretary to her own husband?”
“Because she’s writing a novel of her own, and hasn’t time,” said Rose,
speaking at last, to give, from Lady Wilmot’s point of view, an utterly
valueless piece of information.
“Ridiculous!” she ejaculated. “I should have thought there was enough
scribbling in the family. Why doesn’t she look after her husband, and
be a companion and helpmeet to him, instead of allowing another woman
to come in and give the sympathy which only a wife--and all that kind
of thing?” she concluded, hastily, becoming suddenly conscious of her
companion’s amused eyes. It was a triumph for Rose. She had actually
driven Lady Wilmot, of all people, into the ridiculous position of
defending the domestic hearth, and she had the satisfaction of knowing
that no one felt her position more keenly.
She rose from the table, extending her hand with great cordiality.
“Thank you so much for your delicious tea,” she said. “And I’m sure
you’ll forgive me for rushing off in this unceremonious way. My train
goes at half-past seven, and I _must_ get Cecily in, as well
as socks and shoes and sashes and things. No, _don’t_ move.
There’s such a crush to get through, and I can find my way out--truly.
Good-bye.” She was gone, threading her way between the tea-tables,
and smiling back at Lady Wilmot, who instantly summoned a bewildered
waiter, upon whom she made a vague attack for indefinite shortcomings.
Rose stepped into a hansom with a smile which already contained more
bitterness than amusement. She was reviewing facts as interpreted by
Lady Wilmot and company.