The new-made Darnleys, James and his sister, were triumphantly ushered
into the upper world by Lady Adela, whose father’s rise, whose mother’s
persistence, had won at last a reluctant toleration from her betters.
Accustomed from her birth to live on terms of acquaintance with more
or less interesting or conspicuous people, Lady Adela had developed
something of that native air and ease which James Dadd had never been
able to acquire in all his long exile from his own social hemisphere.
Nor did James Dadd, transformed into James Darnley, ever succeed in
fitting himself perfectly to his altered conditions. His wife, besides
loving him devotedly, if placidly, did all she could to acclimatize
him; she made him buy a vast new house on the Yorkshire moors; she
filled it with people, she made her husband play the squire; but to the
last this man of many descents remained less adaptable, less congenial
to his new environment than many a versatile Hebrew whom twenty years
of unlimited wealth transform into what is nowadays considered a very
tolerable imitation of an English gentleman--especially as seen on the
stage. Among people who talked of money and diseases with a freedom
that struck him as indecent, James Darnley, brought up to think both
topics unmentionable, remained timid and uncomfortable to the end of
his days, and when at last a combination of dyspepsia and a Primrose
League banquet caused him to retire from a world in which he had always
been a stranger, even Lady Adela felt that he was somehow set free
from a long bondage. Gentle in her grief as in all her other emotions,
she resigned herself to becoming crapes, and found new pleasure in the
guardianship of her son Kingston, now turned eleven.
But if James Darnley, first of his line, died a failure,
far otherwise was it with his sister. In her the blood of
great-great-great-grandmother Messiter must have seethed and boiled
with concentrated virulence, for she took to her new life with a zeal
that left nothing to be desired, and soon dropped behind her all trace
and all memory of Darnley-on-Downe. Her manners, from the first, were
forward and easy; her ambition was to be considered a woman of fashion,
and she carried to its accomplishment a temperament entirely devoid
of bashfulness or indecision. Mr. Mimburn, her wealthy stockbroker
husband, soon shrank into mere cheque-signing obscurity beside the
flaming figure of his wife. Her remarks were quoted, her gowns
described; she became at last, in those far-off days, a precursor of
that modern type of woman who is perfectly virtuous, except in dress,
manners, and mind. Nothing would have horrified her more than illicit
proposals, except the accusation of being shocked by them; nothing have
more appalled her than an attack on her virtue, except the suspicion
that she had any.
Her gossip always made a point of flirting round impropriety, and she
was at pains to damn her own flawless character by arch implications.
She had cultivated French, and now was a walking chronicle of the
demi-monde, as well as a living picture of its most prominent
inhabitants. A passport to her friendship was the possession of a past,
and she hastened to attribute amorous adventures to all her dearest
friends on any foundation or none. The foundation did not matter; the
point was that the suggestion glorified them in her eyes; part of her
admiration for Lady Adela arose from the fact that she suspected that
saintly woman of having ‘consoled herself’ during the lifetime of the
late James Darnley. Mrs. Mimburn’s knowledge of her sister-in-law’s
untried and incorruptible virtue was never allowed to interfere with
this romantic possibility; in the face of all probability, in the face
of all evidence, she must imagine some such episode in any career that
touched her own, or else immediately cease to take any interest in
it. So far had she travelled from the mental chastity that ruled in
Darnley-on-Downe.
So, between mother and aunt, the young Kingston Darnley journeyed
through boyhood to maturity. Lady Adela was an ideal parent, and
discharged her maternal duties with a gentle ease that made her
son’s progress altogether pleasant. She was one of the cushion-women
whose numbers nowadays are yearly diminishing. Without initiative,
without any clearness of mind, she had the placid receptivity that
often accompanies such a temperament. The lack of colour in her own
character made it harmonious and restful as a background to more
vivid personalities. Therefore, without effort or desire on her part,
she attracted confidence. She was good to lean on; she listened
well--though often without hearing, and always without understanding.
But her sweet acquiescence gave everyone the idea of being fully
comprehended, and her incapacity for independent action added to her
value as a recipient of confidences. She could be trusted to say little
and do less; and the large majority who, in making confession, only
desire a sympathetic listener, felt that Lady Adela was an altogether
soft and comfortable personality to repose against. What more could be
required? The faithful adviser frequently gives much less, and is, as
a rule, much less valued than the imperturbable Lady Adelas of life.
Kingston Darnley was universally held to be highly fortunate in his
mother, and, by the time he came of age, as he had neither married an
actress nor gone to ruin on the turf, her skill in managing him was
considered marvellous, and even beyond what might reasonably have been
expected.
‘I assure you, La-la, considering what young men are nowadays, I do
think you have done wonders,’ said Mrs. Mimburn, who had called to
congratulate her sister-in-law on the latest triumph achieved by her
diplomacy.
‘Kingston is the dearest child,’ acknowledged Lady Adela, deprecating
undue flattery of her own genius. ‘One only needs to guide him. He is
all obedience. I have never attempted to drive him, Minnie.’
Mrs. Mimburn tossed her head. Her name was always a sore point. She
had suffered heavily in the matter at the hands of her parents, who
had christened her Minna Adelaide, after her great-aunts of formidable
memory, the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd. Understanding that such
names were a grievous handicap to any runner in the race of fashion,
and desirous, too, of obliterating all traces of Darnley-on-Downe, Mrs.
Mimburn did the best she could to remedy the disaster by resolutely
calling herself ‘Minne-Adélaïde.’ This Gallicism Lady Adela could never
bring herself to remember, and embittered the life of her sister-in-law
by calling her Min or Minnie when in a good temper, or plain Minna on
the very rare occasions when she happened to be in not so good a one.
‘Well,’ tartly replied Mrs. Mimburn, with another toss of her plumed
head, ‘I think you have been wise, La-la. But you need not be too
sure of Kingston. There isn’t any reason to believe, La-la, that even
_your_ son is not made of flesh and blood. Such stories one hears! And
a mother is the last person a boy could think of confiding in. Depend
upon it, you don’t know everything. Boys don’t let their mothers marry
them off at Kingston’s age unless there is a reason for it. Dear me!
of course not; everyone loves a little bit of freedom,’ concluded Mrs.
Mimburn, filling her voice with the suggestion of a wicked past.
Lady Adela had the happy knack of never hearing anything that
displeased her. The process of years had brought her a sweet serenity
that nothing could ruffle. Whatever happened Lady Adela smiled.
‘Dear boy,’ she answered reflectively, without any symptom of having
noticed her sister-in-law’s remarks, ‘dear, dear boy! he has always
been as free as air. And he has been so good about the engagement. Min,
you know, five-and-twenty is such a charming age for a man to settle.
If one waits longer the nice girls of one’s own age have all got
married off, and one has to put up with an elderly one, or a widow, or
something dreadful like that.’
‘Or something even worse,’ supplemented Mrs. Mimburn, with a smile of
worldly knowledge. She was looking most typical that afternoon. She was
a little round dark woman, with deep, luscious eyes, and more black
hair than Nature had provided. Her gown was of brown velvet, adorned
with an incalculable number of ruckings, tuckings, ruchings, quillings,
flutings, flouncings, rosettes, and insertions. Her parasol lost its
outline in a foam of scarlet, and her brown tricorne hat, with its one
enormous geranium-coloured plume, was worn at an audacious tilt, in
exact imitation of that assumed by Marie de Lorraine in the second
act of ‘Mélanges du Divorce.’ That gorgeous lady, whose notoriety
almost passed into fame, was Mrs. Mimburn’s favourite model. She had
constituted herself the especial chronicler of Marie de Lorraine,
copied her clothes devotedly, bought every scent and powder that bore
her name, and collected her anecdotes, apocryphal or unpublishable,
with as much enthusiasm as a pious Pope accumulates relics. While
the hat recalled ‘Mélanges du Divorce,’ the parasol to-day was based
on that in ‘Infidèle,’ the gown was collated from two that appeared
in ‘Messalineries,’ the tippet’s prototype had figured in ‘Autour de
Mitylène,’ and the Parisian pearls that twined round Mrs. Mimburn’s
throat had been specially copied from the historic necklace which her
heroine had extracted from Prince Henri de Valois, to the general
scandal of Europe. Even in the matter of cosmetics Mrs. Mimburn was
faithful to her model, and her rich complexion glowed like a plum
behind its bloom through a skin-tight mask of Blanc de Perle ‘Marie,’
while her ruby lips owed their flamboyancy of tint to the Vermeil de
Lorraine.
Lady Adela looked at her across the tea-table with a kind smile. She
felt that her sister-in-law added colour to the room. Lady Adela was
one of those women whose habitations have a certain cool tonelessness
that matches their own character, and, like their disposition, suits
with any tint that may be introduced. Her boudoir was nondescript and
mild in scheme; pale, sweet flowers stood here and there in transparent
glasses, and the summer light flowed in, pale and ghostly, through
the lowered white silk blinds. Entrenched behind china and silver,
Lady Adela seemed the incarnation of the room’s spirit; she also had
the same indefinable pale sweetness. Her gown was grey, her abundant
beautiful hair snow-white, her features were filled with a gentle
complacency. Altogether she irresistibly called to mind an old white
rabbit--a very soft, very fluffy, very reverend and lovable old white
rabbit.
‘Dear Min,’ she said at last, ‘you have no notion what a comfort this
engagement is to me.’
Again Mrs. Mimburn bridled. Why could La-la never realize the
difference between Min and Minne?
‘Ah, _ma chère_,’ she replied, ‘indeed, it must be. And you certainly
have done wonders. It is not every mother who can say that her son has
never given her an hour’s anxiety in his life, and ended up by marrying
the very first girl that she picked out for him.’
‘Never an hour’s anxiety,’ repeated her sister-in-law, always
behindhand in a conversation. ‘No, dear Min; I can truly say that ever
since Kingston had diphtheria at school he has never given me another
hour’s anxiety. And they said afterwards that that was only some other
kind of sore throat. But it was quite as alarming at the time, I
remember. Anyhow, since then the dear boy has been everything I could
wish.’
‘It makes him sound terribly dull,’ commented Mrs. Mimburn. ‘Now, I
like a boy to be a little bit naughty myself--a--well, a _bêtise_ now
and then, you know.’
‘There is nothing of _that_ kind about my son, Minna,’ protested Lady
Adela in a momentary spasm of dignity. Mrs. Mimburn, as in duty bound,
had, of course, suspicions that her nephew was not all he had the
tact to seem. But she was anxious to hear details of his engagement,
and therefore waived the question of young men’s iniquity, which she
was usually inclined to treat with a wealth of illustrations and many
anecdotes from the career of Marie de Lorraine.
‘But tell me about Gundred Mortimer, La-la,’ she said. ‘I have never
met her. What is she like?’
Lady Adela warmed into the expression of a more positive enthusiasm
than she usually showed.
‘Min,’ she answered, ‘Gundred is absolutely the dearest of creatures.
Everything that is nice. I really feel that I have quite found a
daughter--thoroughly well brought up, and charming manners, and truly
religious, which is such a great thing nowadays. Not at all forward or
fashionable, but just a steady, old-fashioned, good girl. I am sure you
will love her, Min.’
Mrs. Mimburn began, on the contrary, to conceive a strong dislike for
the future Mrs. Darnley--a dislike tempered only by the hope that she
might be found to have had a mystery in her life.
‘Quite a bread-and-butter miss,’ she tittered.
‘Do have some more, Min,’ pleaded Lady Adela, with apparent
irrelevance, exercising her usual happy power of ignoring unfavourable
comment. ‘Yes, nothing could be luckier in every way. She is the
very wife I should have chosen for dear Kingston. She will make him
perfectly happy. And now, Min, I do really feel that my work is
finished. It has been a great responsibility, you know, having sole
charge of a son all these years. There are so many dangers. Mercifully,
he has always had confidence in me, and I have been able to keep him
away from everything undesirable. But, of course, as time goes on, one
gets to feel more and more anxious. You can say what you like, but it
isn’t always easy to understand young men. Even a mother’s sympathy
finds it difficult sometimes.’
Mrs. Mimburn had a very terse answer to the riddle of young-manhood.
Human nature presented no mysteries to her mind; woman was the solution
of them all. She sniffed knowingly.
‘I think _I_ could manage it, La-la,’ she replied. ‘However, you are
marrying off Kingston, and that is the great thing. I suppose he is
very much in love?’
‘Oh, very, very, even before I suggested it. And she adores him, of
course. I saw that long ago. But dear Kingston is so simple and good,
he had no idea until I told him.’
‘And he proposed--when? Yesterday?’
‘After lunch, dear Min. I asked Gundred on purpose, and we had some
really delightful Caviare biscuits. And then I managed to leave them in
the drawing-room--and--and--it came off, dear Min. I am so pleased.’
‘What does Mr. Mortimer say, La-la?’
‘Naturally he is charmed, Minna. What should he be? Besides, nobody
cares much what Mr. Mortimer says. But his dear aunt, Lady Agnes, is
quite on our side. In fact, you may imagine that she and I talked it
all out between us.’
Mrs. Mimburn laughed.
‘What an obedient boy Kingston must be,’ she said. ‘Had he nothing to
say in the matter?’
‘Kingston trusts to his mother to know best,’ answered Lady Adela with
gentle dignity. ‘Gundred is altogether pretty and good and sweet, so
what more could he want? Besides, as I pointed out to him--and he quite
understood--such a marriage will be a great help to him in his career,
when he finds one.’
‘But Mr. Mortimer is very silly, surely,’ protested Mrs. Mimburn. ‘How
can he be a help to anyone?’
‘One shouldn’t be harsh,’ replied Lady Adela, ‘and I am sure when he
succeeds to the dukedom nobody will think him as foolish as they do
now.’
Mrs. Mimburn was still in a carping mood.
‘The Duke himself is actually an imbecile, isn’t he?’ she asked. ‘How
dreadful to marry into a family where there is madness, La-la! A mad,
ga-ga--great-uncle, isn’t it? Yes. Poor Gundred!’
However, Lady Adela refused, as always, to take any but a hopeful view.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we must trust that it will all be for the best.
And there is a little insanity in my own family, too, Min, so that
will make us quite quits, won’t it? No; the only thing I do regret is
that dear Gundred has not got more relations. You see, Lady Agnes has
never married, and Gundred is an only child herself, so that really
poor Kingston will hardly have got so many nice new connections as I
could have wished. There was an Isabel Mortimer, I am told, an aunt of
Gundred’s, but they don’t talk about her. She married a New Zealander,
or something dreadful, and went out there and died. I forget if she
left any children, but of course it can’t matter whether she did or
not.’
Mrs. Mimburn scented romance, and immediately became more friendly
towards the match.
‘Ah, well, poor thing!’ she said. ‘We all have our temptations. I
should be the last to blame anybody. Life teaches one to understand,
La-la. It’s not Miss Gundred’s fault. Probably it runs in the
blood. These things do. You know Marie de Lorraine’s mother used to
drink methylated spirits, and they say she herself can never act
unless--well, dear me, these things are very odd, aren’t they?’
Lady Adela was not listening; she rarely did listen to anyone, and
never to Mrs. Mimburn. ‘Yes,’ she said, returning on her tracks.
‘I spoke to dear Kingston quite plainly. I told him that such an
opportunity would never come in his way again. And after all, it is
something to make a good marriage nowadays. And I said to him how
delighted I should be if he would take it. He was so nice about it.
I am sure he had been in love with Gundred all the while. I know he
used to say how pretty and sweet she was. Anyhow, he made no sort of
difficulty, and they will be married at the end of the season.’
‘What an anxiety off your mind!’ cried Mrs. Mimburn, giggling archly.
‘Yes,’ replied Lady Adela gravely. ‘One wants one’s son to settle down;
and, of course, one likes cleverness well enough in other people, but
in one’s own children one can really have too much of it. When it came
to Kingston’s telling me he thought it wrong to shoot grouse, I knew
it was time to see him safely married. Grouse are so truly excellent.
It always happens, I am sure. If a young man does not marry early in
life he becomes clever, and gets into every kind of uncomfortable fad.
But Gundred will prevent and cure all that, I am quite sure. She is so
religious and good, dear Min, as I told you; she will have no patience
with humanitarianism and all those dreadful fashionable crazes. Humble
and simple and devout, Min--just the wife that dear Kingston wants.
I have never been really anxious about him, I need not say, but I
certainly was beginning to think it time he fell into the hands of some
nice sensible girl or other.’
Mental aberrations never interested Mrs. Mimburn. Her curiosity was
confined to the vagaries of the flesh.
‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘that will wear off, you know, all that nonsense.
You may be thankful it was nothing worse. Most young men--ah, well! One
must be grateful that Kingston never got into the clutches of Marie de
Lorraine, for instance. She is such a terror. Even her garters, you
know, diamonds and pearls. Oh, dear me, how delightful life would be,
wouldn’t it, if one didn’t have to be good?’
‘Men,’ continued Lady Adela in a ruminant manner, ‘are always a little
puzzling at the best of times. Even if they seem perfectly satisfactory
in every way they are quite liable to break out sometimes into most
extraordinary freaks. One can never tell. Though dear Kingston is as
quiet as anyone could possibly be, I do feel that it is satisfactory to
get him settled so nicely.’
‘As you say,’ admitted Mrs. Mimburn knowingly, ‘one can never tell.
The strangest things one hears! Quite old men, too--so very funny!
There was Lord Bennington; they say he wanted to run away with Marie de
Lorraine--seventy, if he is a day, La-la, and eight grandchildren. Dear
me, yes; one can never prophesy what a man will do. Only be ever so
little polite to one, and the next minute--well, I suppose it is human
nature, after all.’ She sighed coyly, as one whose virtue is for ever
being besieged.
‘Even my own dear husband,’ continued Lady Adela, ‘the best and most
devoted of men, had had his moments of madness--really, one can call
it nothing else, can one, Min? You remember how good and orderly James
always was? Nothing seemed able to excite him, and though I am sure he
loved me most warmly, still--well, it wasn’t at all _public_, Minnie.
And yet, you know, there was a Frenchwoman, or something dreadful like
that, whom James quite lost his head over, so I am told, before he
met me. Perfectly crazy, they say he was, and when she was drowned he
wanted to commit suicide. Now, could anything sound more unbelievable,
Min?’
‘I have heard about it,’ replied Mrs. Mimburn; ‘one of those ridiculous
affairs I was talking of. Poor, sober, straightforward, stodgy,
bourgeois James, and some terrible creature with padded hips and a
French walk. That is just what happens. Your nonconformist, your decent
provincial, always gets caught by the most brazen _horizontale_. James
was absolutely idiotic about it, so people told me--met her--now, where
did he meet her?--anyway, he suddenly made himself more absurd than
a schoolboy--and I could tell you stories of _them_, La-la--fell in
love with her at first sight, and talked the most amazing nonsense you
can imagine. She was his affinity, if you please, the other half of
his soul, the lost love of a century ago. And all this from sober old
James. She must have been a shameless creature, too--but they always
are, _ces dames_; for she seems to have met him--well, quite half-way,
and encouraged his monstrous craze. And then she was most mercifully
drowned, and after a week of sheer madness, James calmed down into his
right mind again, and was only too glad to marry a nice quiet girl like
you, La-la. Now, that just shows. If there ever was a person whom one
would have thought perfectly safe from a passion like that, the person
was our decent, beef-eating James. But no, one can never count on a
man. Nine out of ten of the men we marry, however placid and devoted
they may be, have had some dreadful insane romance in their lives,
La-la. One knows what it is to be a man’s romance one’s self, and, dear
me, it’s not by any means the same thing as being a man’s wife!’
‘Such a sad, dreadful story,’ commented Lady Adela comfortably, taking
no notice of Mrs. Mimburn’s artful, question-courting sighs. ‘And to
think of its happening to James, too. Do you know, Min, he always wore
black for that woman on the twentieth of July. So stuffy of him, in the
hot weather!’
‘Oh, my dear La-la, trust a man always to _afficher_ himself in the
most ridiculous way he can.’
‘Minna, do you think Kingston is at all like his father?’
‘My dear La-la, all men are alike. Let us trust that Kingston’s
marriage will prevent him from playing the fool like that, though.’
‘Minnie, do you know Kingston sometimes seems to me so like his
father that I am almost frightened. And yet he is quite different,
which makes it all the odder. Somehow, his father seems to look over
Kingston’s shoulder at me from time to time, and every now and then I
hear poor James’s voice distinctly in something Kingston says. And yet
they are two quite different people. Isn’t it uncanny? I take quinine
for it, Minnie. And I know dear James is safe in heaven, of course, but
yet I can never quite help feeling that the father and son are the same
in some mysterious way. And that is so uncomfortable, Min. One does
like to think that people are really dead when they have been buried.
It seems so much more proper, somehow.’
Exhausted by her effort of subtlety, Lady Adela sighed and poured more
water into the teapot. Meanwhile Mrs. Mimburn was growing impatient.
‘Well, dear La-la,’ she said, ‘Kingston is just a man. That’s all the
likeness there is between him and his father. It is the male element
you feel in both. No woman can help feeling it--_voilà ce qui donne
les frissons_. And now, La-la, I seem to have been a perfect age, and,
really, I ought to be going on. Do you think Kingston and Gundred are
likely to be in soon? Because I did want to see her, and it is getting
so late that I can hardly spare more than another minute or two.’
Lady Adela looked helplessly at the clock.
‘The play surely must be over by now,’ she answered. ‘Do wait, Minnie.
They will be here any time now.’
‘What has he taken her to this afternoon?’
‘“La Tosca.” It sounds a very dreadful sort of play, and not at all one
to take a nice girl to. But dear Kingston has always been interested
in literature and things like that, so I suppose he wants to interest
dear Gundred in them, too. There are such pretty books nowadays; I
never can see what people want with clever ones. However, I do think
Gundred will cure dear Kingston. She has the sweetest, simplest tastes.
We agree in everything.... Ah, there they are,’ broke off Lady Adela
in tones of triumph, as if the return of the lovers were a personal
achievement of her own. Mrs. Mimburn rose, diffusing an eddy of Peau de
Marie as she did so.
‘Just a moment,’ she announced, ‘and then I must fly. I must, indeed.’
She gathered herself into a welcoming posture, picturesquely assumed
the parasol, and stood with protruded hips to watch the opening of the
door and the entrance of her nephew’s future wife.
Miss Mortimer had clearly no false bashfulness about confronting and
challenging the approval of her future husband’s family. Sedately
and collectedly she came into the room, greeted Lady Adela, and then
underwent the introduction to Mrs. Mimburn. Her lover followed close
upon her track--tall, fair, handsome, radiant, his manner filled with
proprietary joy.
Miss Mortimer might be recognised at first glance as the very fine
flower of that type which, after all, even Lady Adela only copied. From
head to foot her appearance and bearing proclaimed that she belonged to
a class that had ruled unquestioned for many generations. She was very
neat, placid, clear-cut in dress, build, and demeanour, an elegant,
tiny figure, unalterably, coldly perfect in every detail. Everything
about her was exactly as it should be, from the elaborate neatness of
her pale golden hair to the nice grace with which she accepted Mrs.
Mimburn. Her manners, her smile, were consciously faultless, and she
radiated the impression of imperturbable good breeding. She was, in
fact, a crisp and charming specimen of that type which develops later
into neat-featured peeresses with royalty fringes, violet toques,
and short cloaks of sable or mink. It was easy to see how she had
attracted Lady Adela. The two women had ease, gentleness, placidity
in common. But there the resemblance stopped. Miss Mortimer’s mind
was as definite, as clear, as simple as her appearance; she had none
of that soft vagueness which characterized Lady Adela; her decisions
were as swift and firm as their expression was gentle and well bred;
one could divine in her the immovable obstinacy of one who is never
violent or angry, but always unchangeably certain that he is right. As
she smiled upon Mrs. Mimburn’s congratulatory fondlings, she conceived
an instantaneous dislike for that over-decorated woman, and had no
difficulty in feeling sure that her disapproval was righteous.
‘Call me Minne,’ Mrs. Mimburn was saying effusively, gladly conscious
that she was making a highly favour-impression on the bride-elect.
‘Always remember to call me Minne.’
Mrs. Mimburn had never allowed her nephew to emphasize her age by
calling her aunt, and saw no reason for delaying to make the situation
clear to her prospective niece.
‘So kind,’ murmured Gundred, smiling into Mrs. Mimburn’s eyes, and
noticing the heavy rings of bistre that enhanced their charms. Then she
turned to Lady Adela.
‘Just one cup of tea, dear Lady Adela, if I may? And then, really,
I must be getting home. Kingston and I have been having the most
delightful afternoon, but papa will be thinking I have been run over,
or something terrible. And I sent the carriage home, too.’
Lady Adela poured her out a cup of tea, and Kingston Darnley offered it
to her with due devotion.
‘No, dear, no sugar,’ said Gundred gently, repulsing his offer. ‘You
forget, I never take sugar.’ His ardour was such that he persisted in
plying her with all good things; hers was such that she expected him
to remember minutely all her preferences and dislikes. Accordingly, her
clear, sweet voice conveyed a hint of reproach.
‘And have you enjoyed the play, dear?’ asked Lady Adela.
‘Very wonderful,’ replied Gundred. ‘But so painful, Lady Adela. I
cannot see why they should want to perform such painful things. There
is so much beauty in life--yes? So why should we look at the ugly
things?’
‘It’s all in the day’s work,’ suggested Kingston Darnley. ‘Beauty as
well as ugliness. One has to face both in life.’
‘But beauty can never be ugly,’ answered Gundred, ‘and art only deals
with beauty----’ Her calm tones carried the conviction of perfect
certitude, and flattened out the conversation like a steam-roller.
She was too pretty, however, for such syllogisms to be as daunting
as they might have been from the lips of a plainer woman. Kingston
contemplated the speaker with a pleasure that obliterated all close
consideration of the thing spoken.
‘I like a play with plenty of passion in it,’ announced Mrs. Mimburn.
‘English plays are so absurdly mealy-mouthed. These things exist, and,
really, the whole of life is wonderfully interesting. And yet English
writers leave out the most exciting half of everything. Why, for my own
part, as soon as I have read the _haut goût_ parts in a book, I take no
further interest in the story.’
‘It is all a matter of taste, I suppose--yes?’ answered Gundred, her
cold tone implying that it was a matter of good taste and bad, and that
on the point her own was as good as Mrs. Mimburn’s was bad.
‘Some women like to pretend that they are not flesh and blood,’ began
Mrs. Mimburn.
Clearly, sweetly, decisively, Gundred interposed.
‘Dear Lady Adela,’ she said, ‘really, you make the very best tea that
anyone could imagine. And it is such a rare art nowadays. But, do you
know, I must not stay another minute. Poor papa will be getting quite
anxious. Kingston dear, you may get me a hansom if you like, but I
cannot let you come with me. Your mother will almost forget she ever
had a son. You must stay with her and tell her about that dreadful
play.’
‘Look here, do let me come with you,’ pleaded Kingston. ‘I hardly feel
to have seen you at all to-day. I want to talk to you.’
‘Dear boy,’ smiled Gundred, ‘you have just had three and a half hours
of my company.’
‘In a stuffy theatre, with four hundred people looking on the whole
time. Besides, one can’t talk--_really_ talk, in a theatre. It isn’t
really being together, sitting side by side in the stalls. One might as
well be with one’s grandmother, for all one is able to say. There are
ever so many things I haven’t had a chance of saying to you. Take me
home with you, Gundred, and let me dine with you.’
Gundred shook her head. ‘Impossible, dear,’ she answered decidedly. ‘We
have got people coming, and it would put the table out. You may run in
to lunch to-morrow, though. And now, may he ring for a hansom, Lady
Adela?’
But at this point Mrs. Mimburn intervened with an urgent plea that
Gundred should let herself be driven home in Mrs. Mimburn’s carriage.
‘Now, do, dearest Gundred,’ pleaded Mrs. Mimburn, nerving herself to
the inevitable audacity of calling the new niece by her Christian name.
Then she fetched her breath in a gasp of relief, and went on. ‘Our
horses go like the wind, and you will be home in a flash--an _éclair_,
a positive _éclair_.’
To Gundred’s British mind the word merely suggested confectionery,
and the proposal, as emanating from Mrs. Mimburn, was altogether
distasteful. She smiled a cordial refusal. But Mrs. Mimburn pressed her
point.
‘We must really see something of each other, dear,’ she went on, ‘now
we are to be relations. A cosy little drive together, now, don’t say
no. I shall be quite offended if you do.’ Mrs. Mimburn persisted until
Gundred saw that there was no hope of being able decently to decline
the offer.
‘You are so kind,’ she said. ‘Well, if you are really sure it will not
be taking you out of your way? Kingston, dear, may I have my parasol?’
He told her he had left it outside the door.
‘Where?’ asked Gundred. ‘Come and show me.’ Together they slipped out
of the room, leaving Mrs. Mimburn making her farewells to Lady Adela,
and exchanging comments.
‘But look here,’ protested Kingston, as they stood on the landing, ‘why
am I not to see you again till to-morrow? Why shouldn’t I dine with
you? Confound the table, you know.’
‘Hush,’ said Gundred, but not sternly. ‘It really would put the
table out. And papa is so particular. Besides’--she faltered for a
moment--‘besides, Kingston dear, I--I don’t want you to see too much
of me before we are married. You might--you might get tired of me, you
see.’ She raised her eyes and looked full into his. In the smiling
depths of her gaze might have been seen the whole truth. Sedate,
restrained, correct, she loved her choice with a passion that no one
was allowed to guess from the cool suavity of her usual demeanour.
Only in stolen flashes of privacy such as this was even Kingston
permitted to realize his triumph. Gundred lived, as a rule, in public;
every gesture, every inflection, was calculated to satisfy that
pervasive invisible arbiter whose approval confirms its object’s title
to ‘good form.’ Few and brief were the moments in which she consented
to be, in body and spirit, alone with her lover. And rarely had he
time to grasp the concession, before the blessed instant passed and
Gundred slipped back into her cool, normal self, hastily evasive, as
if frightened of her own self-revelation. So it was now. He heard her
murmured words on the cool, dim landing, saw the look in her eyes, and
realized her meaning. But as he caught at her hands, and broke into
a hot protest, the mask flew back on to the girl’s face again. She
reclaimed her hands and busied herself in putting on her gloves. It
was the polite, public Gundred that stood before him. To his contrast
with her public self, so self-contained and orderly, was due half the
sweetness and the charm of that shy wood-nymph soul that only allowed
itself to peep out at him so timidly and rarely. He saw that the moment
was over.
‘You are so demonstrative,’ said Gundred calmly. ‘And putting on one’s
gloves is a serious matter. One cannot do two things at once. And, oh,
dear me! I have never said good-bye to your mother.’
She slipped quickly back into the drawing-room before he could stop
her, and, as he remained outside, playing disconcertedly with the
tassel of her parasol, he heard the well-known clear level tones
taking a daughterly farewell of Lady Adela. Then Mrs. Mimburn emerged
in such a roaring surf of silk petticoats that other sounds became
indistinguishable. She squeezed her nephew’s hand.
‘A thousand congratulations,’ she whispered. ‘Charming, charming! Just
the sort of girl that pays for marrying. You will wake her up. She
will be quite a different creature when you have been married a little
while. I know that sleeping-beauty type of girl.’
Mrs. Mimburn smiled darkly upon him, and put a world of knowledge into
her glance. But she had not time to say more, for Gundred now appeared,
and the two women descended the stairs, exchanging civilities. Kingston
followed, to see them safely tucked into Mrs. Mimburn’s elaborate
victoria.
‘Lunch to-morrow; don’t forget,’ said Gundred, as a last reminder. Then
the carriage drove off, and Kingston went upstairs again to his mother.