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The Oyster
By
a Peer
London
John Long, Limited
Norris Street, Haymarket
[_All rights reserved_]
_First Published in 1914_
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
In Two Editions, 6s. and 1s. net.
Theo
The Hard Way
The Decoy Duck
A Wife Imperative
To Justify the Means
The Ordeal of Silence
_All Published by_
JOHN LONG, LIMITED, London
The Oyster
CHAPTER I
Gleams of bright sunshine came through the windows of the trim little
flat into the drawing-room furnished in miniature aping of luxury. The
chairs and tables were Sheraton--Sheraton passably imitated--the
covering rich brocade. Soft white cushion covers, fine as cobwebs,
clothed the big squares stuffed with feathers. Late narcissi and early
roses made the air heavy with scent. The place was small, but it
carried the air of comfort; it was a miniature of its roomy brothers
and sisters in big town houses. The door of the dining-room, standing
open, showed the same taste. Polished inlaid mahogany, good silver,
embroidered table linen. Early as it was there had been strawberries
for breakfast, and cream, and hot bread.
"Luncheon at the Berkeley. It will be a good one too. I'm driving with
Denise to that show at the Duchess's. Tea at the Carlton. Dining with
Robbie at his club; the Gay Delight afterwards; supper at Jules. Oh!
the days are not half long enough."
Long-limbed, slender, gracefully pretty, Esme Carteret turned over the
leaves of her engagement-book. Her blue eyes sparkled behind dark
lashes; her skin was fair and carefully looked after. She was so
bright, so dazzling, that at first sight one missed the selfishness of
the weak, red-lipped mouth, the shallowness of the blue eyes.
"Not half long enough," she repeated. "Oh, Bertie, you--"
A flashing smile, a hand held out, yet in the greeting no look of the
real love some women feel for their husbands.
"Well, Butterfly." Bertie Carteret had a bundle of letters in his
hands; he was opening them methodically with an ivory cutter.
A dark man, with a quiet, strong face. Dazzled, attracted by this fair
piece of womanhood, loving her as men love when they do not stop to
look further than the flesh and blood they covet, and so, married. And
now, loving her still, but with eyes which were no longer blinded, with
little lines of thought crinkling round his eyes when he looked at her,
yet still her slave if she ordered him, thrilling to the satin softness
of her skin, the scented masses of her hair.
"Well, my Butterfly," he said, opening another letter.
Esme did not pay her own bills. She had not as yet sufficient wisdom to
keep the house accounts. It saved trouble to let Bertie take them.
"Esme child!" He looked at the total written under a long line of
figures. "Esme! those cushion covers are not made of gold, are they?"
"No--hand embroidery," she said carelessly. "Everyone gets them."
"They seem to represent gold, you extravagant child."
"Dollie Maynard had them; she kind of crowed over mine last day we had
bridge here. I must have things same as other people, Bert. I can't be
shabby and dowdy."
"So it seems." He opened several other letters. "Well, we can just do
it, girlie, so it doesn't matter. Breakfast now. I was working hard
this morning."
"And I was eating strawberries. Bobbie sent them. There are eggs for
you."
"Once upon a time laid by a hen," he said resignedly. "Got the stalls
for to-night. That blue gown suits you, Butterfly."
"It ought to," she said, coming in to give him his breakfast. "It cost
fifteen guineas."
Bertie Carteret was adjutant of volunteers in London; he had taken it
to please Esme, who would not endure the idea of a country station in
Ireland.
Now Carteret was going abroad, his adjutancy over. His battalion was in
South Africa; he was to join it there until he got something else to
do. Esme flashed out at the thought of the place.
"Dust and bottled butter; black servants and white ants. No thank you,
Bertie--I won't go."
No one expected sacrifice from Esme; she was too pretty, too brilliant,
to endure worry or trouble. Bertie Carteret smiled at her. She should
stay at home. They would soon get something else to do, and he would
come back.
Esme bent across to him that day, her face set in unwonted thought.
"Just think if your Uncle Hugh had no sons," she said, "he'd leave you
everything. We'd be rich then."
Bertie laughed. Two boys made barrier between him and hopes of the
Carteret money.
A pleasure-loving pair, absolutely happy in their way. Well enough off
to have all they wanted, and pleasant enough to get the rest from their
friends.
They chattered through breakfast of engagements, parties, trips, of
days filled to the brim. Bertie was lunching at the Bath Club. Esme,
with her friend, Denise Blakeney, at the Carlton.
"And oh, Bert--ring up those fruiterer people. Dollie dines here
to-morrow. We must have strawberries, and asparagus--the fat kind--and
peas, Bert. She had them--Dollie. I don't want her to go away and talk
of 'those poor Carterets and their mutton chops'--and send in matron
glaces, Bert, and sweets from Buzzard's, will you, and some Petit Fours
for tea."
"Anything else?" he said. "Esme, do you know, my Butterfly, that we
spend every penny we have, and a little more?"
With a laugh she slipped a supple arm about his neck. "And why not?"
she said lightly--"why not, Sir Croaker?"
He drew her to his knee, kissing her firm neck, her soft arms--on fire
to her touch.
"She was a witch," he told her, "and a Butterfly, hovering over a man's
heart." She should have her strawberries, her sweeties. "And--what is
it?"
For Esme had turned white, put her hand to her throat, a sudden nausea
seizing her.
"I've been like that twice before," she said; "it's the racket. Bertie,
I don't feel up to luncheon now, and I like to be hungry when I lunch
with Denise. Oh, thank you, dear."
For he brought smelling-salts, holding the fragrant, pungent, scented
stuff to her nostrils. He was genuinely anxious.
"It's nothing," she said lightly; "something disagreed with me."
"Lunching with Denise?" He lighted his pipe. Carteret was not a
cigarette-smoker. "Ever see Blakeney with her now, girlie?"
"No-o," she said reluctantly.
"H'm! I hear they're not too good pals. Denise has been playing the
fool with young Jerry Roche--the 'wily fish' as they call him. She'd
better not go too far with Cyril Blakeney. I was at school with
him--came just when he left. But I knew his brother there also. I tell
you, Esme, they're a bad lot to vex."
Esme shook her head thoughtfully.
"Hope Jimmie Helmsley won't be at luncheon," Carteret went on. "Steer
clear of him, old dear."
"I'm lunching with him on Saturday, Bert."
"Well, don't again. He's a beast. Of course there's no fear of you, but
there was the Grange Stukeley girl, poor soul, married off to a parson
cousin; and Lettice Greene, and--oh, heaps of his victims."
There are some women who create trust. The dazzle about Esme was not
one of warmth. It was cold as she was selfish. Her husband, without
realizing this, yet knew that he might trust her implicitly, that
beyond mere careless flirtation nothing amused her.
"Well, good-bye, Esme. I must go to do a few things which don't want
doing, even as this morning I paraded unwilling youths at seven."
Carteret strolled out. Esme picked up the salts bottle, sniffing at it.
She rang for a trim, superior maid to take away, going back herself to
the pretty drawing-room to write a few notes.
"I'm feeling rotten," wrote Esme to a girl friend, "slack and seedy--"
and then she jumped up, crying out aloud.
"Not that! Not that! Not the end of their dual in the treble. Not the
real cares of life forced on her. Oh, it could not be--it could not!"
Esme raged round the room, crying hysterically, fighting off an
imaginary enemy with her hands.
It would mean a move from the little expensive flat. Doctors, nurses,
extra maids swallowing their income.
"It can't be!" she stormed. "I'm mad!" and rushed off to dress.
She looked hungrily at her slim figure in her glass, watched her maid
fasten hooks and buttons until the perfectly-cut early summer gown
seemed to cling to the slender figure. There was that, too--a figure
spoilt. Dowdy, disfiguring clothes, and fear, the fear of the
inevitable. She was counting, calculating as the maid finished
fastening her dress, brought her a cloudy feather wrap, deep brown over
the creamy gown, long white gloves, a scented handkerchief, a bunch of
deep pink roses.
"Shall I alter Madame's yellow gown?" Marie wondered at Esme's silence.
"Madame is weary of its present aspect, with silver and violet. I can
make it new--and the waist, it seemed a little tight last evening for
Madame."
"It wasn't," Esme flung out. "It's quite right. Get me new corsets,
Marie--these are old. A taxi, yes."
Speeding westward swiftly, but with dread flying as swiftly. Not
that--not the ending of her careless, selfish life.
"Why, Esme, what a pretty gown; but you look pale, dear."
Lady Blakeney was at the Berkeley. A big, soft woman, with a weak,
pretty face, palpably face-creamed, powdered, tinted, yet the whole
effect that of a carefully-done picture, harmonizing, never clashing.
With her brown hair, her deep brown eyes, she was a foil to flashing,
dazzling Esme.
"Just four, you see," Lady Blakeney sauntered to her table. She was in
dull rose, exquisitely dressed.
"Yes, Jerry and Jimmie Helmsley."
Lord Gerald Roche, slim, distinctly young, just getting over being
deeply in love, and still trying to think he was a victim to it, more
impressive, as if to whip his jaded fancy, came in; a bunch of rare
mauve orchids, fresh from a florist's, in his hand. Behind him, Jimmie
Gore Helmsley, a tall man, dark, with satyr's ears, thick, sensual
lips, and black eyes of cool determination. No one realized Jimmie's
fascination until they spoke to him. It was in his manner, his power of
subtle flattery, of making the woman he spoke to feel herself someone
apart, not of common attraction, but a goddess, an allurement.
Unkind men, unfascinated, called Jimmie's black eyes boiled sloes, and
swore that he rouged his cheeks; but women raved about him.
Jimmie was a pursuer of many women, a relentless one if his fancy were
touched; there were girls--girls of his own rank of life--who whispered
his name bitterly. The plucking of a bird sometimes amused him more
than the wearing of a full-blown rose.
"Ah you! the sunshine is here now." He bent over Esme's hands, and his
flattery was as water pattering off polished marble. Esme had no use
for the Gore Helmsleys of life; she had laughed when he had given her a
flower as though it were made of diamonds. Jimmie made things as cheap
for himself as he could.
But Esme talked to him now. Jerry was almost whispering to Denise
Blakeney, making his adoration foolishly conspicuous.
The restaurant was filling. Denise had ordered luncheon; she never
trusted to chance. A soufflet of fish, asparagus, grilled fillets of
beef.
As the fish was handed to them, Denise Blakeney started and flushed
painfully. Her young admirer had been showing her a jewel flashing in a
tiny box--a pear-shaped pink pearl.
"Oh!" she cried sharply, and pushed the box away.
A bluff man, with heavy features, had gone up the room and sat down at
a small table. His companion was an elderly woman, dowdy, rather
fussily impressed.
"It's Cyrrie!" said Denise. "Cyrrie and his old Aunt Grace. He asked me
to have her at Grosvenor Square to-day, and I told him a fib to
escape." Denise fidgeted uneasily, her colour changing. "I told one
fib," she said, "now it will take a dozen more to make it credible."
"The fib is a mental fly," said Jimmie, laughing; "he's grown large
quickly. Cheer up, Milady, don't look tragic."
The big man nodded to his wife with a careless smile. It is an
Englishman's need to be outwardly pleasant, to glaze a volcano with a
laugh--in public.
"He hasn't scolded me enough lately," said Denise, grimly. "And the
nature of husbands being to scold, it makes me nervous." She watched
Cyrrie narrowly.
"Aunt Grace is having boiled chicken, specially ordered for her; she
will finish up with stewed fruit and rice. It makes it so difficult
when she comes. My cook is uncertain as to boiling chickens plainly."
Lady Blakeney tried to fling off her depression, to do her duty as
hostess. She muttered something sharply to Lord Gerald, she talked a
little too fast, a little too gaily.
Esme would flash smiles, planning some future gaiety, forget for a
moment, and then, across her happiness, a cloud rose looming,
threatening. Oh! it could not be! It must not be! There were so many
things she meant to do. Bertie's appointment was up; he was going to
South Africa until they got something else, or his other battalion came
to Aldershot. Exchanges could always be managed. And Esme was due at
Trouville in August; she was going on to Scotland; she had been asked
to Cheshire to hunt for two months. It must not be!
Once, in a spasm of fear, she clenched her hand, crushing her glass in
her fingers, spilling her champagne. Esme drank champagne on a hot May
day because it looked well to see it there, because it brightened her
wits, made pleasure keener. She liked expensive dishes, ordering
them recklessly when she was asked out, taking the best of everything.
She was never tired, never knew sleeplessness; could dance until four
and be out riding next morning, with her bright colour undimmed.
Perfect health makes perfect temper. Esme was an unruffled companion,
provided she got her own way. Down in the country, without amusement,
she would have fretted, beaten against bars of dulness.
"Oh, Mrs Carteret!" she heard Jimmie exclaim as the amber liquid
vanished, as the broken glass tinkled together on the cloth. "What
dream moved you?" he whispered, bending close. "What, lady fair?"
A man who could throw meaning into his lightest word, here it was
implied, had she thought of hidden things; the eyes burning into hers
expressed that she had thought of him. Though every road in the map of
love was known to Jimmie Gore Helmsley, he hinted at unknown turns, at
heights unclimbed to each fresh companion he took by the route, knowing
how women love mystery and hate the flat, soft paths they can see too
well.
"Of what?" he whispered. "If I dared to think. It would make Friday--"
"Don't dare," Esme flashed at him mockingly. "And Friday--where do we
lunch on Friday?" she asked carelessly. "Let it be near Dover Street; I
must be at the club at half-past two."
Esme looked shrewdly at the man, wondered what women saw in the
sloe-black eyes, the high-coloured cheeks; wondered why girls had made
fools of themselves for him.
"I heard of an old friend of yours to-day," she said--"Gracie
Stukeley--I forget her married name."
Jimmie nodded carelessly; there were no chinks in his armour. He gave
no thought to a little fool who had come flying to his rooms because
someone vexed her, who prattled to him of divorce; he was rather fond,
in a way, of his big, swearing, hard-riding wife. He remembered that
Grace Stukeley had to be married off to save her people's name.
"Nice girl," he said carelessly; "but a fool."
"Ah, Denise! You did not lunch with Eva? She put you off an hour ago; I
see."
Big Cyril paused as he passed his wife. Denise made sweetly-drawled
apology to Aunt Grace.
"I see," said Sir Cyril, his big face set a little grimly; "and now,
whither away, Denise? To drive--to the cloth show? Well--we meet at
dinner."
"Yes--to drive;" but first Denise knew that she had meant to go home to
spend an hour with Jerry in her boudoir. And now she was afraid; she
faltered and flushed. Would not Aunt Grace drive? Esme could come any
day.
Aunt Grace, easily flattered, gravely believing the previous
engagement, accepted willingly.
She quite understood how difficult it was to find time to receive
visitors from the country. Engagements were sacred. The vicar had never
forgiven her once because she forgot to go to tea to meet the bishop's
wife, and the hot buns were overcooked waiting for her. Mrs Lemon made
a speciality of hot buns. Grace Bullingham chattered on, delighted with
her luncheon, her day in London; but Sir Cyril stood silent, a curious
smile on his lips.
"You're coming, Cyrrie? Denise, isn't Cyrrie coming?"
"The electric limousine of the moment has only room for two--and an
interloper," said Blakeney. "No, I'm not coming, Aunt Grace. I should
be the interloper. But I'll meet you at four at the station, the car
can take you there, and--"
Denise was still flustered; still talking nervously. She arranged to
meet Esme again; she fussed uneasily, afraid that Jerry might be openly
impressive, that he might try to whisper his regret.
"Now, auntie, come along. Au revoir, Esme. Good-bye, Lord Gerald. See
you some time next week--to luncheon on Sunday if there's no other
attraction."
Something fell with a little clatter on the pavement. Sir Cyril stooped
and picked it up.
"You've dropped this," he said to his wife.
It was a pear-shaped pink pearl set with tiny diamonds, a valuable toy.
Denise took it from him, hesitating.
"A pretty thing," said Blakeney, quietly. "Be more careful of it,
Denise."
"Sit and smoke a cigarette with me," Esme heard Gore Helmsley's
caressing voice close to her, "in my club. And look here--I've a lovely
scheme--listen!"
The scheme was unrolled simply. As Carteret would be away, Esme must
come to Leicestershire for a few days in the winter. He had a lodge
there; she could get another girl to come.
"I'll lend you horses," said Jimmie. "You'd sell them for me with your
riding. Brutally frank, ain't I, but you know I must keep going. Come
for a month."
Another month's hunting after Christmas; the fun of staying with three
men. Four or five days a week on perfect mounts. Bridge in the
evenings; the planning of tea-gowns, the airing of new habits.
She was not afraid of Jimmie, or of any man. Esme did not know the
lower depths Gore Helmsley was capable of in hours when he mixed with
the underworld--the great stream which glides beneath London's surface.
"I'd love to," Esme began.
And then again the sudden fear. May--this was May. In January there
might be no hunting, no enjoyment, nothing but a weary waiting for what
must be.
"I'll come," she said gaily; "I must have my hunting. Oh! I must!"
Gore Helmsley smiled softly. "And--drop a hint to Denise Blakeney to go
slow," he said. "Those big men think a lot."