HARRY'S ENTERTAINMENT
Van Buren, who was a business man, was an idealist; while Harry de
Freyne, the artist--was, emphatically, not.
Van Buren had been brought up on Thackeray and Dickens, above all on old
pictures from _Punch_; Du Maurier's drawings enjoyed at an early age had
made him romantic about everything connected with London. As soon as he
was able to leave his bank in New York--in fact, the moment he had
retired from business--he had realised his dream and come to live in
London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything
delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry,
who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a snobbish
Anglomaniac, at least his snobbishness was not of the common quality nor
about the obvious things; he was a little ashamed of his money, but he
did not worship rank and titles; it was Intellect--but Intellect that
had the stamp of fashion--that held a glamour for him. So did everything
that he supposed to be modern, previous, and up-to-date. No one could
ever, whether in New York or in London, have been in life less modern
than poor Van Buren, though he was eminently contemporary and perhaps
even in advance in matters connected with business. For business he had
genius, and yet, curiously, no passion; he was unconsciously brilliant
on the subject; it was hereditary. But in his innermost heart he
believed that it was vulgar to be an American millionaire! And he had a
childish horror of vulgarity, and an innocent belief that an Englishman
who had been to Eton and Oxford and who was _dans le mouvement_, smart
and good-looking, and had deserted diplomacy for art, must of necessity
be refined, superior, cultured, everything that Van Buren wanted to be.
Of course he soon found out that Harry was frightfully hard up, and in
the most delicate manner imaginable--a delicacy rather wasted on his
friend--implored, as a special favour, to be allowed to be his banker.
But Harry had refused, having vague ideas of much more important extent
than a mere loan with regard to making Van Buren useful. He had thus
gone up in his friend's estimation, at the same time placing him under
a great and deeply felt obligation by gratifying his fancy for knowing
clever people and celebrities.
At last the friendship had culminated in Harry's suggestion of a
marriage between his young cousin, Daphne, and Van Buren. Harry felt
that if he could compass this arrangement he would at one stroke give
fortune to Daphne, freedom to himself--the child was very much in his
way in Valentia's house--and make Van Buren eternally grateful.
Harry really liked Van Buren and respected him; he regarded him as
touching, but also, at times, as a menace. A shadow sometimes came over
their friendship, the alarming shadow of the future bore. What was now
to his cynical mind screamingly funny about the American--his sensitive
delicate feelings, his high standard of morals with regard to what he
called the ladies, and illusions that one would rarely find in London in
a girl of seventeen, might some day develop into priggishness and
tediousness, and--especially--would take up too much time. For since
Harry had been intimate with Van Buren he had discovered that the
tradition of American hustling was, like most traditions, a fiction.
Americans always have time; Englishmen never. The leisurely way in which
Van Buren talked was an example of this--it was the way he thought; his
brain worked slowly. Harry and his like have no time to drawl; they have
to keep appointments.
On the evening of the Ritz dinner-party Harry was not in a particularly
good temper, and thought to himself he was rather like a Barnum as he
introduced his guests one by one to the modest millionaire, who said to
them all, "Pleased to meet you", and fixed his admiring glance with a
sentimental respect on Daphne, an undisguised admiration on Valentia,
and an almost morbid curiosity on Miss Luscombe, the first actress he
had ever met.
Miss Luscombe was a conventional, rather untidy-looking creature, very
handsome, with loose hair parted and waved over her ears, and with
apparently no design or general idea either in her dress or manner. She
varied from minute to minute from being what she thought theatrical to
appearing what she supposed to be social. She evidently hadn't settled
on her pose, always a disastrous moment for a natural woman who wishes
to be artificial. Practically she always wore evening dress except in
the evening, so while at her own flat in the afternoon she was
photographed in a _décolletée_ tea-gown, this evening she was dressed as
if for Ascot, except for the hat, with an emaciated feather boa and a
tired embroidered _crêpe de Chine_ scarf thrown over her shoulders,
also a fan, long gloves, and a rose in her hair by way of hedging. To
these ornaments she added a cold, of which she complained as soon as she
saw the other guests. But no one listened. No one ever listened to Miss
Luscombe, no one ever could, and yet in a way she was popular--a kind of
pet among a rather large circle of people. Women never disliked her
because she created no jealousy and always unconsciously put herself at
a disadvantage; men did not mind her prattle and coquettish airs, being
well aware that nothing was expected of them. For Miss Luscombe, though
vain, was a pessimist, and quite good-natured. She was also a standing
joke.
The other guests besides Valentia in yellow and Daphne in pink--both
looking as fresh as daisies and as civilised as orchids--consisted of
Lady Walmer, a smart, good-looking, commonplace woman, rather fatter
than she wished to be, but very straight-fronted, straightforward, and
sporting, with dark red hair and splendid jewels; a faded yet powerful
beauty who had been admired in the eighties, but had only had real
success since she turned forty-six.
With her was her daughter, a girl who at the first glance looked eight
feet high, but who really was not very much above the average length.
She was a splendid athlete, and her talk was principally of hockey. She
wore a very smart white dress and had a dark brown neck, pretty fair
hair, and an entirely unaffected bonhomie that quite carried off the
harshness of her want of style or charm--in fact it had a charm of its
own. Besides, it was well known that her grandmother had left her an
estate in the country and £ 7000 a year, and that Lady Walmer was
anxious to get her married. Hence Miss Walmer never wanted for partners
at balls nor for attention anywhere, but--it was always for _le bon
motif_. As Valentia said, she was the sort of girl (poor girl!) that one
could only marry.
Hereford Vaughan, who was an object of considerable curiosity to several
of the guests on account of his phenomenal success in having eleven
plays at the same time being performed in London, New York, Berlin,
Paris, and every other European city, was, to those who did not know him
before, an agreeable surprise. Heaven knows what exactly people expected
of him; perhaps the men feared 'side' and the women that he would be
overpowering after so many triumphs, but he was merely a rather pale,
dark, and rather handsome young man. He behaved like anybody else,
except that perhaps his manner was a little quieter than the average.
Unless one was very observant (which one isn't), or unless one listened
to what he said, he did not at first appear too alarmingly clever. He
had one or two characteristics which must have at times led to
misunderstandings. One was that whatever or whoever he looked at, his
dark opaque eyes were so full of vivid expression that women often
mistook for admiration what was often merely observation. For instance,
when he glanced at Lady Walmer she at once became quite confused, and
intensely flattered, nearly blushed and asked him to dinner. While, if
she had but known, behind that dark glance was merely the thought, "So
that's the woman that Royalty ... What extraordinary taste!"
Hereford Vaughan, who was himself thirty-four, did not share in the
modern taste for the battered as a charm in itself, though he could
forgive it--or, indeed, anything else--if he were amused.
Knowing that Miss Luscombe, hoping for a part, would be painfully nice
to Vaughan, Harry had good-naturedly placed them as far apart as
possible. Nevertheless she leaned across the table and said--
"How _do_ you think of all these clever things, Mr. Vaughan? I can't
think how you do it!"
"Yes, indeed, we'd all like to know that," said Captain Foster, the baby
Guardsman, as Valentia called him. He spoke enviously. He was a
perfectly beautiful blond, delightfully stupid, and had been longing for
enough money to marry somebody ever since he was seventeen.
"I'm sure I'd jolly soon write a play if I only knew how."
"It's perfectly easy, really," said Vaughan; "it's just a knack."
"Is it though?"
"That's all."
"How do you get the things taken?"
"Oh, that's a mere fluke--a bit of luck," said Vaughan.
Every one who heard this sighed with relief to think that was how he
regarded it.
Vaughan always used this exaggerated modesty as an armour against envy,
for envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would
have objected to his talent deserving recognition--only to his getting
it.
"Now what do you think of Miss Luscombe?" Valentia asked the dramatist.
"I don't think of her. I never regard people on the stage as real
people," Vaughan answered.
"Don't you, really? Well, you ought to know. You have made a sort of
corner in 'leading ladies'. What curious clothes she wears!"
"Doesn't she? On the stage she dresses like an actress, and off the
stage she doesn't dress like a lady. She's so extraordinarily vague," he
said.
"Yes; and yet I've heard that, though she's so dreamy and romantic,
she's quite wonderfully practical, really. She never accepts an
engagement unless she gets a large salary--and all that sort of thing."
"I see. She lives in the clouds, but she insists on their having a
silver lining," said Vaughan. "Who's the pink young man she's confiding
in now?"
"It's Mr. Rathbone. He likes theatres--at least he collects programmes
and posters, I think. Besides, he's tattooed."
"Oh, yes. That must be a great help in listening to Miss Luscombe. He's
been trained to suffer."
Miss Luscombe was talking rather loudly and most confidentially to
Rathbone, who had an expression of willing--but agonised--martyrdom on
his fair pink, clean-shaven features.
"I _told_ dear George Alexander that I would have been only _too_
pleased to understudy Irene in the new piece--in fact, it would have
just suited me, Mr. Rathbone, and left me plenty of time for my social
engagements too. Besides, if I once got a chance of a part like that I
feel I should have made a hit. Oh, it was a cruel disappointment! After
being too charming to me--or, at any rate, I was charming to him at the
Cashmores' reception, you know--I remember he was standing in the
refreshment-room with Mrs. Cashmore, and I went _straight_ up to him and
said, 'Don't you remember me, Mr. Alexander?'--and after all this he
only promised me--and that conditionally--a horrid, silly little part in
the curtain-raiser in No. 2 B Company on tour. On tour! Of course I
refused that--one must keep up one's prestige, Mr. Rathbone. There's a
great deal of injustice in the profession. Talent counts for
nothing--it's all influence. But I've always had a great ambition ever
since I was a little girl." Miss Luscombe put her head on one side and
talked as she had to the interviewer of _The Perfect Lady_. "It was
always my dream--do you know?--to marry a great actor--or, at any rate,
to be his great friend--like Irving and Ellen Terry--that sort of
thing--a great, lifelong friendship! And as a child I was madly in love
with the elder George Grossmith, but I don't think he ever knew it. Too
bad!"
She pouted childishly, gave her arch musical laugh with its three
soprano notes and upward inflection, and then accepted a quail with a
heavy sigh.
"When I was a boy," said Rathbone in a low concentrated voice of
reminiscence--he spoke rather quickly, for he had been trying in vain
during the whole of dinner to get a word in edgeways and feared to lose
his chance now--"when I was a boy I was in love, too, with some one
on the stage. Between ourselves--you won't mention it, will you, Miss
Luscombe?----"
"You can trust me," she said earnestly, with a look of Julia Neilson.
"Good! Well, I was in love, and I've got her initials--C. L.--tattooed
on me now!"
"Impossible! How exciting! Who is C. L.?"
He looked round the table and murmured in a low voice, "Cissie Loftus.
Isn't it odd? I wrote and told her about it, but I never received an
answer to my letter."
"Poor, poor boy! I call that really touching! Will you show me the
initials some day?"
"Oh no. Impossible." He was stern, adamantine. She hastily went on. "So
you're very keen--interested in the stage, Mr. Rathbone?"
"Well, in the stage door. I collect programmes, and I haven't missed a
first night since I was twenty!"
"Fancy! Then I ought to remember your face, at all the theatres!"
"I mean at the Gaiety," he said, "only the Gaiety."
"Oh, the Gaiety!" she turned her shoulder to him.
* * * * *
"Yes, Miss Daphne, if you would come out to New York you'd have a real
good time. You'd turn all the young fellow's heads. I'm afraid you'd do
a terrible amount of damage there. I should like to show you and Mrs.
Wyburn Newport in the season, too. You ladies have it all your own way
over the other side of----may I say, the herringpond?"
"Oh, please do; yes, _do_ say the herringpond!"
Daphne leant forward and said to Harry:
"Do you know who is that very distinguished-looking man who has just
come in--rather weary and a little grey on the temples? He bowed and
kissed the woman's hand so charmingly--at the next table to us. Looks
like a great diplomatist."
"Then he must be a stockbroker," said Valentia decidedly. "Every one
with the grand manner always is."
"Really! I can't say; I don't know any stockbrokers," said Miss
Luscombe.
"How distinguished that sounds!" murmured Vaughan.
"It's very clever of you, Miss Luscombe," said Lady Walmer; "I don't see
how you can help it! I know nobody else. I always tell Alec she'll have
to marry one, and when she says she doesn't want to, 'My dear child,' I
say, 'you can't marry people you don't see!' And almost the only people
she ever sees at our house _are_ stockbrokers--except a few soldiers
who never have a penny."
Alec was the daughter, named after her distinguished godmother.
"It's quite gone out to be snobbish now," Lady Walmer continued in a
lower voice to Harry. "We're all only too glad to take all we can get in
exchange for anything we give!"
"And you don't call that snobbish?" said Harry.
"My dear, no!--of course, we give as little as possible. I talk like
this and yet I married for love--and you know the result! Walmer's
always gambling, always running after--goodness knows what--and leaves
me--not quite in the gutter, but certainly on the kerb!"
"Don't you want Alec to marry for love?"
"I'm afraid she'll have to, my dear--she's not very attractive. It's a
blessing she's an heiress. But if she's allowed to play hockey, and
skate, and fence, and dance, and the husband is fairly kind to her, I'm
sure she'll be happy--I mean, I have no idea of her marrying a duke,
Harry. I shall be satisfied if he's a charming man, and not too
selfish." She lowered her voice still more to add--"You know she likes
you, poor child, don't you?"
"You're making fun of me, dear Lady Walmer."
"No, I'm not.... Walmer's taken 'Flying Fish' again, and after Cowes
we're going for a long cruise. You must come with us. Her father will be
all right. He lets me have my own way about her. Well, aren't you
coming?"
"You're too frightfully kind, Lady Walmer, of course. But----"
"My dear boy, of course you're going to the Green Gate, but I wish you'd
listen to a woman of the world. That," she gave Valentia a piercing
glance, "can't go on for ever! You will find Romer making a row some
day, and that will be a bore for you. He's just the sort of man who
would."
Valentia, noticing their confidential tone and feeling instinctively
that some treachery was in the air, looked once angrily at Harry and
then became apparently absorbed in the conversation of Vaughan.
Every one was talking volubly and gaily. Only Daphne and Captain Foster
were silent as they sat side by side looking at their plates. But they
were the only people who had found the dinner a real success.
Harry, who with all his _usage du monde_ was peculiarly subject to
sudden obscure impulses as of the primitive man, became pale with a
strange and painful sensation as he looked at Valentia.
She was flirting with Vaughan, or so every one present must be thinking.
Of course it was only from pique, and he would soon put a stop to it.
And Vaughan, with his ironical glance and quiet manner, why did he look
into her eyes all the time?
What was he saying?
Harry asked them all to come back to the studio for some music, but even
as he made the arrangement to drive Valentia, he remembered that, _à la
fin des fins_, he would have to leave her at her husband's house. Would
Romer be sitting up? What an ass he was! What rot the whole dinner was!
It was all through Van Buren. Van Buren was a fool. Confound Romer!
Harry was jealous.