IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS
Mrs. Frayling's afternoon party passed off to admiration. But this by no
means exhausted her social activities. Rather did it stimulate them; so
that, with Damaris' amusement as their ostensible object and excuse, they
multiplied exceedingly. Henrietta was in her native element. Not for
years had she enjoyed herself so much. This chaperonage, this vicarious
motherhood, was rich in opportunity. She flung wide her nets, even to the
enmeshing of recruits from other larger centres, Cannes, Antibes and
Nice. This more ambitious phase developed later. Immediately our
chronicle may address itself to the initial Thursday, which, for our
nymph-like maiden, saw the birth of certain illusions destined to all too
lengthy a span of life.
Luncheon at the villa--or as Henrietta preferred it called, The
Pavilion--set in the grounds of the Hôtel de la Plage and dependent for
service upon that house--was served at mid-day. This left a considerable
interval before the advent of the expected guests. Mrs. Frayling refused
to dedicate it to continuous conversation, as unduly tiring both for
Damaris and for herself. They must reserve their energies, must keep
fresh. Marshall Wace was, therefore, bidden to provide peaceful
entertainment, read aloud--presently, perhaps, sing to them at such time
as digestion--bad for the voice when in process--might be supposed
complete. The young man obeyed, armed with Tennyson's _Maud_ and a volume
of selected lyrics.
His performance fairly started General Frayling furtively vanished in
search of a mild _siesta_. It inflated his uxorious breast with pride to
have his Henrietta shine in hospitality thus. But his lean shanks
wearied, keeping time to the giddy music. Wistfully he feared he must be
going downhill, wasn't altogether the man he used to be, since he found
the business of pleasure so exhaustingly strenuous. And that was beastly
unfair to his lovely wife--wouldn't do, would not do at all, by Gad!
Therefore did he vanish into a diminutive and rather stuffy smoking-room,
under the stairs, unfasten his nankeen waistcoat, unfasten his
collar-stud, doze and finally, a little anxiously, sleep.
Whatever Marshall Wace's diffidence in ordinary intercourse, it
effectually disappeared so soon as he began to declaim or to recite. The
histrionic in him declared itself, rising dominant. Given a character to
impersonate, big swelling words to say, fine sentiments to enunciate, he
changed to the required colour chameleon-like. You forgot--at least the
feminine portion of his audience, almost without exception, forgot--that
his round light-brown eyes stared uncomfortably much; that his nose, thin
at the root and starting with handsome aquiline promise, ended in a
foolish button-tip. Forgot that his lips were straight and compressed,
wanting in generous curves and in tenderness--an actor's mouth,
constructed merely for speech. Forgot the harsh quality of the triangular
redness on either cheek, fixed and feverish. Ceased to remark how the
angle of the jaw stood away from and beyond the sinewy, meagre neck, or
note the rise and fall of Adam's apple so prominent in his throat.--No
longer were annoyed by the effeminate character of the hands, their
retracted nails and pink, upturned finger-tips, offering so queer a
contrast to the rather inordinate size of his feet.
For the voice rarely failed to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed
a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and
fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy
of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the--then--Laureate's poem,
that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend,
moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his
own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed,
orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, with a simulation of
sincerity as convincing to others as consolatory to himself.
And Damaris, being unlearned in the curious arts of the theatre, listened
wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fictitious
emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed
Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More
and more did the poem assume a personal character, of which, if the
reader were hero, she--Damaris--became heroine. Marshall Wace seemed to
read not to, but definitely at her; so that during more than one ardent
passage, she felt herself go hot all over, as though alone with him, an
acknowledged object of his adoring, despairing declarations. This she
shrank from, yet--it must be owned--found stirring, strangely and not
altogether unpleasantly agitating. For was not this _protégé_ of
Henrietta's--whom the latter implored her to encourage and treat
kindly--something of a genius? Capable of sudden and amazing
transformation, talking to you with a modesty and deference agreeably
greater than that of most young men of his age; then, on an instant,
changing at will, and extraordinarily voicing the accumulated wrongs,
joys and sorrows of universal humanity? Could Henrietta, who usually
spoke of him in tones of commiseration, not to say of patronage, be aware
how remarkable he really was? Damaris wondered; regarding him, meanwhile,
with innocent respect and admiration. For how tremendously much he must
have experienced, how greatly he must have suffered to be able to portray
drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but
glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum,
though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How
should it?
Therefore when Mrs. Frayling--recollecting certain mysteries of the
toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected
guests--brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a
little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be
guilty of talking millinery in church.
For--"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet
emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpass yourself. I
never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt.
But time has flown--look."
And she pointed to the blue and gold Sévres clock upon the mantelpiece.
"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at
being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my
reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me,
Cousin Henrietta."
He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet
ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up
more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to
his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring
table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.
The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with
some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention
had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had
been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She,
therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.
"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."
The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.
He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's
warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace.
And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of
agreeable success--and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably
disqualified henceforth.
But his misfortunes worked to quite other ends than he anticipated. For
Damaris came nearer, her expression gravely earnest as appealing to him
not to mind, not to let these things vex him.
"I have never heard anyone read so beautifully," she told him. "You make
the words come alive so that one sees the whole story happening. It is
wonderful. I shall always remember this afternoon because of your
reading--and shall long to hear you again--often, I know, long for that."
Wace bowed. This innocent enthusiasm was extremely assuaging to his
wounded self-esteem.
"You have but to ask me, Miss Verity. I shall be only too honoured,
too happy to read to you whenever you have leisure and inclination
to listen."
But here Mrs. Frayling put her arm round Damaris' waist, affectionately,
laughingly, and drew her towards the door.
"Come, come, darling child--don't be too complimentary or Marshall will
grow unbearably conceited.--You'll put on flannels, by the way, Marshall,
won't you?" she added as an after-thought.
"I shall not play tennis this afternoon," he answered, his nose in the
air. "There will be plenty for a change of setts without me. I am not
good enough for Binning and his two young aristocrats, and I don't choose
to make sport for the Philistines by an exhibition of my ineptitude. I
have no pretentious to being an athlete."
"Nonsense, Marshall, nonsense," she took him up quickly, conscious his
reply was not in the best taste. "You wilfully underrate yourself."
Then later, as, still entwined, she conducted Damaris upstairs to her
bed-chamber.
"There you have the position in a nutshell," she said. "Still am I not
right? For hasn't he charm, poor dear fellow, so very much cleverness--so
really gifted isn't he?"
And as the girl warmly agreed:
"Ah! I am so very glad you appreciate him.--And you have yet to hear
him sing! That takes one by storm, I confess--Unhappy Maud
Callowgas!--But you see how frightfully on edge he is--how he turns off
for no valid reason, imagines himself a failure, imagines himself out
of it? In point of fact he plays a quite passable game of tennis--and
you heard what he said? These fits of depression and self-depreciation
amount to being tragic. One requires endless tact to manage him and
save him from himself."
Henrietta paused, sighed, sitting on the stool before her toilette table,
neatly placing tortoiseshell hairpins, patting and adjusting her bright
brown hair.
"I could have bitten my tongue out for making that wretched slip about
the coffee cups; but I was off my guard for once. And like all artistic
people Marshall is a little absent-minded--absorbed to the point of not
seeing exactly what he is doing.--Poor young man, I sometimes tremble for
his future. Such a highly strung, sensitive nature amounts almost to a
curse. If he got into wrong hands what mightn't the end be?--Catastrophe,
for he is capable of fatal desperation. And I must own men--with the
exception of my husband who is simply an angel to him--do not always
understand and are not quite kind to him. He needs a wise loving woman to
develop the best in him--there is so very much which is good--and to
guide him."
"Well," Damaris said, and that without suspicion of irony, "dearest
Henrietta, hasn't he you?"
Mrs. Frayling took up the ivory hand-glass, and sitting sideways on the
dressing-stool, turned her graceful head hither and thither, to obtain
the fuller view of her back hair.
"Me? But you forget, I have other claims to satisfy. I can't look after
him for ever. I must find him a wife I suppose; though I really shall be
rather loath to give him up. His gratitude and loneliness touch me so
much," she said, looking up and smiling, with a little twist in her
mouth, as of playful and unwilling resignation, captivating to see.
By which cajoleries and expression of praiseworthy sentiment, Henrietta
raised herself notably in Damaris' estimation--as she fully intended to
do. Our maiden kissed her with silent favour; and, mysteries of the
toilette completed, more closely united than ever before--that is, since
the date of the elder's second advent--the two ladies, presenting the
prettiest picture imaginable, went downstairs again, gaily, hand in hand.