Mr. Perior was a tall man, well built, yet carrying himself with a
certain ungainliness. He had an air of eagerness reined back. His face
was at once severe and sensitive.
He gave no notice to Mrs. Fox-Darriel, whose head twisted round to
observe his entrance, and walking up to Miss Paton he took her
hands--she had put out both her hands in welcome--and, looking at her
kindly, he said--
"Well, Célimène."
"Well, Alceste."
The smile that made of Camelia's face a changing loveliness seemed to
come and go, and come again while she looked at him, as a butterfly's
wings fold and open while it rests upon a flower. She rarely laughed
outright, but her face in gravity was unfamiliar; one could hardly
imagine it without the shifting charm.
"You might have come before," she said--her hands in his, "and I
expected you."
"I was away until yesterday."
"You will come often now."
"Yes, I will."
Mrs. Fox-Darriel's eye--a none too friendly eye--travelled meanwhile up
and down the "vial of wrath." Clever, eccentric, he had evidently made
an impression upon the not easily impressed Camelia, and his
clean-shaved face, and the rough gray hair that gave his head a look of
shaggy heaviness, seemed to express both qualities significantly.
"Did you ride over?" Camelia asked. "No? Hot for walking, isn't it?
Frances, my friend Mr. Perior."
"You live near here, Mr. Perior?" said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, glancing at his
boots, which were peculiarly solid and very dusty.
"Only five miles away," he said. Mr. Perior's very boots partook of
their wearer's expression of uningratiating self-reliance.
"We have heard of you in London too, I believe. You are editor of--what
review is it, Camelia?"
"I was the editor of the _Friday Review_, but I've given that up."
"He quarrelled with everybody!" Camelia put in, "but you can hear him
once a week in the leading article--dealing hatchet-blows right and
left. They don't care to keep him at closer quarters."
Mr. Perior looked at her, smiling but making no repartee.
"And Camelia has been telling me that you are responsible for her
Greek."
"Is Camelia ashamed of her Greek? She needn't be. She was quite a good
scholar."
"But Greek! For Camelia! Don't you think it jars? To bind such dusty
laurels on that head!"
"Laurels? Camelia can't boast of the adornment--dusty or otherwise."
"Oh! leave me a leaf or two. You are disloyal. I am glad of my Greek.
When one is so frivolous the contrast is becoming. And every twig of
knowledge is useful nowadays in a woman's motley crown, provided she
wears it like a French bonnet."
Perior observed her laughingly--Mrs. Fox-Darriel had as yet seen no
hatchets.
"No danger of your being taken for a blue-stocking, Camelia."
"No, indeed! I see to that!"
"You little hypocrite," said Perior.
Mrs. Fox-Darriel's eyebrows arched into her fringe. She got out of her
chair trailingly.
"I will go into the garden. Lady Paton is there, Camelia? I think so. I
know that you have reminiscences. I am in the way."
"You are, rather," said Perior, when she had gone out. "A very
disagreeable face that, Camelia; how do the women manage to look so hard
nowadays?"
"Thanks. She is a dear friend."
"I am sorry for it. I hate to see eyes touched up; it gives me the
creeps. I am sorry she is a dear friend."
"I am afraid I shall often give you cause for sorriness." Camelia stood
by the mantelpiece, smiling most winningly. "Come, now, let us
reminisce. I saw you last in London. Why didn't you stop there longer?"
"I had enough of London to last me for a lifetime when I lived there,"
said Perior. "I do go up for a bout of concerts now and then," he added,
and looking away from her he took up a large photograph that stood on
the table beside him. "Is this the latest?"
"How do you like it?" she asked, leaning forward to look with him.
"It makes a very saintly little personage of you; but it doesn't do you
justice. Your Whistler portrait--the portrait of a smile--is the best
likeness you'll ever get."
Camelia looked pleased, and yet a trifle taken aback.
"What a nice Alceste you are this morning!" she said. "Tell me, what are
you doing with yourself down here? Growing more and more of the stoic? I
expect some day to hear that you have left the Grange and moved into a
tub. How do you get on without your pupil?" and Camelia as she stood
before him made ever so faint a little dancing step backwards and
forwards, expressive of her question's merriment.
"I have existed--more comfortably perhaps than when I had her."
"Now tell me, be sincere," she came close to him, her own gay steadiness
of look exemplary in the quality she recommended, "_Are_ you crunchingly
disapproving? Ready to bite me? Have you heard dreadful tales of
frivolity and worldliness?"
"Not more than are becoming to a pretty young woman with such capacities
for enjoyment."
"You don't disapprove then?"
"Of what, my dear Camelia?"
"Of my determination to enjoy myself."
"Why should I? Why shouldn't you have your try like the rest of us? I am
not going to throw cold water on your laudable aspirations."
Camelia still looked at him steadily, smilingly, and a little
mockingly. Their eyes at these close quarters could but show a
consciousness of familiarity that made evasions funny. Camelia's eyes
were gray, the sunlit gray of a brook--reflecting broken browns and
greens, _yeux pailletés_, as changing as her smile; and Perior's eyes,
too, were gray, but the fixed, stony gray that is altogether another
color, and they contemplated her fluctuations with an apparently
unmoved, though smiling calm.
She laughed outright, and then Perior permitted himself a dry little
responsive laugh that left his lips unparted.
"What are you up to, Camelia?" he asked.
"We _do_ see through one another, don't we?" she cried joyfully. "I see
you are going to pretend not to mind anything. 'That will sting
her!--take down her conceit! I'll not flatter her by scoldings!' Eh!
Alceste?"
"You little scamp!" he murmured, while Camelia, sitting down on the
sofa, swept her white draperies over her feet and motioned to the place
beside her. "You will not--no, you will not take me seriously."
"If you see through me, Camelia," said Perior, taking the seat beside
her with a certain air of resignation, "you see that I am very sincere
in finding your behavior perfectly normal--not in the least surprising.
You are merely gay, and happy, and self-centred; and behaving as all
girls, who have the chance, behave," he added, putting his finger under
her chin with a paternal pat and a look of gentle ridicule.
"Well done! That was very neat! Do you want me to show signs of
discomfiture. I won't. You know that I am quite individual, and that
for years you have thought me a selfish, hard-hearted little scoundrel."
"Oh no; not so bad as that."
"What have you thought, then?" she demanded.
"I have thought that, like other girls, you can't evade that label----"
"Oh, wretch!" Camelia interjected.
"That, like other girls," Perior repeated with an unkind emphasis, "you
are going to try to make a 'good match.'" His face, for all its attempt
at lightness, took on a shade of irrepressible repugnance as he spoke.
"The accessories don't count for much. You may be quite individually
naughty, but in your motives I see only a very conventional conformity."
"That's bad--bad and crude. The good match is, with me, the accessory;
therein lies my difference, and you know it. You know I am not like
other girls. You saw it in London. You saw," Camelia added, wrinkling up
her nose in a self-mockery that robbed the coming remark of fatuity,
"that I was a personage there."
"As a noticeably pretty girl is a personage. You really are beating your
drum rather deafeningly, Camelia."
"Yes; I'll shock you by mere noise. But, Alceste, I am not as conceited
as I seem; no, really, I am not," and with her change of tone her look
became humorously grave. "I know very well that the people who make much
of me--who think me a personage--are sillies. Still, in a world of
sillies, I am a personage. It does come round to that, you see."
"Yes; I see."
Camelia leaned back in her end of the little sofa, her arms folded, her
head bent in a light scrutiny of her companion's face. The warm quiet of
the summer day pervaded the peaceful room, a room with so many
associations for both of them. They had studied, read there together for
years; laughed, quarrelled, been the best of friends and the fondest of
enemies. Perior, as he looked about it, could call up a long vista of
Camelias, all gay, all attaching, all evasive, all culminating and
fulfilling themselves with an almost mathematical inevitableness, as was
now so apparent to him, in the long, slim "personage" beside him, her
eyes, as he knew, studying him, her mind amused with conjectures as to
what he really thought of her, she herself quite ready to display the
utmost sincerity in the attempt to elicit that thought. Oh no, Camelia
would keep up very few pretences with him. Perior, gazing placidly
enough at the sunlit green outside the morning-room, knew very well what
he thought of her.
"Are you estimating the full extent of my folly," she asked presently,
"tempering your verdict by the consideration of extenuations?"
This was so apt an exposition of his mental process that Perior smiled
rather helplessly.
"See," she said, rising and going to the writing-table, "I'll help you
to leniency; show you some very evident extenuations." From a large
bundle of letters she selected two. "Weigh the extent of my influence,
and find it funny, if you like, as I do."
"I wonder if you quite realize the ludicrous aspect of our
conversation," said Perior, taking a thick sheaf of paper from the first
letter.
"Quite--quite. Only you push me to extremes. I must make you own my
importance--my individuality."
"Ah, from Henge," said Perior, looking at the end of the letter. "He was
my fag at Eton, you know; dear old Arthur!"
"Yes, and you quarrelled with him five years ago, about politics."
"We didn't quarrel," said Perior, with a touch of asperity; "he was
quite big enough not to misunderstand my opposition. Must I read all
this, Camelia? It looks rather dry."
"Well, I should like you to. He is one of the strongest men in the
government, you know."
"Quite. He is the man for me, despite past differences of opinion. The
man for you, too, perhaps," he added, glancing sharply up at her from
the letter; "his devotion is public property, you know."
"But my reception of his devotion isn't," laughed Camelia.
"I am snubbed," said Perior, returning to the letter, and flushing a
little. Camelia noted the flush. Dear old Alceste! Shielding so
ineffectually, under his sharp blunt bearing, that quivering
sensitiveness.
She put her hand through his arm, sinking down beside him, her eyes over
his shoulder following his, while he read her--certificate. Perior quite
understood the smooth making of amends.
"Well, what do you say to that?" she asked when he had obediently read
to the very end.
"I should say that he was a man very much in love," said Perior, folding
the letter.
"You are subtle if you can trace an amorous influence in that letter."
"It doesn't call for subtlety. Samson only abandons himself so
completely under amorous circumstances. I hope you are not going to
shear the poor fellow."
"For shame," said Camelia, while Perior, looking at her reflectively,
softly slapped the palm of his hand with Arthur Henge's letter. "I am
his comrade. I help him; I am on his side, if you please, and against
the Philistines."
"Oh, are you? And this? Ah! this is from the leader of the Philistines,
Rodrigg. Yes, I heard that Rodrigg was in the toils." Perior examined
the small, compact handwriting without much apparent curiosity.
"That is simply nonsense. There was a time--but he soon saw the
hopelessness. He is my friend now; not that I am particularly fond of
him--the grain is rather coarse: but he is a good creature, far more
honest than he imagines, simple, after a clumsy fashion. He aims at
distinguished diplomatic complexity, I may tell you, and, I fancy, comes
to me for the necessary polishing. Read his letter."
Perior had looked at her, still smiling, but more absently, while she
spoke.
"Oh! Rodrigg is more cautious," he said glancing through the great man's
neatly constructed phrases. "You are not with the Philistines; he feels
that."
"Politically no; but I have a good deal of influence with him. You see
those reviews he mentions; I went through a lot of heavy French and
Italian reading for him--sociology, industrialism--and saw the result in
his last speech."
"Really."
"Ah, really. Don't be sarcastic, Alceste, to me. One of those men will
probably be Prime Minister some day. You can't deny that they are
eminent men."
"And therefore you are an eminent woman. Well, the logic isn't too lame.
I'll conclude, Camelia, that you may do quite a lot of harm in the
world."
"You don't believe that a woman's influence in politics can be for
good?"
"Not the influence of a woman like you--a--a _femme bibelot_."
"Good!" cried Camelia, gently clapping her hands.
"It is as that, you know, that these men court you. An _objet d'art_ for
their drawing-rooms."
"You are mistaken, Alceste."
"If I am mistaken--if they cherish ideals, they are unlucky devils."
"No, Alceste, I am well justified in keeping my self-respect intact. It
is not for my _beaux yeux_ that I am courted--yes, yes--that wry look
isn't needed! I know in what hideously bad taste I am talking, but one
can't use artistic methods with you. As I say, I have my finger in any
number of pies besides the pie political. You should see the respect in
which I am held by the writers and painters. And I _have_ good taste; I
know that. You can't deny it, since you helped it to grow. What other
woman in London has a collection to equal mine? Dégas--Outamaro--Oh,
Alceste, don't look so funnily! Do you really imagine that I am not
conscious of the baldness of my exposition? But what is the good of
putting on a wig for you!"
"And all this to convince me----"
"Yes, to convince you."
"Of what, pray?"
"That I am not a little insignificance to be passed by with indulgence."
"Should you prefer severity?" and Perior, conscious that she had
succeeded in "drawing" him, could not repress "You are an outrageous
little egotist, Camelia."
Camelia, her hands clasped over her knee, contemplated him with more
gravity than he had expected.
"No," she demurred, "selfish, but not egotistic. There is a difference,
isn't there? Egotism is subjective, selfishness objective. I wonder,"
she added, "what you _do_ think of me. Not that I care--much! Am I not
frank? I must care, since I am shuffling about before you; getting a
cuffing for my pains!" She rose suddenly, laughing, not in the least
bitterly, and walked to the window.
"Mamma and Mary," she announced. "Did Frances evade them? They disconcert
her. Frances, you know, goes in for knowingness--cleverness--the modern
vice. Don't you hate clever people? Frances doesn't dare talk epigrams
to me; I can't stand it. You saw a lot of Mamma and Mary last winter,
didn't you? Took Mary out riding. Now, come here, Mr. Perior, and tell
me _how_ she looked on horseback."
Camelia was smiling irrepressibly as he joined her, and they watched the
approach of the two ladies across the lawn. Certainly the angular,
thick-set form of the younger gave no hint of pleasing possibilities
under circumstances so trying as the equestrian.
"_I_ never could wheedle Mary into the saddle. I should like to see her
on horseback immensely." Camelia's eyes twinkled: "A sort of cowering
desperation, wasn't it?"
"No, she rode rather nicely," said Perior concisely. There was something
rather brutal in Camelia's comments as she stood there with such
rhythmic loveliness of pose and contour.
"I wish Mary did not look so much like a milk pudding," she went on; "a
raisinless milk pudding--so sane, so formless, so uneventful."
Perior did not smile.