"Mrs. Jedsley is in the drawing-room," Camelia announced, "so I ran
away. I am really afraid of her."
Mrs. Fox-Darriel laughed slightly; she put down the book with which she
was solacing a lazy afternoon on the sofa, and, looking at Camelia's
cloth dress and sailor hat, asked her if she had been out again.
"Yes, just back. I only stayed in the drawing-room long enough to show
Mrs. Jedsley that she scared me. It's those eyebrows, you know, that
lack of eyebrow rather, emphasized by an angry redness in the place
where they should be. No, I cannot face her."
"She is rather _épatante_. I suppose you were walking with your brace of
suitors."
"No, I don't know where they are. I was walking by myself. I think I
must have walked eight miles," Camelia added, stretching out her feet to
look at her dusty shoes.
"You certainly are an unsociable hostess, but those boys are becoming
bores. Whom do you expect next week? You must have something to leaven
the lump of pining youthful masculinity."
"That poet is coming--the one who writes the virile poems, you know, and
whose article of faith is the _joie de vivre;_ and Lady Tramley, dear
creature, Lord Tramley, and--would you specify Sir Arthur as leaven?"
"Do you mean to imply that he _isn't_ pining?"
"I imply nothing so evident."
"Wriggling, then--that you must own."
Camelia was sitting near the window, opened on its framing magnolia
leaves, and said rather coolly as she took off her hat--
"No, _I_ am wriggling. _I_ must decide now."
This was a masterly assurance. Mrs. Fox-Darriel reflecting that nothing
succeeds like unruffled self-confidence, and that Camelia's had never
shown a ripple of doubt, owned to herself that her slightly stinging
question was well answered.
"Don't wriggle, my dear; decide," she said, accepting the restatement
very placidly, "you could not do better. To speak vulgarly--the man is
rich beyond the dreams of avarice."
"Beautifully rich," Camelia assented.
"Ah--indeed he is."
"And he himself is wise and excellent," Camelia added; "I like him very
much."
"He is coming alone?"
"No, Lady Henge comes too."
Mrs. Fox-Darriel gave her friend a sharp glance.
"That's very serious, you know, Camelia. I think you must have
decided--to suit Lady Henge."
Camelia smiled good-humoredly. "I will suit her--and then see if he
suits me."
Mrs. Fox-Darriel lay reflecting on the sofa. Camelia accepted frankness
to a certain point, beyond that point she repulsed it. It was rather sly
of her, Mrs. Fox-Darriel thought, to keep up these needless pretences.
Camelia must be anxious for the match--anxious to a certain degree, and
her careful preservation of the false dignity of her position was really
rather mean. As for Mrs. Fox-Darriel, she desired the match with a
really disinterested fervor. She felt a certain personal pride in
Camelia's success; she had resigned supremacy, and only asked Camelia to
uphold her own. Camelia as Lady Henge would, from a very charming
person, have become a very important personage, a truly momentous
friend. Her fondness for the child would ensure the child's loyalty. A
near friend of the Prime Minister's wife--who knew? The thought flitted
pleasantly through Mrs. Fox-Darriel's mind, and the thought, too, of all
that Camelia, in an even less exalted position, could do for the
impecunious Hon. Charlie, Mrs. Fox-Darriel's husband. There was really
no possibility of a doubt in Camelia's mind. Mrs. Fox-Darriel simply did
not believe her, and regretted her lack of candor; but at the same time
she felt a little anxiety. There were certain phases in Camelia that had
always baffled her investigations, an unexpectedness that Mrs.
Fox-Darriel had encountered more than once.
"It is really the very best thing you could do," she observed now, "and
I wouldn't play with him if I were you. I know that he is the image of
fidelity, and yet the Duchess of Amshire is very anxious for him to
marry her girl, that ugly Lady Elizabeth, and Lady Henge favors that
match, and he really is under his mother's thumb."
"Decidedly I must waste no time," said Camelia, laughing, "and decidedly
it would be the best thing I could do, since the Marquis was snapped up
by the American girl--swarming with millions. I think I should have been
a Marchioness, Frances, had not that strange look, between a squint and
a goggle, in his eyes made me hesitate."
"Oh, the Marquis! You know that this is far better. This man means a
lot."
"He swarms with millions too," said Camelia. "Come, Frances, preach me a
nice little worldly sermon on the supreme utility of riches--without the
gloves now."
"I usually remove them when I approach the subject," Mrs. Fox-Darriel
sighed with much sincerity. "My poor Charlie! How we keep our heads
above water I really don't know, and, as it is, the sharks are nibbling
at our toes! Supreme! Money, my dear, is the only thing! Once you've
that foundation you may begin to erect your sentiments, your
moralities."
"And how few people are honest enough to say so. You and I are honest,
Frances; it buys everything, of course."
"Well, almost everything. One must thank Nature for beauty and
cleverness."
"Beauty and cleverness in rags have a sorry time of it in this world.
But money, of course, especially if not too new, buys friends, power,
good taste, morality. Poverty makes people base and cringing--makes
criminals. One is jumped on in this world, scrunched into the earth,
into the dirt, if one hasn't money, and yet the hypocrites talk of
compensation! Of all the sloppy, canting optimism with which people try
to make themselves comfortable that is the sorriest! And while they
talk they go on scrambling and scrunching for all they are worth; nasty
beasts! They kick a man on the head, and say 'the stupor compensates for
the pain.' That is the current theory about the lower classes."
"Yet you enjoy the world, Camelia."
"I am not jumped on."
"You jump on other people, then?"
"Not in a sordid manner; I don't have to soil my feet. Why shouldn't I
enjoy it?"
"And you think that Sir Arthur's millions would emphasize the
enjoyment?"
"Widen it, certainly. But don't be gross, Frances. A great deal depends
on him. I am not offering myself for sale, you know."
"No, I don't think you would. You have no need to."
"He would really be glaringly golden, wouldn't he, were he not draped
with the mossy antiquity of his name?" said Camelia, drawing a white
magnolia flower within the window frame, and bending her head to the
scented cup.
"An ideal husband, from every point of view," Mrs. Fox-Darriel resumed;
"clever, very clever, and very good--rather overpoweringly good,
Camelia."
"I think goodness a most charming phenomenon, I shouldn't mind studying
it in a husband."
"Mrs. Jedsley is good. Why don't you study her?"
"There is nothing phenomenal in her goodness, it is a product of
circumstance only. There is Mary," Camelia added, tipping her chair a
little towards the window for a clearer view of the lawn below. "Mary
in a Liberty silk, of yellow-green, and smocked. Why, Mary, why wear a
Liberty gown, especially smocked?"
"I have sometimes suspected that your colorless little cousin is here to
play the part of a discord that resolves into and heightens your
harmony," said Mrs. Fox-Darriel; "or is it the post of whipping-boy that
she fills?"
Camelia continued to look from the window placidly, only raising her
eyebrows a little.
"No, Mary never gets a whipping, not even when I deserve one. Mamma is
very fond of Mary; so am I," she added. Mrs. Fox-Darriel took up her
book with a little yawn that Camelia for all her placidity resented.
"How can you read that garbage?" she inquired smilingly, glancing at the
title.
"The _bête humaine_ rather interests me."
"Even interpreted by another? The man is far more insupportable than
Zola, inasmuch as he is clever, and an artist."
"That's why I read him. You seem to know a good deal about garbage, my
dear."
"I know a good deal about everything, I fancy!" said Camelia, with her
gayest laugh. "I took a course of garbage once, just enough to make up
my mind that I did not care for the flavor. We have a right to choose
the phases of life we want to see represented."
"I like garbage," Mrs. Fox-Darriel said stubbornly.
"Yes, you are very catholic, I know. I am more limited." Camelia still
eyed the lawn, sniffing at the magnolia. Now she rose suddenly and went
to the mirror.
"Mary puts on a sailor hat--so," she said gravely, setting hers far back
at a ludicrous angle. "Poor Mary!" She tilted the hat forward again, and
briskly put the pin through it. "I am going down to harry Mrs. Jedsley.
Good-bye, Frances."
"Good-bye. I shall be down to tea presently."
"The _bête humaine_ will spoil your appetite!" laughed Camelia as she
went out.
Mrs. Fox-Darriel heard her running down the corridor and the light
rhythm of her feet on the stairs.
"Pretty little minx!" she said good-humoredly; and her thoughts turned
to Sir Arthur. What a lucky girl was Camelia! It was rather tiresome,
perhaps, to sit by and watch her triumphs. Mrs. Fox-Darriel found the
rôle of second-fiddle a little dull; still, it was well worth while to
play it. She got up and went to the window, where the magnolia still
swayed faintly from the suddenness of Camelia's departure. Tapping the
sill lightly with her finger-tips, Mrs. Fox-Darriel looked out, yawning
once more, at the translucent blue of the sky, the still shining of the
little lake beyond the trees, the sun-dappled lawn, and at Mary
Fairleigh on the lawn in the funny Liberty dress. Mr. Perior was walking
beside her, in riding costume, a whip in his hand. Mrs. Fox-Darriel
surveyed them as they walked slowly away from the house. He had
evidently just joined Mary; and as Camelia herself appeared on the lawn
her departure took on an amusing aspect.
Now it really was too bad of Camelia, she could have no use for him
herself. The sun flashed from her hair as she bounded gaily across the
turf and caught Perior's arm with a schoolgirl familiarity. Mrs.
Fox-Darriel drew back sharply, but still observed from the screen of
magnolia leaves Mary's slow return to the house, and Camelia's skipping
step as she led Mr. Perior towards the garden. He held the whip clasped
in his hand behind his back, and, as he walked, switched his calf in its
leather gaiter. Mrs. Fox-Darriel fancied some temper in the action.