PROLOGUE TO A DINNER-PARTY.
I.
Even _unusual_ dinner-parties begin like ordinary ones. There is the
discomfiture of the guest who arrives first, subjected to his hostess's
reassurances that he is not really early. After what seems an
interminable length of time, during which a score of conversational
topics are broached, and both hostess and guest are reduced to a state
bordering on mutual animosity, the remainder of the party arrive _en
masse_, as if by collusion. The butler (who likes to chew the cud of
reflection between the announcements) is openly pained, while the
distracted hostess must manage the introductions, and, as friendships
are begun or enmities renewed, endeavour to initiate the new-comer into
the subject of conversation immediately preceding his or her entrance.
As the good woman's subconscious mind is in the kitchen, and as she is
constantly interrupted by the necessity of greeting new arrivals, she
usually succeeds in mystifying every one, and creating that atmosphere
of 'nerves' so familiar to denizens of the best sets.
But we had almost forgotten--there is always one guest who is late.
The fateful hour mentioned in the dinner invitation arrives, strikes,
and floats down the mists to the eerie catacombs of the Past. The
hostess knows that the cook, with arms akimbo, is breathing rebellion,
but tries to blot out the awful vision by an extra spurt of hollow
gaiety.
Ten minutes pass.
Conversation flags. The portly bachelor who lives at his club wonders
why he didn't have a chop before he came. His fellow-diners try to
refrain from the topic, but it is as hopeless as trying to talk to an
ex-convict without mentioning jails. Finally, in an abandon of
desperation, they all turn inquiringly to the hostess, who, affecting
an ease of manner, says pleasantly, 'Dear me! What _can_ have detained
Mr. So-and-so? I wonder if we had better go in without him?'
And then he arrives--the jackass--and in a sublime good-humour! He
tells some cock-and-bull story about his taxi breaking down, and
actually seems to think he's done rather a smart thing in turning up at
all. In short, he brings in such an air of geniality and
self-appreciation that the guest who arrived first has more than a
notion to 'have him out' and send him to a region where dinner-parties
are popularly supposed to be unknown.
No--the lot of a lady who gives dinners is not a happy one.
II.
On this Friday night of November in the year 1918, Lady Durwent sat by
the fire in the drawing-room and discussed music with Norton Pyford.
Having sacrificed his watch on the altar of art, he had been compelled
to rely on appetite, with the result that he arrived just as eight was
striking. Lady Durwent did her best, but as she knew nothing of music,
nor he anything of anything else, the situation was becoming difficult,
when the entrance of Madame Carlotti brought welcome relief.
That lady was wearing a yellow gown rather too tight for her, so that
her somewhat ample flesh slightly overran the confines of the garment,
giving the effect that she had grown up in the thing and was unable to
shed it. This impression was heightened by a mannerism, repeated
frequently during the evening, of grasping her very low bodice with her
hands, exhausting her breath, pulling the bodice up, and compressing
herself into it. It was an innocent enough performance, but invariably
left the feeling that she should retire upstairs to do it.
She wore a yellow flower in her hair; her stockings were a rich yellow
with a superimposed pattern like strands of fine gold, and her dainty
feet were enclosed in a pair of bronzed shoes. As her lips were
heavily carmined and her eyes brilliantly dark, Madame Carlotti's was a
distinctly illuminating presence.
But the sunniness of her entrance was dimmed by the lack of audience.
She had not expended her genius to throw it away on a strangely dressed
young man whose hair fell straight and black over a large collar that
had earned a holiday some days before, and whose velvet jacket was
minus two buttons, the threads of which could still be seen,
out-stretched, appealing for their owners' return.
'Lucia, my dear,' said Lady Durwent, just like an ordinary hostess,
'you look' (_sotto voce_) 'simply wonderful! I think you have met Mr.
Norton Pyford, _the_ Norton Pyford, haven't you?'
'Hah d' ye do?' said the Pyford.
'Chairmed,' minced Madame Carlotti.
'Lucia, take this chair by the fire. You must be frozen.'
'Ah, _grazie_, Sybil. What a perfectly meeserable climate you have in
this London!'
'Just what I tha-a-y,' bleated Mr. Pyford, sinking into his chair in an
apparently boneless heap. 'The other night, at a fella's
thupper-party, I'----
'MRS. LE ROY JENNINGS.'
The resolutionist swept into the room clothed in black disorder, much
as if she had started to dress in a fit of temper and had been
overtaken by a gale.
She knew Madame Carlotti.--She did _not_ know Mr. Norton Pyford, _the_
Norton Pyford.--She was glad to know him.
He muttered something inarticulate, and glancing at the ring of women
about him, shrank into his clothes until his collar almost hid his
lower lip.
'We were discussing,' said Lady Durwent, vaguely relying on the last
sounds retained by her ear--'discussing--suppers.'
'Don't believe in 'em,' said Mrs. Jennings sternly; 'three regular
meals--tea at eleven and four, and hot milk with a bit of ginger in it
before retiring--are sufficient for any one.'
The Italian took in the forceful figure of the New Woman and smiled
with her teeth.
'Madame Jennings,' she said, 'perhaps finds sufficient distraction in
just ordinary life--and _una tazza di tè_. But we who are not
so--_comment dirai-je?_--so self-complete must rely on frivolous things
like _una buona cena_.'
'Don't believe in 'em,' reiterated the resolutionist; 'three
regular'----
'_Ah, c'est mauvais_,' gesticulated Madame Carlotti, who alternated
between Italian and French phrases in London, and kept her best English
for the Continent.
'Mr. Pyford,' put in Lady Durwent, descrying a storm on the yellow and
black horizon, 'has just written'----
'MR. H. STACKTON DUNCKLEY,' announced the butler, with an appropriate
note of _mysterioso_. Lady Durwent summoned a blush, and rose to meet
the ardent author, who was dressed in a characterless evening suit with
disconsolate legs, and whose chin was heavily powdered to conceal the
stubble of beard grown since morning.
'You have come,' she said softly and dramatically.
'I have,' said the writer, bowing low over her hand.
'I rely on you to be discreet,' she murmured.
'Eh?'
'Discreet,' she coquetted. 'People will talk.'
'Let them,' said Mr. Dunckley earnestly.
'Madame Carlotti, I think you know Mr. Dunckley--H. Stackton
Dunckley--and you too, Mrs. Le Roy Jennings; you clever people ought to
be friends at once.--And I want you to meet Mr. Pyford, _the_'----
'Hah d'ye do?'
'How are you?'
'Ro--splendid, thanks.'
'We were discussing,' said Lady Durwent--'discussing'----
'MR. AUSTIN SELWYN.'
Every one turned to see the guest of the evening, as the hostess rose
to meet him. He was a young man on the right side of thirty, with
dark, closely brushed hair that thinned slightly at the temples. He
was clean-shaven, and his light-brown eyes lay in a smiling setting of
quizzical good-humour. He was of rather more than medium height, with
well-poised shoulders; and though a firmness of lips and jaw gave a
suggestion of hardness, the engaging youthfulness of his eyes and a
hearty smile that crinkled the bridge of his nose left a pleasant
impression of frankness, mingled with a certain _naïveté_.
'Mr. Selwyn,' said Lady Durwent, 'I knew you would want to meet some of
London's--I should say some of England's--accomplished people.'
'_Oimè_! I am afraid that obleeterates me,' smiled Madame Carlotti,
whose social charm was rising fast at the sight of a good-looking
stranger.
'No, indeed, Lucia,' effused the hostess. 'To be the personification
of Italy in dreary London is more than an accomplishment; it--it'----
'It is a boon,' said Dunckley, coming to the aid of his floundering
loved one.
'Exactly,' said Lady Durwent with a sigh of relief. 'Madame Lucia
Carlotti--Mr. Selwyn of New York.'
'_Buona sera, signora_.'
'_Buona sera, signore_.'
He stooped low and pressed a light kiss on the Neapolitan's hand, thus
taking the most direct route obtainable by an Anglo-Saxon to the good
graces of a woman of Italy.
'How well you speak Italian!' cooed Madame Carlotti; 'so--like one of
us.'
The American bowed. It was rarely he achieved a reputation with so
little effort.
The remaining introductions were effected; the clock struck
eight-thirty; and there followed an awkward silence, born of an
absolute unanimity of thought.
'Of course, you two authors,' said Lady Durwent, forcing a smile, 'knew
of each other, anyway. It's like asking H. G. Wells if he ever heard
of Mark Twain.'
The smile in the American's eyes widened. 'Lady Durwent flatters me,'
he said. 'I am not widely known in my own country, and can hardly
expect that you should know of me on this side of the Atlantic.'
'What,' said Mr. Dunckley--'what does New York think of "Precipitate
Thoughts"?'
The American considered quickly. He wished that in conversation, as
well as in writing, people would use inverted commas.
'Whose precipitate thoughts?' he ventured.
'Mine,' said H. S. D., with ill-concealed importance.
'Oh yes, of course,' said Selwyn, wondering how any one so stationary
as the other could project anything precipitate. 'New York was keenly
interested.'
'Ah,' said the English author benignly, 'it is satisfactory to hear
that. Of course, the great difference between there and here is that
in New York one impresses: in London one is impressed.'
An ominous silence followed this epigrammatic wisdom (which Dunckley
had just heard from the lips of a poet who had succeeded in writing
both an American and an English publishing house into bankruptcy) while
the various members of the group pursued their trains of thought along
the devious routes of their different mentalities.
'Dear me!' said Lady Durwent anxiously, 'what _can_ have detained'----
'MR. JOHNSTON SMYTH.'
With a jerky action of the knees, the futurist briskly entered the room
with all the easy confidence of a famous comedian following on the
heels of a chorus announcing his arrival. He looked particularly long
and cadaverous in an abrupt, sporting-artistic, blue jacket, with
sleeves so short that when he waved his arms (which he did with almost
every sentence) he reminded one of a juggler requesting his audience to
notice that he has absolutely nothing up his sleeves.
'Lady Durwent,' he exclaimed, striking an attitude and looking over his
Cyrano-like nose with his right eye as if he were aligning the sights
of a musket, 'don't tell me I'm late. If you do, I shall never speak
to the Duke of Earldub again--never!'
As he refused to move an inch until assured that he was not late, and
as Lady Durwent was anxious to proceed with the main business of the
evening (to say nothing of maintaining the friendship between Smyth and
the Duke of Earldub, whose part in his dilatory arrival was rather
vague), she granted the necessary pardon, whereupon he straightened his
legs and winked long and solemnly at Norton Pyford.
'Good gracious!' cried Lady Durwent just as she was about to suggest an
exodus to the dining-room, 'I had forgotten all about Elise!' She
hurriedly rang the bell, which was answered by the butler. 'Send word
to Miss Elise that'----
'Milady,' said the servitor, addressing an arc-light just over the
door, 'she is descending the stairs this very minute.'
III.
There are moments when women appear at their best--fleeting moments
that cannot be sustained. Sometimes it is a tremor of timidity that
lends a fawn-like gentleness to their movements, and a frightened
wistfulness to the eye, too subtle a thing of beauty to bear analysis
in words. A sudden triumph, noble or ignoble, the conquering of a
rival, the sound of a lover's voice, will flush the cheek and liberate
the whole radiancy of a woman's being. Such moments come in every
woman's life, when the quick impulse of emotion achieves an unconscious
beauty that defies the ordinary standards of critical appreciation. It
is that little instant that is the torch to light a lover's worship or
a poet's verses--to send strange yearnings into a young man's breast
and set an old man's memory philandering with the distant past.
It was such a moment for Elise Durwent as she stood in the doorway, the
overhanging arc touching her hair and shoulders with the high lights of
some master's painting. Conversation ceased, and in every face there
was the universal homage paid to beauty, even though it be tendered
grudgingly.
She was dressed in a gown of deep blue, that colour which renders its
ageless tribute to the fair women of the world, and from her shoulders
there hung a black net that subdued the colour of the gown and left the
graceful suggestion of a cape.
'I am so sorry, mother,' she said. 'I was reading, and quite forgot
the time.'
Austin Selwyn stroked the back of his head, then thrust both hands into
his pockets. There was something in the girl's appearance and the
contralto timbre of her voice that left him with the odd sensation that
she was out of place in the room--that her real sphere was in the
expanse of unbridled nature. He could see her wealth of copper-hued
hair blown by the western wind; he could picture her joining in
Spring's minuet of swaying rose-bushes.
'My daughter Elise--Mr. Austin Selwyn.'
He bowed as the words penetrated his thoughts; then, glancing up, he
felt a sudden contraction of disappointment.
The girl's eyes had narrowed, and were no longer sparkling, but
steady--almost to the point of dullness; her lower lip was full, and
too scarlet for the upper one, which chided its sister for the wanton
admission of slumbering passion; and her voice was abrupt. He almost
cried out '_Legato, legato_,' to coax back the lilt which had caressed
his ear a moment before.
He was dimly conscious that dinner was announced, and that amidst a
babel of tongues he was being led by, or was leading, Lady Durwent into
the dining-room. He heard the resolutionist and Dunckley both talking
at once, and felt the melancholy languor of Pyford floating like
incense through the air. He had an obscure recollection of sitting
down next to his hostess; that the table, like Arthur's, was a round
one; that Johnston Smyth was seated beside Miss Durwent and was ogling
one of Lady Durwent's maids. Then he remembered that he had heard some
voice in his ear for several minutes past, and, growing curious, took a
surreptitious glance, to find that it belonged to Madame Carlotti.
'Meester Selwyn,' she said indignantly, 'you have not been listening to
me.'
'That is true, signora,' he said; 'but I have been thinking of you.'
'Yes?' she purred, leaning towards him. 'What did you thought?'
He turned squarely to her in an impassioned counterfeit of frankness.
'Are all Italian women beautiful?' he murmured.
'Hush-sh!' Her hand touched his beneath the table, reprovingly and
tenderly.
'Mr. Selwyn,' said Lady Durwent, 'you have not tasted your soup.'