A HOUSE-PARTY AT ROSELAWN.
I.
As is the habit of the year, June followed May, and in its turn gave
way to the yellow hours of July. Lady Durwent, wearying of London and
its triumphs, returned to Roselawn to share the solitary, rural reign
of her husband.
As she drove in a sumptuous car through the village and into the wide
confines of the estate she purred with contentment. Men doffed their
caps, women curtsied, and the country-side mingled its smile with
theirs. It was not unlike the return of a conqueror from a campaign
abroad, and after the incognito forced by London on all but the most
journalised duchesses, it was distinctly pleasant to be acknowledged by
every one she passed.
In this most amiable of moods she dined with her husband, and was so
vivacious that, looking at her over his glass of port, he thought how
little she had changed since, years before, she had first affected his
subnormal pulse. Together they wandered over the lawns, and he showed
the improvements wrought since her last visit. She gave the
head-gardener the benefit of her unrestricted smile, and shed among all
the retainers a bountiful largesse of good-humour.
Still noting the beauties of Roselawn, they discussed their children.
She learned that Malcolm was on leave from the --th Hussars, and was
golfing in, and yachting off, Scotland with scions of the Scottish
nobility. The mention of Dick brought a pang to her heart, and a cloud
that marred the serenity of her husband's brow. Lord Durwent regretted
the necessity of his actions, but the boy had proved himself a 'waster'
and a 'rotter.' He had been given every chance, and had persistently
disgraced the family name. If he would go to Canada or Australia, he
could have money for the passage; otherwise----
After that imperialistic pronouncement, Lord Durwent turned to more
congenial topics, and spoke of additions to the stables and
improvements to the church. His wife answered mechanically, and it was
many minutes before the heart-hunger for the blue-eyed Dick was lulled.
She said nothing, for the development of her sons' lives had long since
passed from her to a system, but in the seclusion of their country home
the domestic tragedy made a deeper inroad on her feelings than it had
done in London.
It was perhaps not unnatural that they barely spoke of Elise at all.
She was visiting a county family in the north, and would be home in a
couple of days. As there was no immediate suitor on the horizon, what
more was there to be said of the daughter of the house?
Next morning Lady Durwent was still amiable, but rather dull. The
following day she was frankly bored. On Sunday, during the sermon, she
planned a house-party; and so, in due course, invitations were issued,
and accepted or regretfully declined. She possessed sufficient sense
of the fitness of things to refrain from transplanting any of her
_unusual_ varieties from their native soil, but asked only those
persons whose family connections ensured a proper tone to the affair.
Perhaps it was just a kindly thought on her part to ask Austin Selwyn.
It may have been the desire of having an author to lend an exotic touch
to the gathering. Or, being a woman, she may have wanted an American
to see her at the head of the table in two widely different settings.
Perhaps it was all three motives.
II.
In preparation for the arrival of guests, 'a certain liveliness'
pervaded the tranquil atmosphere of Roselawn. The tennis-court was
rolled and marked; fishing-tackle was inspected and repaired; in view
of the possibility of dancing, the piano was tuned; bridge deficiencies
were made good at the local stationer's; and gardeners and gamekeepers
hurried about their tasks, while flapping game-birds signalled to
trembling trout that the enemy was mobilising for the yearly campaign.
Roselawn differed little from the hundreds of English country-houses,
the seclusion and invulnerability of which have played so great a part
in forming the English character. A lodge at the entrance to the
estate supplied a medieval sense of challenge to the outside world, and
the beautifully kept hedges at the side of the mile-long carriage-drive
gave that feeling of retirement and emancipation from the world so much
desired by tranquil minds.
It was the setting to produce a poet, or a race of Tories. Once within
the embracing solitude of Roselawn, the discordant jangling of common
people worrying about their long hours of work or the right to give
their offspring a decent chance in the world became a distant murmur,
no more unpleasant or menacing than the whang of a wasp outside the
window.
Not that the inhabitants of Roselawn were any more callous or selfish
than others of their class, for the record of the Durwent family was by
no means devoid of kindly and knightly deeds. Tenantry lying ill were
always the recipients of studied thoughtfulness from the lord and lady
of the place, and servants who had served both long and faithfully
could look forward to a decent pension until death sent them to the
great equality of the next world.
If one could trace the history of the Durwent family from the
beginning, it would be seen that among the victims of a hereditary
system there must be numbered many of the aristocracy themselves.
Caricaturists and satirists, who smear the many with the weaknesses of
the few, would have us believe that the son of a lord is no better than
the son of a fool; yet, if the vaults of some of the old families were
to unfold their century-hugged secrets, it would be seen that, as
Gray's country churchyard might hold some mute inglorious Milton, so
might these vaults hold the ashes of many a splendid brain ruined by
the genial absurdity of 'class' wherein it had been placed. A boy with
a title suspended over his head like the sword of Damocles may enter
life's arena armed with great aspirations and the power to bring a
depth of human understanding to earth's problems, but what chance has
he against the ring of antagonists who confront him? Flunkeyism,
'swank,' the timid worship of the peerage, the leprosy of social
hypocrisy, all sap his strength, as barnacles clinging to the keel of a
ship lessen her speed with each recurring voyage.
It is not that the hereditary system injures directly; its crime lies
in what it engenders--the pestilence of snobbery, which poisons nearly
all who come into contact with it, titled and untitled, frocked and
unfrocked, washed and unwashed. The very servants create a comic-opera
set of rules for their below-stairs life, and the man who has butlered
for a lord, even if the latter be the greatest fool of his day, looks
with scorn upon the valet of some lesser fellow who, perchance, is
forced to make a living by his brains.
III.
The house at Roselawn was large, and, with its ivy-covered exterior,
presented a spectacle of considerable beauty. The front was in the
form of a 'hollow square,' creating an imposing courtyard, and giving
the windows of the library and the drawing-room ample opportunity for
sunshine. From these windows there was a charming vista of well-kept
lawns, margined with gardens possessed of a hundred tones of exquisite
colour. At the back of the house the windows looked out on receding
meadows that melted into the solidarity of woods.
The drawing-room (Lady Durwent tried to designate it 'the music-room,'
but the older name persisted) had all the conglomeration of contents
which is at once the charm and the drawback of English country homes.
Furniture of various periods indulged in mute and elegant warfare.
Scattered in graceful disorder about the room were relics procured by
an ancestor who had been to Japan; there was a Spanish bowl gathered by
Lord Dudley Durwent; there was an Italian tapestry, an Indian tomahawk,
a Chinese sword that had beheaded real Chinamen, all procured by Lord
Dingwall Durwent in the eighteenth century. There was a massive Louis
Seize table and a frail Louis Quinze chair; a slice of Chippendale
here, and a bit of Sheraton there; portraits of ancestors who fought at
Quebec, Waterloo, Sebastopol, and a very military-looking gentleman on
a terrific horse, who had done all his fighting in Pall Mall clubs.
There were 'oils' purchased by Durwents who liked to patronise the
arts, and 'waters' by Durwents who didn't like oils.
And year after year, generation after generation, the ancient
drawing-room received its additional impedimenta without so much as a
creak of protest.
In the impressive seclusion of Roselawn, therefore, the house-party
began to gather. They were an admirably assorted group of people who
never objected to being bored, providing it was accomplished in an
atmosphere of good breeding. The soothing balm of the Roselawn meadows
offered its potency of healing to fatigued minds or weary bodies, but,
like the fragrance of the unseen flower, it was wasted on the desert
air. Lady Durwent's guests had not been using either their brains or
their bodies to a point where honest fatigue would seek healing in the
perfume of clover. If a hundred gamins from Whitechapel's crowded
misery had been brought from London and let loose in summer's
sweet-scented prodigality, the incense of fields and flowers might have
brought sparkle to young eyes dull with the wretchedness of poverty,
and colour to pale, unnourished cheeks. But Lord and Lady Durwent,
denying themselves the luxury of such a treat, asked people who lived
in the country to come and enjoy the country.
The pleasure of their guests was about as keen as would be that of a
party of bricklayers invited by a fellow-labourer to spend a Saturday
with him laying bricks.
IV.
To the insatiable curiosity of Austin Selwyn the party presented an
infinite chance for study, as well as an unlooked-for opportunity to
meet Elise Durwent under circumstances which should either cement their
friendship or else demonstrate its utter impracticability.
He listened to the chat of men who did the same things all the year
round with the same people, and he wondered a little at their
persistency in conversing at all. They rarely disagreed on anything,
partly because they were all of the same political faith, and it seemed
an understood thing that, so far as it was humanly possible, no one
would introduce any subject which would entail controversy. When
Selwyn, who was almost too thorough a believer in the productive powers
of fiction, used to drop conversational depth-bombs, they treated him
with easy tolerance as one who was entitled to his racial
peculiarities. Sometimes they would even put to sea clinging to the
raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off
into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of
satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy,
inconsequential banter which was full of humour without being labelled
funny; but it used to fill him with sorrow to see many of his best
controversial subjects punctured by a lazily conceived play of words.
He felt that, coming from the New World, he was in a position to give
knowledge for knowledge, but his fellow-guests were impervious to his
geographical qualifications, and persisted in their pleasant task of
rolling vocabulary along the straight grooved channels of their
well-bred thoughts.
The women were less of a type, but their little lives were so lacking
in horizon that they seemed to live in a perpetual atmosphere of
personalities. As pretty much the same topics of conversation did them
for a whole season, they were not unlike a travelling theatrical
company producing the one show wherever they went. One woman
occasioned some mirth to Selwyn by her familiarity with the obscure
royalties of Europe, whom she thrust forward on every possible
occasion. On dowager-duchesses and retired empresses she was without
parallel, and she went through life expressing perpetual regret that
she had not known you were going to Ruritania, because she would have
insisted upon your calling on her friend the Empress Lizajania.
It was perhaps an unfortunate circumstance that had brought together a
group of women none of whom was artistically accomplished, although
they were by no means lacking in social charm. Music for them was not
a refreshing stream which ran by the road of everyday life, but
something which was to be heard at the Opera, and which enjoyed a close
alliance with sables and diamond tiaras. Pictures were of the Academy,
and, like all the best people, they invariably said, 'Have you seen
this year's show at Burlington House? My dear, it's frightful.' Nor
did they neglect literature in their curriculum. Though literature
lacks a yearly exhibition, such as is possessed by music and painting,
they made it a subject for gossip, and denounced H. G. Wells as a
'bounder.' 'I never read him, Mr. Selwyn,' said the obscure-royalist
person. 'My cousin the Duchess of Atwater met him, and says--well,
really, she says he's quite impossible.'
With a mixture of wonder and amusement Selwyn watched the spectacle of
these people of more than average education and intelligence contenting
themselves with a perpetual routine of small-talk and genteel
insularity, and he wondered how it was that a race so gifted with the
blessed quality of humour could evolve a state of society offering such
a butt to the shafts of ridicule.
He liked Lord Durwent, whose unfailing gentleness and courtesy would
have stamped him as a gentleman in any walk of life. Although his mind
was comparatively unimpressionable to new ideas, it was saturated with
the qualities of integrity and fairness, and in his attitude towards
every one of his guests there was an old-world dignity, born of the
respect in which he held both himself and them. The study of this man
moving contentedly about his daily tasks, never making any one's day
harder by reason of his passing that way, was the first jolt Selwyn had
received in his gathering arraignment against English social life. By
way of contrast he pictured certain successful gentlemen of his
acquaintance in America, and the vision was not flattering to his
national self-esteem.
He also enjoyed the refreshing vitality of Lady Durwent, who never
quite lost her optimism no matter how tight was the grip of good form;
and he admired without stint the devotion of every one, regardless of
sex, to sport. Throughout the day there were constant expeditions that
necessitated long, invigorating hours in the open air; and it seemed to
the American that they were never so free from affectation, that the
comradeship between the men and the women was never so marked, as when
they were indulging their wise instinct for out-of-door sports.
He had been at Roselawn a couple of days before he had a chance to do
more than observe Elise Durwent as one of the party. She had been his
partner at tennis and bridge, and a dozen times he had exchanged light
talk with her, but there was always about her the defensive shield of
impersonal cordiality. When he spoke to her it was almost in a drawl,
but no matter to what a lackadaisical level he reduced his voice, her
replies were always punctuated by a retort that had in it the sense of
sting, as Alfio in _Cavalleria Rusticana_ accompanies his song with the
crack of a driving-whip.
He watched her with the men of the party, and wondered at their
good-natured endurance of her sharpness, as reckless as it was
disturbing; and he saw that her inclusion among the women made them
less at ease and disinclined to chatter. No matter what group she
joined, she was never of it; and even when it was obvious that she was
doing everything in her power to reduce her personality to the pitch of
the others, her individuality branded her as something apart.
Studying her, partly subconsciously and partly with the keen
observation prompted by the attraction she held for him, Selwyn began
to feel the loneliness of the girl. Not once did he see the melting of
eyes which comes when one person finds close affinity in the
understanding of a friend. When she spoke at the table her suddenness
always left a silence in its wake. At bridge her moves were so
spasmodic that, when opposite dummy, she seemed to play the two cards
with a simultaneous movement. The same mannerisms were in her outdoor
games, a second service at tennis often following a faulty first so
rapidly that her opponent would sometimes be almost unaware that more
than one ball had been played.
Selwyn's original feeling of exasperation mellowed to one of genuine
pity in contemplation of her solitary life--a life directed by a
restless energy that only grew in intensity with the deepening
realisation of her purposelessness. Yet she was so confident in her
bearing, and so capable of foiling with repartee any approach of his,
that he contented himself with a studied politeness that was no more
personal than the grief of an undertaker at a funeral.
V.
One evening, after dressing for dinner, Selwyn found that he had
half-an-hour to fill in, and as the smell of grass was scenting the
air, he sauntered from the house and strolled across the lawn to a path
which led to the trout-stream.
His mind was drowsy with a thousand half-formed ideas that lazily lay
in the pan of his brain waiting the reveille of thought. A skylark
twitted earth's creatures from its aerial height. A cow, munching in
endless meditation on its unfretful existence, emitted a philosophic
moo.
Selwyn smiled, and let his mind wander listlessly through the fields of
his impressions. He thought of Britain, and wondered what there is in
the magic of that little island that fastens on one's heart-strings
even while the brain is pounding insistent criticism. For the first
time the insidious beauty of Roselawn's tranquillity was cloying the
energy of his mind--a mind that never gave him rest, but was always
questioning and seeking the truth in every phase of human endeavour.
The peacefulness of the twilight hour was lulling his mental faculties,
and the perfumes of summer's zenith were stirring his senses like music
of the Nile.
As though he were picturing inhabitants of another world, he conjured
to his vision the feverish traffic of New York, deluged with human
beings belched from their million occupations into the glare of
lunch-hour. It gave him a strange sensation of being among the gods to
be able to look at the lowering sun and know that at the same moment it
held New York in the pitiless heat of midday. . . . And he wondered
dreamily why people lived such a mockery of existence as in its
towering streets. The pastoral atmosphere was so perfect, so
completely soothing in its cool fragrance of evening, that he thought
if he could only remain there, away from the conflict of the world, he
could write of such things as only poets dream and painters see.
He had readied the stream, and was about to retrace his steps, when he
heard the rustle of a dress, and coming round a bend in the path he saw
Elise Durwent. She was in an evening gown that looked oddly exotic in
those surroundings, and, still in a haze of reverie, he stood in
perplexed silence until she stopped opposite him.
'Have I interrupted the muse?' she said.
'On the contrary, you have awakened it. I was just thinking how vivid
you looked with that setting of overhanging bushes and the background
of fields. I--I think it must have been your gown that gave such a
quaintly incongruous effect.'
'And, of course, there is nothing incongruous in a dinner-jacket near a
trout-stream? If I were an artist I should paint you, and call the
picture "Despondency."'
'Well,' he smiled, 'that would be an improvement on most Academy
titles. An ordinary artist would simply name it "Young Gentleman by
Trout-Stream." Haven't you often gone through a gallery picturing all
sorts of dramatic meanings in paintings, only to have your illusions
shattered by the catalogue?'
She nodded. 'You have expressed no surprise at my coming,' she said
abruptly. 'Are women in the habit of tracking you in this way?'
'I'm sorry,' he answered, lazily thrusting his hands into his pockets.
'As a matter of fact you are never very far from my thoughts. Perhaps
that is why I felt no surprise.'
'How are you enjoying your visit?'
'Tremendously.'
'How do you like the guests?'
'Is this a catechism, Miss Durwent?'
She shrugged her shoulders and pulled a leaf from a bush. 'I was
wondering,' she said, 'whether they bored you as much as me.'
'Why,' he said with a slight laugh, 'to be frank, people never bore me.
The moment they become tedious they are of interest to me as a study in
tediousness.'
'Just the same,' she said quickly, 'as when a woman interests you she
becomes an object of analysis. I wish I could detach myself like that.'
'And yet,' he said gently, wondering at the intensity of her eyes, 'I
should have thought you possessed the gift of detachment to a greater
degree than I. You always seem separate and distinct from your
associates.'
She said nothing in reply, and as if by tacit agreement they started
back along the path. He did not break the silence, feeling that words
might be provocative of a retort that would dispel the growing feeling
of mutual confidence.
'No,' she said, after a long pause, 'I do not possess the power of
detachment. It's just that I don't mix well. Have you read Robert
Service's poem about the men that don't fit in?'
'Yes.'
'Well, it's far worse for the women who don't. A man can go out and
try to find some place for himself. We have simply to stay and endure
things.'
Half in compassion he watched her from the corner of his eye, but again
refrained from saying anything. He felt intuitively that she was
trying to break down the barrier of impersonality, but he knew that she
must do it in her own way of timid starts and quick withdrawals.
Although her movements were more restricted by her gown than when she
wore ordinary walking-garments, her vitality and limitless energy lent
a lilt to her step, and even touched the shoulders with a suggestion of
restless virility. When she walked there was an imperious tilt to her
head; but no matter how carefully planned her toilette, or how cleverly
her coiffure might have been arranged by her maid, there was nearly
always some stray bit of colour or carelessly chosen flower that
combined with her nature in a suggestion of outlawry: the same instinct
of rebellion that had dominated her brother Dick during their
childhood. Inside the house she would sometimes look, in her quickly
changing moods, as if she were some creature of Nature imprisoned
within the walls.
Selwyn wondered if heredity, in one of its strange jests, had recalled
the spirit of the smuggler ancestor and recast it into the soul of the
girl.
They were nearing the house, when, emerging upon a clearing, they came
to a rustic bench looking across a short field lined with shrubbery.
'Let us sit down a minute,' she said. 'We can hear the dinner-gong
from here.'
He took his seat beside her, and dreamily watched the yellow rays of
the sun casting their receding tints along the bushes opposite them.
It was strangely quiet, and the hum of insects seemed like a soft
orchestral accompaniment to the crickets' song.
'It is not very sporting of me, Mr. Selwyn,' she said softly, but with
her old staccato mannerism, 'to force my mood on you like this. I did
it once before--that dreadful night at the Café Rouge--and I know that
you must think it is just selfishness on my part that makes me so
unhappy. But--you know I never had a real friend--except little
Dick--and I felt to-night as if I had lost all my courage about life.
That's why I followed you. I knew you would be patient and kind.'
'My dear girl,' said Selwyn gently, speaking almost listlessly for fear
the smouldering power of retort should be fanned into being, 'for
months I have been hoping that some day we should be able to talk like
this, as friends. Perhaps it was my fault, but there always seemed a
sort of third-person-singular attitude in our talk, as if we were
speaking at each other, which served to block our friendship from
becoming anything of value to each other. Naturally I have seen that
you are not happy, though there have been moments when you were the
very personification of light-hearted ness, and I have known for a long
time that the motif of your whole nature is resentment. Believe me,
Miss Durwent, if I could be a friend--and I mean that to the last
ditch--I should be deeply grateful for the privilege.'
'Thanks,' she said simply, and placing her hand in his, let it remain
there.
The hot blood of his impressionable nature mounted to his cheeks, and
his heart was aflame with a sudden intoxication of desire. But
chivalry told him how much it had cost this girl, whose whole being
rebelled at the thought of being physically conquered, to show such a
mark of confidence. And reason warned him that any triumph he might
obtain would be only for the moment. He watched the flight of a hawk
in the sky--and his lips were parched and hot.
'For a long time,' she said, 'I have had a growing sensation of
suffocation in life. It's stifling me. When I look ahead and see
nothing but this kind of life--visiting, visiting, entertaining,
entertaining, listening to that endless talk in London--well, I think I
understand why some women go to the devil. At least there's something
genuine about sin.'
A rabbit leaped from a bush opposite as though it bad seen something
terrifying, and scampered madly across the field to some burrowed
refuge by a great oak. Selwyn felt the hand in his tighten
convulsively.
'Look!' she cried. 'Austin--look!'
Her face blanched with sudden alarm. He sprang to his feet.
'What is it?' he cried.
'The bush--there--where the rabbit darted out.'
He looked at the spot indicated by her trembling hand, but the
dwindling sunlight had just passed it, and he could see nothing but a
clump of shrubbery.
'It was a man,' she said, her voice shaking querulously. 'I saw his
face. He was crouching there and watching us.'
Selwyn frowned. 'Some poacher fellow,' he said, 'that's all. At any
rate, I'll make sure.'
He started for the bush, when, with a tearful laugh, she stopped him,
her hands clinging to his arm.
'No--no,' she said swiftly, 'it's nothing. It was just my nerves.
There is no one there. The rabbit startled me.'
He hesitated momentarily, then, turning to her, gripped her arms with
his hands. A great feeling of pity for the high-strung girl welled up
in him, and he wished that it were possible to impart some of his own
strength to her. 'Elise,' he began hoarsely, his whole being in a
cloud of passion through which his brain slashed its lightning shafts
of warning--'Elise'----
The hall gong, growing in a clamant intensity, rang out on the quiet
air. With the lightness of a fawn she released herself from his grip,
and gathering her skirts in her hand, moved towards the path. 'Come
along,' she cried; 'we shall be late for dinner.'
He followed her slowly, his hands in his pockets and his mind besieged
with countless thoughts. As he crossed the lawn he looked up.
From a window in the tower of Roselawn there was shining an angry,
blood-red reflection of the sun's dying moments.
VI.
It was a few minutes after midnight when the party at Roselawn retired
to their rooms. There had been an impromptu dance, following some
spirited bridge, and there was more than the usual chaffing and
laughter as the guests dispersed to the various wings of the house.
Tired with the many events of the day, the American quickly undressed,
and soothed by the comfort of cool sheets, lay in that relaxation of
mind and body which prefaces the panacea of sleep. With half-closed
eyes and drowsy semi-consciousness he heard the sounds of life growing
less and less in the roomy passages of Roselawn, as his mind lingered
over the burning memory of Elise's proximity a few hours before. He
felt again the perfume of her hair and the radiant freshness of her
womanhood, with its inexplicable sense of spring-time. And memory,
with its power of exquisite torture, recalled to his mind the
questioning eyes and the trembling, beckoning lips.
The soft chime of a clock downstairs sounded the passing of another
hour. Its murmuring echo died to a silence unbroken by any sound save
that of the summer breeze playing about the eaves and towers of the
house.
Minutes passed. His thoughts blurred into the gathering shadows of
sleep.
Of a sudden he was awake, his eyes staring into the dark, his whole
body nervously, acutely, on the alert. He had heard a cry--of a
nightjar--but so strange and eerie that it made him hold his breath.
The call was repeated. An owl answered with a creepy cry of alarm.
Selwyn muttered impatiently at the trick played upon him by his nerves,
and turning over, was about to settle again to slumber, when he heard a
door softly opening. Light footsteps passed in the hall, stopping at
each creaking board as though suspicious that some one might hear; then
their sound was lost in the thick carpet of the stairway.
For a minute there was complete silence. He heard from below the
cautious opening of the side-door leading to the lawn.
Wondering what mischief was on foot, he rose from his bed, and peering
through the window, tried to penetrate the gloom. A sullen sky kept
the stars imprisoned behind deep banks of clouds, and only the trees,
by reason of their solid blackness, were discernible in the darkness of
the night. Slipping on a dressing-gown, he stealthily left his room,
and creeping downstairs, found the open door. Emerging on the lawn, he
looked quickly about.
Beneath a near-by tree he saw a woman in white, and the figure of a man
pleading for something. Suddenly Selwyn saw the woman take some
article from around her neck and hand it to the man. The fellow took
it, and seemed to be turning away, when, with a suppressed sob, she
caught him in her arms, murmuring incoherent endearments through her
tears.
The black scudding clouds left the sky-clear for a moment overhead--and
Selwyn felt a contraction of pain in his heart.
The woman was Elise, and the man--her brother Dick.