“Five years ago since I saw Piccadilly!”
“Good Heavens! it must be--seems hardly possible!” exclaimed Carey’s
friend, Trelawney.
The two men were in a hansom on their way to Mrs. Edgbaston Smith’s
party.
“I can’t think how ever you came to stop away so long, old man! I
should have gone mad; but then I’m like poor old Ortheris when I’ve
been out of London six months,--‘sick fer the sounds of ’er, and the
sights of ’er, and the stinks of ’er--orange peel, and hasphalte, an’
gas, and all!’” He laughed.
“Oh! I don’t know,” said Carey, with a shrug. “I meant to come home
before, of course,” he went on after a moment, “and then, when the
poor old man died I felt I never wanted to see the place again. So I
moved on, kept moving, went to the other end of nowhere. I’ve seen most
things now, that’s why I’m back again.”
“Well! it’s time you _were_ back, steadily turning your copy to
account. Your book’s been boomed a bit, you’ve caught on, I think.
Perhaps after the solitude of the desert you won’t object to find
pretty women bowing the knee before you to-night? Mrs. Edgbaston
Smith’s excitement when I offered to bring you this evening was a sight
for the gods!”
“What the devil does one do when they bow the knee? I’ve been out of
the civilized world too long, it seems-- Ah! St. James’s Hall!” Carey
leaned forward a moment, and watched the crowd on the pavement before
the lighted entrance. “I wonder if there’s a Wagner concert on!” he
said, leaning back with a smile.
There was a moment’s pause.
“The last time I passed that place,” he remarked, with a backward
nod in the direction of the Hall, “I was in a hansom with the most
beautiful girl I ever saw in my life. It seems like yesterday.”
“Sounds as though you were hard hit, old man! Her image in your heart
for five long years. She ought to have ‘loved another,’ to make the
thing complete. Did she?”
“Not to my knowledge, and I’d hardly time to be hard hit. I met her
only once before that drive, and I sailed next day. We drove from here
to Hackney, to be sure, which is like saying till the crack of doom.”
“Oh! I understand. Not the blushing _ingénue_. I don’t know why, but I
imagined she was.”
“Not the blushing sort, certainly, but nevertheless you don’t
understand. It was not the ordinary episode by any means. She was
clever, very clever. I wonder what has become of her. If she’s
emerged--”
“Emerged? A woman emerges in so many ways. She may be married, or on
the County Council.”
“Or both, but I meant as a writer. She sent me some stories to read, I
remember, and I was struck with them. I sent them to Goddard, and I had
a pretty little note from her at Port Said to say he’d taken them. Oh,
tell me about the people to-night, Trelawney. Remember I’m out of it.
What’s the set?”
“Well, there’ll be the usual lot, no doubt,--Blandford, Eversleigh,
Archie Morefield, and that young ass Trilling, I suppose.”
“Don’t know any of them. What do they do?”
“Tell them you never heard of them! Trilling will say, ‘How exquisitely
subtle!’ or if it’s Eversleigh, ‘How symbolic!’”
“Of what?”
“Oh! anything, nothing. Ask them that too, and they’ll hurl paradoxes
and epigrams at you till you’ll begin to doubt your own sanity. You’ll
soon see how it’s done; you may even learn to do it yourself. It’s not
difficult. Merely remember what a normal man says when he’s asked a
plain question, invert it, season to taste with a few passion-colored
adjectives, and serve up as languidly as possible.”
“Ah! a few passion-colored adjectives may be useful, I imagine, if
that’s the set. Well, go on.”
“Goldfield will be there, I suppose. Oh! and Travers and his wife.”
“Paul Travers? I’ve seen his name now and again. He used to be
promising.”
“Yes, he’s brilliant in a way,--the thin, sketchy way that’s in vogue
just now. He’s by way of being the high priest of the elect, you know.
He’s got plenty of money, only writes when he feels like it. I suspect
him of being a brute, a cynical brute. I’m sorry for his wife. I think
you’ll be struck with her. She-- Ah! here we are.” He threw away his
cigar as the hansom drew up before a big house in a gloomy square.
Carey was greeted effusively by his hostess, a tall, bony woman, with a
nervous, flustered manner, and was speedily and impressively introduced
right and left.
The crowded drawing-room, with its lights and flowers and babel of
conversation, struck him as somewhat bewildering. He found it hard to
fix his attention upon the lank-haired youth before him who had begged
an introduction, apparently for the purpose of anathematizing the
prudery of the British public, which by the hand of its publishers
persisted in refusing his distinguished, if somewhat erotic poems.
Carey glanced round the room with interest. He had been out of
drawing-room life so long that it had almost the glamour of novelty
for him. He was pleased with the bright, sheeny folds of the women’s
dresses, with the gleam of diamonds on the white neck of a pretty girl
who stood near him, talking vivaciously; with the star-like effect of
the candles between the flowers about the room.
He vaguely wondered how many times since his absence these same men and
women had met and talked, and been bored, and had concealed or revealed
the fact, according to their several natures. He felt it was marvellous
that they kept up appearances so well. Five years of it! and Heaven
knew how many before that. There was a little stir and flutter about
the door at the moment, as a fresh arrival was announced.
“There’s Travers--and his wife. Lovely woman, isn’t she?” he heard some
one remark at his elbow.
A tall, high-shouldered man, with a narrow, clean-shaven face, was
shaking hands with people near the door. Mrs. Travers was talking to
her hostess. Carey could not see her face just for a moment, till Mrs.
Edgbaston Smith moved aside to greet new-comers.
She came forward then, smiling, and shaking hands. Two or three men
hurried to meet her, and she was soon the centre of a little circle.
“She has altered!” was Carey’s first conscious thought, after the
momentary shock of surprise. “She is beautiful, but she’s changed!”
She was exquisitely dressed, he noticed, in white, with a great deal of
filmy lace about the gown. She moved with the same grace he remembered,
and he even recalled the quick turn of her head as she talked. She
did not look much older at first sight. It was difficult to tell what
constituted the great change in her appearance; he puzzled over it a
moment, and thought it lay in the expression of her eyes. He did not
know whether he liked the change. Her face was more interesting. “She
has lived some of the life she wanted so much, I expect,” he thought as
he watched her. Until this evening he had not thought of the girl for
years; now almost every word of their five years’ old conversation came
back to him. “Bridget Ruan! Bridget Travers now, of course,” he added,
correcting himself.
He had no opportunity of speaking to her for some time; the room was
very full, and he saw she had not yet recognized him. Once he found
himself standing at the back of her chair. A young man with long hair,
and very loose-jointed about the knees, was lounging on the corner of a
divan next to her. Carey caught snatches of their conversation.
“Yes, but they are blind to the exquisite snake-like charm, to the
subtle glamour of sin, which is the perfect flower of a well-spent
life,” the man peevishly complained.
“You are too hard on them, Mr. Trilling. You expect too much. They
are thoroughly inartistic, remember. They cleave to goodness and the
Nonconformist conscience, poor deluded souls! There is a great field
before you. Go out and show them the beauty of sinfulness; it used to
be holiness, you know--but what’s in a name?”
She spoke in a languid, even tone, leaning back in her low chair, and
holding a large white fan of feathers, which she moved slowly as she
spoke.
“She has picked up the tone, knows all the catch-words and the patter,
I suppose. I wonder why I hardly expected it of her?” Carey asked
himself. She was sitting under the light of a tall standard lamp. Her
waving hair was touched here and there with gleams of dull gold. He
remembered that he had never decided on the true color of her eyes or
hair, and then he resolutely gave his mind to the confidences of Miss
Yorke-Woodville, who was confiding to him her burning desire to write a
novel.
Half an hour later, as he was entering the inner drawing-room, he
came face to face with Mrs. Travers. She glanced at him hastily, in a
startled fashion, then put out her hand, and smiled. Her color rose a
little.
“Then you haven’t forgotten me?” Carey said.
“I should be very ungrateful if I _had_,” she replied softly. “So you
have come back from the Wonderlands? But of course you came back long
ago?”
“No, I landed on Monday.”
They moved towards some vacant seats near a door opening into the
conservatory.
“What have _you_ been doing these five years?” Carey asked, sinking
into a low seat beside her.
“I? Oh!--” she laughed a little. “I have married.”
“So I heard.”
“You know my husband?” she said quickly.
“Only through his books,--that is, his earlier sketches and stories.
I’ve been out of things five years, remember. I thought his work had
great distinction even then, when he was quite a young writer.”
“Yes, it is brilliant.” Carey glanced at her. The words were evidently
uttered in all sincerity, but there was something about her manner that
struck him oddly.
“But you?” he asked. “I’m so anxious to hear about your work. It was
such a pleasure to me to know that Goddard thought well of the stories
you sent me. You know--if you haven’t forgotten--_my_ opinion of them,”
he added, smiling.
“I haven’t forgotten,” she returned slowly. “One doesn’t forget
criticism of that kind, and sympathy. The stories were published in
the _Coterie_,” she continued, indifferently. “They attracted a little
attention at the time.” She paused, waving her fan with the graceful
mechanical action he had observed before.
“And what have you done since?”
“Nothing. I don’t write now; at least, I don’t publish.”
“But--” he began, protestingly.
“One can’t do two things at once,” she interrupted, laughing a little.
“Nowadays, marriage is looked upon as a _vocation_, remember, and one
throws one’s whole heart and soul into such a dignified thing as a
vocation! At least, one should.” She turned to Carey, and raised her
eyes to his, still laughing. She was a little flushed, and her eyes
were very large and bright.
He did not reply for a moment. “Well! some of my prophecy has been
fulfilled at any rate, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve had my share of the fruit of the Tree. There’s so much
of it--one grows a little tired of fruit, don’t you think so?”
“You think the blossoms are best, after all? Ah, but suppose I had
tried to persuade you of that, five years ago?”
“I should have turned and rent you, of course,” she said, smiling. “But
then no children believe they wouldn’t like fruit if they could get
it. You must let them make themselves ill with it before they believe
_that_. Oh, but some of it was very nice,” she added hastily, with a
change of voice.
“My friends the Mansfields came home about nine months after you went,
and they were delighted about my little success, of course. I was
invited to a great many different houses. Oh! I had a lovely time.
Everything was fresh and new and interesting, you understand? I met my
husband at one of these houses,” she added. “We have been married three
years.”
“Mansfield?--my friend Trelawney is engaged to Professor Mansfield’s
daughter. Is--”
“Is Mr. Trelawney a friend of yours?” Bridget said, animatedly. “How
strange! Yes, he and Helen are engaged. She is a great friend of mine.
There she is!” She pointed out a tall girl in black, with coils of soft
fair hair. “But of course Mr. Trelawney has introduced you?”
“Yes. I’ve been talking to Miss Mansfield. She is charming.”
Bridget smiled at him approvingly. She was very much like the young
girl of five years ago as she did so; the slight, almost imperceptible
hardness in her voice melted, he noticed, when she spoke of her friend.
“And you?” she said after a moment. “You have done great things. You
have given me no opportunity of forgetting you,” she added, smiling.
“I’ve read all your articles, and your book. The book was beautiful.”
The sudden seriousness in her shining eyes gave him the sense of having
received a great compliment. He remembered that he had felt flattered
when she had expressed her admiration for his work years ago as a mere
slip of a girl.
They talked for some time. Carey forgot that he had thought her
changed. Her languid manner had vanished; she was eager and responsive
as he remembered her. She had the same pretty attitude of attention
too, the same vivacious gesture of agreement or dissent.
He was telling her of some experience of his in Benares, when he
noticed her husband leisurely making his way towards them. He came and
stood before Bridget.
“I’m exceedingly sorry--” he began, and glanced at Carey, who rose and
moved back a step.
Something in the man’s voice made his attitude a little stiff.
“The carriage is here?” she asked, rising. Carey made a slight
involuntary movement--he hardly knew why--as she spoke.
“Good-night,” she said, turning to him. She gave him her hand with a
smile. For a second she hesitated, then turned away. Carey thought she
blushed a little.
She had not introduced him to her husband, nor had she asked him to
call. He thought of this as he watched her, followed by her husband,
threading her way towards Mrs. Edgbaston Smith, with a smile, and a
gracious little bow here and there.
He reflected that he would probably meet her at the Mansfields.