In the full-grown schoolgirl, who stands on the threshold of womanhood,
we have a creature who, though probably admirably equipped with normal
or even supernormal passions, is, possibly owing to the accident of her
age and her position, less prone to be led by passion than by vanity in
her first affairs with the other sex.
Standing on the threshold of life as she does, she may be a little too
eager to prove that she is fit for the game, fit for the thrills and
throbs of the great melodrama. Out of sheer anxiety therefore, without
any genuine desire to gratify a passion, but simply with the view of
giving her self-esteem the proof that she is mature, she may behave very
much as if her heart and passions were involved. And though, in later
life, she may develop into a supremely desirable woman, she behaves for
the nonce very much like those deplorable people who in all they think
and do are actuated by vanity alone.
The dupe in such cases, the fool in such cases, the creature who, owing
to his gross misunderstanding of the situation, allows himself to be
persuaded by his vanity that he has stimulated _une grande passion_ in
an unbroken filly, naturally deserves all he gets. Unfortunately, as the
world is at present constituted, his punishment, like that of the modern
co-respondent, always falls short of its proper severity.
Now Denis Malster was certainly no fool,--nay, he was probably above the
average in intelligence; and yet the speed with which he had succeeded
in monopolising Leonetta's attention made him feel in his gratified
vanity, so immensely grateful to the girl, that willy-nilly, he found
himself drifting all too pleasantly along that warm and intoxicating
stream that the nineteenth century called "Love," without feeling either
the obligation or even the desire to realise calmly and dispassionately
what had actually happened.
Quite recently she had even allowed him to kiss her. It was unspeakable
bliss, almost distressing in its transcendent quality. He "had such joy
of kissing her," he "had small care to sleep or feed. For the joy to
kiss between her brows time upon time" he "was well-nigh dead." How
could he be deceived by such unequivocal demonstrations of real passion?
In any case it was too wonderful to be wrong, and if wrong--what then?
The Devil was worth a score of heavens!
He had not carelessly overlooked the other sister. He was not
absent-minded where she was concerned. He had resolutely cast her out of
his mind. With conscious deliberation he had banished her far beyond his
horizon. His only remaining difficulty was not to discover the nature
of his next step, but how to take it. He felt an irrevocable destiny
bidding him solicit Leonetta's hand, but he rightly foresaw that there
might be some difficulty where Mrs. Delarayne was concerned.
It was because he happened to be in this mood of conscienceless desire,
unreflecting longing, that he had been able to listen calmly at the
table, the day before, while Wilmott announced Cleopatra's fall. Dimly
he had connected his behaviour with her indisposition; but the
temptation to continue along his present lines was too great to allow
him to dwell profitably upon that aspect of the situation.
Now again, just after he had come down from Brineweald Park to "The
Fastness," as was his wont after breakfast, he had scarcely felt a fibre
of pity or remorse stir in his body while Mrs. Delarayne had described
Cleopatra's second fainting fit to him. He had expressed his sympathy
formally, conventionally, like one who had but a few moments to spare
for such considerations, and even before Mrs. Delarayne had completed
her narrative, had allowed his eyes to wander eagerly all over the
garden for a sign of Leonetta.
Rigid and unmoved, he had seen the stir caused by the arrival of the
doctor, and later by the departure of Stephen Fearwell on his
motor-cycle with an urgent message from Mrs. Delarayne to Sir Joseph to
send one of his cars round at once for her immediate use.
What the car was wanted for, how it was connected with Cleopatra's
illness, he hadn't either the inclination or the interest to discover;
he only deplored the destiny that caused Cleopatra's breakdown when,
suddenly, without Mrs. Delarayne's having made any mention of the plan
to him, Leonetta, dazzling, electrifying, and elfish as usual, tripped
out into the garden to whisper to him that her mother wished her to
drive with her to Ashbury at once.
"To Ashbury--you--at once--with the Warrior?" he ejaculated. "Whatever
for?"
"I don't know," said Leonetta.
"But it's impossible," he objected. "Can't you say you can't go?"
"I wish I could."
"But why should the old Warrior want to take precisely you to Ashbury?"
he pursued.
"I only know," she replied, "that Lord Henry's Sanatorium is at Ashbury,
and that Peachy's making far too much of Cleo's illness. Why, it's only
the heat."
"How many miles is it to Ashbury?"
"Seventeen to twenty, I believe."
"So you'll be gone about two hours?"
"Yes, my darling,--cheer up."
He smiled at these words, pressed her hand tenderly as he did so, and
heard the car glide round the drive.
"Good-bye, my goddess," he whispered.
Then suddenly Mrs. Delarayne's head appeared at one of the bedroom
windows of the house.
"Come in and get ready at once, Leonetta!" she called out angrily. "The
car has just arrived."
"Good-bye, my angel," she whispered, and ran in.
It was eleven o'clock; they could be back for lunch. The Fearwells,
Vanessa, and Guy Tyrrell had gone to Stonechurch for a bathe. The whole
place was a desert. He thought he might go for a walk, and entered the
house to fetch his hat and stick. But he hesitated; he felt so desolate
alone. The sound, however, of another car in the drive outside, and Sir
Joseph's voice giving instructions to the chauffeur, brought him quickly
to his senses, and snatching his hat down, he ran out of the house,
through the garden, and out into the meadows beyond.
It was a glorious day. He had no wish to try to account for his
reluctance to meet his chief alone at that moment, and as he swung his
stick and whistled on his walk, he tried to convince himself that he
could afford to snap his fingers at the powerful City magnate.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Mrs. Delarayne and Leonetta were racing along as swiftly as
Sir Joseph's head chauffeur dared to go. The road and the hedges on
either side seemed to be simply a green-edged ribbon which the bonnet
of the car cut into two gigantic streamers that flew for miles and miles
behind them. Villages were skirted as far as possible, and appeared to
be packed hurriedly away like so much stage scenery. Narrow bridges and
awkward turnings were negotiated at top speed, and seemed to be cleared
more by good luck than skilled driving; but still the pace was not
sufficiently hard for Mrs. Delarayne, who, sitting almost erect in the
car, with neck craned and eyes fixed on the farthest horizon, spoke
scarcely a word to her companion.
The mother instinct had been roused in the heart of this elegant,
youth-loving widow,--that, and also the complex emotions provoked by the
fact that, since her last momentous interview with Lord Henry, she had
not heard from him.
It had cost her a good deal to decide upon this step. For reasons which
she had refrained from investigating, she had not introduced Lord Henry
to her daughters. At first the omission had been the outcome of a series
of pure accidents, quite beyond her control. Then, as she acquired the
habit of meeting him alone, or at least unaccompanied by her offspring,
her relationship to him had at last seemed to derive part of its
essential character from this very exclusiveness. He appeared to belong
to her. The thought of one of her daughters becoming perhaps attached to
him filled her with vague qualms, as if her relationship to him would
thereby be marred. Thenceforward intention or design began to take the
place of accident, and her daughters had been rigorously excluded
whenever Lord Henry and the widow met.
And now, in a moment of stress, in a mood of deep anxiety concerning a
daughter who, despite the radical difficulty of daughter-and-mother
relationships, had been on the whole singularly devoted and sensible,
she had resolved to reverse the old order, to invite Lord Henry to "The
Fastness," and thus necessarily to let her daughters meet him.
The sight of the blundering local practitioner that morning had revealed
to her the danger of excluding Lord Henry any longer from her family
affairs. Her difficulties had become too heavy. She knew that he and he
alone could assist her; and she determined to enlist his help. Thus her
principal "secret" man, the most cherished of all her clandestine male
attachments, was to be brought by her own hand, by her own act and
exertion, into the presence of charms far more magnetic, far more
irresistible than any she could now hope to wield, and which were all
the more apparent to her for being so much like her own. This was indeed
a surrender of principle which showed that Mrs. Delarayne's maternal
instinct had been moved to action; but its energy in this case,
creditable as it was, fell so far short of what it might have been in
the case of a beloved son, that the widow far from being happy, was
conscious only of being urged by painful duty upon the errand she was
now fulfilling.
The presence of Leonetta in the car, though an insoluble mystery to the
child herself, was accounted for simply as an obvious manoeuvre on the
part of an angry and ingenious woman of the world, to retaliate to some
extent upon the chief cause of all her trouble, the annoyance and
disturbance he had occasioned her. But she was too sensible to upbraid
the girl herself. She knew how fatally decisive opposition might prove
at this stage in Leonetta's sudden excitement over Denis Malster, and
she resolved to be guided in the whole of the complicated business by
the sure hand of Lord Henry.
To Leonetta's secretly guilty heart, however, her mother's silence
seemed to remove the one possible explanation that yet remained for her
having been made to drive to Ashbury; and by the time three quarters of
the journey had been accomplished, she resigned herself to a mood of
mystified boredom.
Occasionally her mother would mutter anxiously: "I wonder whether Lord
Henry will be in";--but that was all. Her affability and good nature
seemed to be the same as usual.
At last the car drew up at the northern outskirts of Ashbury, before a
building that appeared to Leonetta as unlike her mental image of a
sanatorium as anything could possibly be. It was a large building with a
white stucco front, badly cracked all over,--evidently a sort of old
manor house of about the period of George IV,--and the sight of the
smart motor cars drawn up on either side of the road in front of its
partly dilapidated gate, seemed but to enhance the general impression of
decay which characterised both the house and its surroundings.
The string of cars, however, brought a smile to Mrs. Delarayne's lips,
for they showed that Lord Henry's clinique was open that day.
"Now wait for me here, in the car," she said in her most positive
manner, "however long I am."
Leonetta and Cleopatra knew from experience that when their mother spoke
in this way she would brook no disobedience; and so throwing off her
dust cloak, Leonetta settled herself in the car to see what interest she
could derive from watching the activity at the gate.
Mrs. Delarayne's card sufficed to bring the matron hurrying down with
the assurance that Lord Henry would see her next. He was very busy, and
had been hard at work for at least a fortnight. There was a room full of
people waiting.
"Unusually hard at work!" Mrs. Delarayne observed.
"Yes," replied the matron, "quite exceptional."
"And why is that?" the widow enquired.
"We think it is the heat. The dog days seem somehow to increase nervous
trouble in quite a number of people,--at least so Lord Henry says."
"Then you may be sure it is so," said Mrs. Delarayne emphatically. She
was taken to a private room, and there in a few minutes Lord Henry
joined her.
He listened with his usual earnestness to all she had to tell him, and
learned as much as he could from the description of her untrained
observation of Cleopatra's symptoms.
"What is it, Lord Henry,--do tell me,--that makes grown-up men of the
present day so susceptible to raw flappers? You surely have an
explanation!"
"I have," Lord Henry replied, smiling in his malicious way. "It is
accounted for by the whole trend of modern sentiment and modern
prejudice. It is in the air. It is the result of the nineteenth
century's absurd exaltation of rude untrammelled nature. It really
amounts to anarchy, because it is always accompanied by a certain
feeling of hostility towards law and culture. Hence the love of wild
rugged moors and mountains which is a modern mania."
"Oh, didn't the ancients admire these things?" the lady exclaimed a
little crestfallen.
"Of course they didn't," Lord Henry replied. "Hence, too, the ridiculous
present-day exaltation of childhood, because children are stupidly
supposed to trail 'clouds of glory' from whence they come, as that old
spinster Wordsworth assures us. In fact everything immature or
uncultivated is supposed to be sacrosanct. Of course that young man,
Denis Malster, must be a sentimentalist, too, and he probably wants
kicking badly; but it is not entirely his fault. The sentiment, as I
say, is in the air. We are all threatened with infection. They had it in
the eighteenth century in France."
"What can I do?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded.
"Nothing!"
"But I can't let Cleopatra fall about in all directions,--she'll kill
herself."
"What did the doctor say?"
"Need you ask?"
"Prescribed iron and strychnine, I suppose. Or did he suggest cold
baths?"
"No, as you say, he prescribed iron, quinine, and strychnine."
Lord Henry glanced at his note-book.
"Of course, I am absolutely full up. But--but----"
Mrs. Delarayne fidgeted.
"I'm afraid I shall have to come if I'm to do any good. My senior
assistant here will have to do the best he can, that's all."
Although Mrs. Delarayne was quite prepared for this, she had hoped even
until the last that Lord Henry might be able to treat Cleopatra from a
distance, and that she would therefore be spared the duty of having him
at Brineweald. It was a hard pill to swallow, but she took it
gracefully.
"When can you come?" she asked with forced cheerfulness.
"Can you send the car for me at about quarter to eight this evening?"
Mrs. Delarayne promised to do this, and the young man rose.
She held his hand for some time as they said good-bye, and gazed
longingly into his face. It seemed to her that after this last meeting,
alone, on their old terms, nothing could any longer be quite the same.
He would become the friend of other members of her family. He would no
longer be her private refuge, her nook-and-corner intimate, her own
friend, her secret.
"Lord Henry," she pleaded on their way downstairs, "would you advise me
to say anything to Leonetta?"
"What can you say?" he protested.
"My sister says I ought to scold the child for what she calls her 'fast'
way with young men."
"Oh, nonsense!" Lord Henry exclaimed. "What can you tell the girl?--to
be less fascinating, to be less beautiful, to be less full of life? That
would be as futile as it would be deforming. You can only watch her so
that she does not come to harm, or fall into the hands of a villain. You
cannot moralise. I think you have been wonderful to restrain yourself so
far. But continue doing so."
"You see, I remember what I was at her age!" the widow admitted
bashfully.
Lord Henry laughed, and in a moment she laughed with him.
He accompanied her to the door, and feeling very much relieved she
rejoined her daughter.
* * * * *
At half-past four that afternoon, just as the car bearing away Lord
Henry's last out-patient, had glided out of the drive, he sent for St.
Maur.
The day had been a particularly heavy one. Unfortunate, miserable, and
beautiful girls, with everything they could wish for, had come in their
dozens for the last month, with nervous tics that utterly marred their
beauty and blighted their lives. He had seen no less than three that
day. Business men, Army men, clergymen, married women, mothers, each
with some kind of nervous catch in their voices, uncontrollable spasms
in their limbs, stammers, or obsessions,--everyone was now beginning to
hear of Lord Henry's wonderful success in dealing with such cases, and
he was getting inconveniently busy.
Only a few were perhaps aware that he derived most of his skill in the
handling of these nervous disorders from the teaching of a certain
Austrian Jew of brilliant genius; but even those who knew this fact also
recognised that he had shown such enormous ability in adapting the
principles of his Semitic master to modern English conditions that he
was entitled to be regarded quite as much as an innovator as a disciple.
What Lord Henry had done could have been accomplished only by an
Englishman of exceptional intelligence. He had discovered that the
almost universal feature of nervous abnormalities in England, which were
not the outcome of trauma or congenital disease, arose out of the
national characteristic of "consuming one's own smoke." He had been the
first to demonstrate with scientific precision that the suppression of
Catholicism in England, with its concomitant proscription of the
confessional box from the churches, had laid the foundation of three
quarters of the nation's nervous disabilities. He had thus called
attention to yet one more objectionable and stupid feature of the
Protestant Church, and one which was perhaps more nauseating, more
sordid, than any to which his friend Dr. Melhado was so fond of
pointing. Thus he called his sanatorium in Kent "The Confessional," and
his methods, there, followed pretty closely the methods of the mediaeval
Church.
He would point out that it was this absence of the rite of confession
that made people in Protestant countries so conspicuously more
self-conscious than the inhabitants of Catholic countries. For nothing
leads to self-consciousness more certainly than the attempt constantly
to consume one's own smoke.
"The independence, individualism, and natural secrecy of the English
character, together with the enormous amount of sex suppression that
English Puritanism involves," he used frequently to say, "leads to an
incredible amount of consumption of their own smoke by millions of the
English people. Large numbers of these people are able to digest the
fumes, others fall ill with nervous trouble owing to the poison
contained in the vapours they try to dispose of in secrecy."
His startling successes had all been based upon the recognition of this
fundamental fact. "But," as he said, "instead of these people keeping
well through the ordinary exercise of their religion, they have, owing
to their absurd Protestant beliefs, to pay me through the nose for
providing them with a scientific instead of a sacerdotal confessional
box."
Nevertheless, the hard work was beginning to tell, and as he waited for
St. Maur and recalled the circumstances of Mrs. Delarayne's visit, it
struck him that it would not be unwise to avail himself of that lady's
need of him in order perhaps to take a short holiday.
Truth to tell, he was a little satiated with Society's nervous wrecks.
You cannot hold your nose for long over any kind of smoke without being
nauseated; but the fumes which men and women have tried to consume
themselves, and failed, have this peculiarity, that they are perhaps
more foetid, more unsavoury, more asphyxiating, than any that can be
produced by the combustion of the most obnoxious and malodorous
chemicals.
St. Maur observed his friend's condition as he entered the room.
"Hard day?" he enquired.
"Very."
"I thought so. Cheques have been coming in pretty plentifully too. Any
celebrities?"
"One M.P. and one Canon,--the rest ordinary, or rather extraordinary men
and women. But don't let us talk about it; my stomach's turned as it
is. I'm going to take a few days' holiday, Aubrey."
St. Maur in his astonishment had to sit down.
"Mrs. Delarayne has just been here. Her daughter seems to be an
interesting case of self-surrender and inversion of reproductive
instinct owing to repeated rebuffs. She is now at the self-immolating
stage. Rather dangerous. Falls about. Her knees give way. Might cut her
head open. Great struggle for supremacy apparently with flapper sister.
Both passionate girls, of course. Only thrown up sponge after hard and
unsuccessful fight. Local doctor orders iron, quinine, and strychnine.
It's a wonder he didn't order brimstone and treacle. Mother doesn't
understand the condition at all, but is sufficiently wise to suspect
that the behaviour of a certain young man with fascinating flapper
sister may be contributory."
"Can't she come here?" asked St. Maur.
"Well, she could. But it is one of those cases in which, if I want to do
any real good, I must watch conditions on the spot."
"When do you leave?"
"In an hour or two. The car's coming to fetch me."
He rose, looked down with grave disapproval at his baggy trousers, and
flicked a speck or two of dust from his jacket.
"Aubrey, dear boy, I want you to make me look smart,--do you think it
can be managed?" He smiled in his irresistible way, and St. Maur had to
laugh too. "You evidently think it quite impossible," he added.
"No, not at all, you ass!" St. Maur objected. "I'm always telling you
that you can look the smartest man in England if you choose. You fellows
who are habitually dowdy create a most tremendous effect when, for once,
you really dress in a rational fashion."
Lord Henry scratched his head and glanced dubiously down at his clothes
again.
"I suppose these would do," he said.
St. Maur expostulated with scorn. "Where are all your things? You've got
some presentable clothes, only you never wear them; or if you do, you
wear the wrong ties or the wrong shirts, or the wrong socks with them."
"Have you got your crow's nest here?" Lord Henry demanded.
St. Maur nodded.
"Drive me to the cottage, then," said the elder man, throwing out his
arms dramatically, "and get me up to kill!"
St. Maur was interested, and showed it in his glance.
"Don't be alarmed, dear boy," said Lord Henry. "I may have to play a
part down at Brineweald."
St. Maur did as he was bid, and the two spent about an hour and a half
in Lord Henry's bedroom, sorting out ties, collars, shirts, lounge
suits, dress clothes, and boots and shoes.
At last Lord Henry was clothed, and, as St. Maur had truthfully
prophesied, looked the very paragon of a well-dressed man. Indeed, not
only was the contrast with his usual self so bewildering as to banish
all sense of proportion in estimating the splendour of his
transformation but the singular nobility of his face, with its wise,
youthful brow and deep, thoughtful eyes, also added such a curious
piquancy to his fashionable attire, that the general effect was little
short of startling. It is always so. Dress your scholar, your thinker,
your poet, in clothes that Saville Row has carefully designed and
carried out for a Society peacock, and the result is not a member of the
_phasianidae_, but a golden eagle. It is as if the art of the tailor or
shirt maker were grateful for once to adorn something more than a mere
dandy. That depth of the eye, that wise and learned mouth, those
intelligent and almost understanding hands, the noble studious
brow,--all these embellishments added to the figure of the ordinary man,
give a certain finish to well-made garments, which these in their turn
impart to the aspect of the scholar; and the result is an effect of
completeness which is perhaps the highest product of the fashion, as
well as the taste, of any Age.
Perhaps it is because it is so rarely seen that it is so overwhelmingly
attractive.
"Are you sure this is right?" Lord Henry demanded, scrutinising his
image without a trace of recognition, in the long wardrobe mirror of his
room, and lightly fingering a tie that St. Maur had lent him.
"Yes!" St. Maur cried in alarm; "for Heaven's sake don't touch it!"
On the floor lay the young nobleman's portmanteau, partly filled with
St. Maur's shirts, collars, and ties; and in a large suit-case
sufficient clothes to provide him with decent variety. St. Maur had
drilled him carefully in the combination of socks, shirts, ties, and
suits, and had gone so far as to pack certain groups of things together,
in special sections, so that at Brineweald no mistake should be made.
"You are a marvel, Aubrey!" ejaculated Lord Henry, twisting about in
front of the mirror. "I used to dress like this years ago, but I had
completely forgotten how to do it."
"It's you who are the marvel," St. Maur exclaimed, contemplating his
friend with a critical and approving eye.
They returned to the Sanatorium to partake of a light dinner. The porter
stared as he opened the door, and could scarcely believe his eyes. The
matron was unusually self-conscious as she received the parting
instructions from her chief, and the nurses all turned their heads in
Lord Henry's direction as they sped hither and thither, unable to
understand the meaning or the object of the strange metamorphosis.
"The gorgeous vestments of the priest are all part of the general
scheme," Lord Henry whispered to St. Maur, as he stepped into Sir
Joseph's car.
"Rather!" St. Maur cried after him; and in a few moments the car was
well on its way.