It wanted an hour and a half to lunch time. Mrs. Delarayne appeared to
have left "The Fastness," and Lord Henry was alone in the garden,
meditating and maturing his plans.
A strange and pleasant titillation of all his nerves, somewhat similar
to that which in the morning convinces a man that he has had a
refreshing and healing sleep, seemed to hint to him that here he was not
the usual neuropathic therapeutist of Ashbury fame, not a mere
specialist spectator, but an acting figure, a participator in this
family affair. Could it be his old and deep-rooted admiration for Mrs.
Delarayne that made him feel this hearty concern about a patient's
condition?
He yawned lazily and stretched himself in the fierce August sunlight.
Cleopatra's empty chair brought back to him her queenly presence, her
passionate confession, and the thought of what it must have cost her. He
felt a primitive and violent impulse to perform miracles for the girl
whose health and happiness, out of blind friendship for her mother, he
had undertaken to protect. He even felt prepared to go to greater
lengths in rescuing her self-esteem than he would ever have dared to go
with other people. For, to become normal again, he knew that her
self-esteem must be revived.
Suddenly, in the midst of his meditations, the sound of somebody
approaching from the direction of the house made him turn his head. It
was Mrs. Delarayne, and, some distance behind her, the whole of "The
Fastness" and Brineweald Park party.
He rose with alacrity and, seizing her by the arm, led her across the
lawn to the far end of the garden.
"Quick," he said, "before the others join us."
She followed, looking up at him with the deepest interest.
"Do you want Leonetta to marry Malster?" he demanded.
"Oh no, most certainly not!" cried the widow with angry emphasis.
"Anything but that. I have taken the most profound dislike to him. That
must be avoided at all costs. The child doesn't know her own mind.
Besides, he doesn't deserve her, and Cleopatra's feelings have surely
been outraged enough. No, most emphatically not. She would only learn to
despise him in a couple of months. In fact, I believe Sir Joseph is
dismissing him from Bullion's."
"I thought you would take that view," he said. "You are not forgetting,
I suppose, that they are very much in love with each other."
"In love!" she exclaimed. "Why, Leonetta would fall in love with a
stuffed owl at present, provided it could dance attendance on her."
He grunted. "Now one thing more. Do you agree with me that, beautiful,
fascinating, and bewitching as Leonetta undoubtedly is, she would be all
the better for realising for once that she cannot have everything her
own way?"
"She's an over-confident little hussy," ejaculated Mrs. Delarayne. "I've
tried to make her feel that myself, but parents are not much good at
that sort of thing. Children think we do it out of spite, you know.
That's what I used to think of my own mother."
"It would make her deeper, more reflective, more desirable."
"Certainly," agreed the widow.
"Now let us go back," said the young man, and they returned to the
others who had settled themselves round the marquee.
"Ah, here's Lord Henry!" Vanessa cried. "We'll ask him what he thinks!"
Leonetta was silent, because the difference of opinion concerned Denis,
and she could not take sides against him. So she contented herself with
observing Lord Henry in that grave, interested manner, which is always a
sign that something deeper than consciousness is taking stock of an
object.
The moment Lord Henry had settled himself in a chair, Stephen Fearwell,
who was at the stage of distant and inarticulate adoration towards him,
dropped on the grass in front of him, at Agatha's feet, and contemplated
him with grave interest.
Stimulated pleasantly as he had been by his interview with Cleopatra,
Lord Henry was still enough of a youth and a man to feel equally moved
by the subtle influence of the beautiful girls and the silent young men
about him. This was just the situation in which experience had always
taught him he could shine to the best advantage, and in which his
formidable weapons could be wielded with the finest effect.
"We are discussing poetry, Lord Henry," said Guy Tyrrell.
"Yes," said Stephen a little shyly, "those two fellows Guy and Denis
have had a fit of indigestion I should think; they've been talking about
what they call Victorian verse the whole morning. Look, Denis has got
his Browning with him still. You don't like poetry, do you?" Stephen
blushed a little. It was his first long and direct appeal to the man he
had been secretly admiring ever since the previous evening.
"But I do very much indeed!" Lord Henry protested.
Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, Denis, and Guy laughed triumphantly at this,
and Vanessa, Stephen, Agatha, and Sir Joseph stirred awkwardly.
"We're just four against four,--isn't it funny?" cried Vanessa, jerking
Sir Joseph's arm in which hers was locked. "Of course the Tribes are on
our side too, but they stayed at Stonechurch shopping."
"So I'm to give the casting vote, am I?" Lord Henry enquired.
"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Vanessa, clapping her hands eagerly, "and you'll
give it to us, won't you, Lord Henry! Please!"
Leonetta regarded her schoolmate with grave disapproval, and as she
glanced down at her hands, raised her eyebrows in grieved surprise.
"Well," said Denis, "you see, Lord Henry, I've been telling these people
about the curious decline in poetry reading, and in the appreciation of
poetry, which is noticeable nowadays."
"I confess I never read it," Sir Joseph averred. "I can never make out
what the fellow's driving at, turning everything upside down and inside
out!"
Vanessa cried "Hear, hear!" and the baronet laughed uproariously.
"'Ow can people read the stuff?" he pursued.
"I can't read it," said Stephen, "because it entirely fails to interest
me."
"I can't read it," Agatha declared, "because it all seems to me mere
beautiful words."
"Chiefly archaic!" added Stephen.
"I never read it," Vanessa observed, "because you have to wade through
such quantities of stuff before you can find anything worth
remembering."
Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, Guy, and Denis laughed.
"I tell them there's something lacking in them," snapped Miss
Mallowcoid, looking as unlike a poetical muse as it was possible to be.
Lord Henry turned to Denis. "You hear what they have said?" he enquired.
"Yes, they've been repeating that the whole morning," Denis rejoined.
"Their voices are at least those of sincerity," said Lord Henry.
"Neither can you say they are exceptionally ill-favoured human beings.
Without wishing to cast any aspersions on you, Miss Mallowcoid,
Leonetta, and Guy, I think an impartial judge might be excused if he
regarded your opponents as at least as intelligent as yourselves."
"Unquestionably," Denis admitted.
"Of course!" cried Guy.
Miss Mallowcoid and Leonetta, however, who were not at all persuaded
that they could excuse such a judge, looked stonily unconvinced.
"Well, then," said Lord Henry, "that shows we must seek the cause of
this modern indifference to poetry elsewhere than in the inferiority of
those who refuse to read it."
"Good!" cried the baronet, and Agatha, Vanessa, and Stephen cheered.
"The question is," Lord Henry continued, "why is poetry not read
to-day?"
"What is poetry, to begin with?" Vanessa demanded.
Everybody agreed that this was obviously the first thing to decide, and
various definitions were given, none of which proved satisfactory. Denis
Malster's definition which was: "Fine thoughts expressed in rhythmic
order, and sometimes rhymed," was rejected by Lord Henry.
"You must get out of your mind altogether, the idea that poetry is all
exalted vapourings, and high-browed sublime blue steam!" he said. "Its
most important characteristic is that it adopts a mnemonic form,--that
is to say, the form you would instinctively cast words into if you
wished to remember them."
This was generally agreed to.
"But what is it that can justly claim the right of a mnemonic form?"
Lord Henry exclaimed. "Clearly only those things that are worth
remembering,--important, vital things!"
Vanessa who was the only person present whose nimble mind foresaw Lord
Henry's conclusion, cheered at this point.
"Very well, then," he continued. "A man who casts his thought or his
emotion into a poetical or mnemonic form, implies that he is dealing
with thoughts or emotions that are important or vital enough to be
remembered. If they fall short of this standard, he is dressing asses in
lions' skins!"
Stephen and Vanessa looked at each other and smiled approvingly.
"The disappointment felt is then all the greater," Lord Henry added,
"seeing that the form leads us to anticipate important things and we do
not get them. In fact," he said, withdrawing a note-book from his breast
pocket, "I made a note the other day of the poet's duty. It is to
prepare for mankind memorisable formulas in universal terms of important
thoughts or emotions."
"But that's almost what I said," Denis protested.
"Yes, almost," Lord Henry replied, with just that restraint in scorn
which makes scorn most scathing.
"The consequence is," Lord Henry concluded, "that according to this view
of poetry, which I believe is the right view, and the view unconsciously
taken by the masses, more than three quarters of Victorian Verse is
simply so much superior drivel."
The baronet's party clapped their hands.
"The works of your Wordsworths, your Tennysons, your Brownings, your
Matthew Arnolds," cried Lord Henry above the noise, "might be distilled
down to one quarter of their bulk and nothing would be lost."
Sir Joseph laughed. "Now I know, now I know!" he ejaculated.
"And as for your very modern poets, they are even worse than the
Victorians. Masefield, for instance, is jejuneness enthroned. How can
you expect the bulk of sane mankind to read poetry, when they repeatedly
encounter this vacuity, this unimportance of thought and emotion,
presented with all the pomp and circumstance of a memorisable form?"
"Bravo, Lord Henry!" Stephen cried.
"But have you read Wordsworth's _Ode on Immortality_?" objected Miss
Mallowcoid, with mantling cheeks and indignant glare. She belonged to
the class of persons who always fancy they have thought of an objection
to a generalisation which the man who made it must have overlooked.
"Yes, of course," replied Lord Henry. "It is a preposterously false and
therefore dangerous thought; but I admit it is magnificently expressed.
A much more sensible and profound view of childhood is given by Browning
at the end of _A Soul's Tragedy_; but unfortunately it is expressed in
Browning's usual turbid and muddled way, without Wordsworth's art."
Denis Malster and Guy Tyrrell were shrewd enough to see that Lord Henry
knew his subject, and had at least endeavoured to understand what poets
should aspire to; Denis, however, felt that at all costs he must enter
the lists against the young nobleman. He knew the women would be quick
to account for his silence in a manner not too complimentary either to
his courage or his ability, and he felt that his very prestige demanded
at least a demonstration of some kind on his part. Leonetta, too, was
beginning to look at him with a suggestion of enquiry in her eyes, and
then ultimately Agatha made it impossible for him to desist any longer.
"Come on now," she said, "you two champions of Victorian verse,--aren't
you going to defend it?"
"Lord Henry has admitted all we claim," he observed lamely. "No one
would dream of saying that all Wordsworth or all Tennyson or all
Browning was worth reading."
"Yes, but I claim that fully three quarters of it was not worth
printing," said Lord Henry.
"I think that's a gross exaggeration," Miss Mallowcoid averred.
"Still at it?" enquired Mrs. Tribe, who accompanied by her husband now
joined the party. "I agree with Lord Henry whatever he has said."
"Ah, you know a thing or two!" cried Vanessa.
At a signal from Sir Joseph, Lord Henry now rose, and the two strolled
off together in the direction of the house.
"Have you seen Cleopatra?" the baronet asked as soon as they were out of
earshot.
Lord Henry told him briefly what had happened.
"How strange!" Sir Joseph exclaimed.
"It is all the result of our detestable English system of leaving it to
our daughters to dress their own shop window, so to speak," Lord Henry
remarked, "so that at a given moment they each enter business on their
own account, make the best possible show, and of course become the most
bitter rivals. It is as cruel as it is stupid. It is the old Manchester
School, the commercial idea of unrestricted competition, invading even
the family."
Sir Joseph who imagined that the young nobleman was trying to be
humorous, laughed at this.
"Ye-es, yes, I see!" he exclaimed chuckling.
Lord Henry groaned.
"But it is a most impossible situation," he said sternly. "Don't you
understand? In the case of women of deep passions, like these beautiful
Delarayne girls, it is a harrowing drama."
Sir Joseph looked up. Lord Henry's words had sobered him.
"You don't say so!" he muttered.
"I do, most emphatically," the young man continued "All our plan of life
in England, you see, is founded on the assumption that only people of
mediocre and diluted passion will hold the stage. We allow our girls to
go about freely with young men, for instance. Why?"
"Because we can trust the young men," suggested Sir Joseph.
"Not a bit of it!--because both men and girls are usually so very much
below par temperamentally that they can exercise what is called
'self-control,'--that is to say their passions are relied upon always to
be weaker than their 'self-control'."
Sir Joseph was by now utterly bewildered.
"We allow our daughters to exercise the most heartless rivalry one
against the other in the matrimonial field--why?"
Sir Joseph, who imagined that the young nobleman was growing impatient
with him, did not venture to reply.
"Because," continued Lord Henry, "we know perfectly well that they are
too tame, too mild, too listless about life, ever to become homicidal in
their hatred of one another. The moment two deep, eager and adorable
girls, like these daughters of Mrs. Delarayne, walk on to our English
boards, our whole fabric, our whole scenery, and stage machinery, is
shown to be wrong to the last screw. God! How different this country
must have been when Shakespeare was able to say that thing about one
touch of nature! Now one touch of nature in England sets the whole world
by the ears!"
"Is Cleopatra very bad then?" Sir Joseph enquired anxiously.
"So bad that she would have been suicidal if steps had not been taken
immediately. You see it isn't everybody who is so lukewarm, so anaemic,
as to make a cheerful old maid. Cheery old maids are the condemnation of
modern English womanhood Their frequency in England shows the
shallowness of the average modern woman's passion. Among all
warm-blooded peoples old maids are known to be bitter, resentful,
untractable and misanthropic."
"Are they really?" exclaimed Sir Joseph. "I didn't know that."
Mrs. Delarayne came towards them.
"Lord Henry," she cried, "Cleopatra is coming to lunch. You have
already done wonders with her. At least she wants to be well now. That's
a great triumph."
The remainder of the party now came up the garden towards the house.
"Lord Henry!" Leonetta cried, skipping up to his side, bearing a kitten.
"Do you like cats? Look at this little angel!"
Lord Henry, without looking at her, raised a hand deprecatingly.
"We are not out of the wood yet," he murmured in an aside to Mrs.
Delarayne.
"Oh, she's scratching,--do look at her, Lord Henry!" Leonetta exclaimed,
a little over anxiously this time, as she was not used to having her
self-advertising manoeuvres disregarded in this manner.
"Yes," said Lord Henry with cold courtesy, glancing at the kitten only
for a moment, and then quickly resuming his conversation with his
hostess.
Leonetta, swallowing something in her throat, skipped with a somewhat
forced affectation of childish gaiety in the direction of the house.
Lord Henry, Denis, and Vanessa, however, were the only three of the
party who correctly interpreted her action, though they appeared to be
engaged with other matters.
* * * * *
After dinner that day, when the cool of a midsummer evening had fallen
on Brineweald Park, and Cleopatra had been despatched to her bed by her
new spiritual adviser, Mrs. Delarayne, Sir Joseph, Miss Mallowcoid, and
Gerald Tribe sat down to Bridge on the terrace, Lord Henry invited
Agatha to show him over the grounds, and Mrs. Tribe and Stephen went to
the billiard room.
A moment before Lord Henry had descended the steps with his companion,
he had seen Vanessa and Guy Tyrrell depart mysteriously in the direction
of the woods, and Denis and Leonetta vanish just as mysteriously towards
Headlinge.
For the purpose he had in view, he would have preferred Vanessa for his
companion, more especially as he had noticed that she went reluctantly
with Tyrrell, but he had missed securing her by a minute, thanks to Mrs.
Delarayne's garrulousness.
He stood at the foot of the steps. It mattered not to him whither
Vanessa and her companion were bound, and observing the direction Denis
and Leonetta were taking, he walked slowly along the path to Headstone,
which was exposed for the greater length of its course, and promised to
keep him constantly in their view.
"This way, Lord Henry," said Agatha, starting in the direction of
Headlinge.
"No, if you don't mind," he said, "I prefer this path. I like the sweep
of the hill to the right. These vast stretches of grass at this hour
always make me feel that I am walking on the edge of a carpet, on which
the elves and the fairies are having their revels."
The girl acquiesced. The two figures to the left, on the road to
Headlinge, buried themselves in a wooded grove, and the girl glanced a
little apprehensively in their direction, as she caught the last glimpse
of them.
"Denis and Leonetta are on the road to Headlinge," she said simply.
"Oh, are they?" replied Lord Henry. "Can you see them then?"
"No," she answered. "They are somewhere behind those trees."
* * * * *
Two proposals of marriage were made that evening in Brineweald Park. One
was flatly declined; the result of the other was doubtful. The love-sick
swains were Denis Malster and Guy Tyrrell, and their respective
companions we know.
Guy Tyrrell, who was of the breed who scarcely ever receive a
spontaneous kindly look from women, without offering something very
substantial in exchange, was feeling that romantic passion for the
voluptuous Jewess, which the sun and the plentiful food at Brineweald,
had no doubt done an immense deal to fan to a flame in his breast. He
had recognised very early that with Malster about, he stood no chance
with Leonetta, and he found that had it not been for Leonetta's
occupying the central place, he would have stood just as bad a chance
with Vanessa. For two days now, moreover, he had been observing Vanessa
lavishing her attentions on Sir Joseph, and utterly harmless though the
old baronet was, Guy had been conscious of certain intolerable pangs
when he had seen the girl's shapely little brown hands in the City
magnate's, and her strong nicely rounded forearm enlocked in his
master's.
Tremulously, therefore, but with studious persistency, he had that
evening repeatedly whispered the request to her that she should walk out
to the woods with him, and she, casting a longing glance first at Lord
Henry, then at Denis Malster, had reluctantly acquiesced. Her curiosity
was possibly awakened too; at all events she went, when she had no
pressing need to go, and incidentally received the entertainment she
deserved.
He was agitated, as all "clean-minded" young men are, whose amorous
passions have for once got the better of their qualms, and he breathed
very heavily,--rather like a draft-ox at the turn of the plough. He was
gauche, timid, thoroughly unskilled in the art of wooing, not even up to
the wiles of the most guileless male animal or bird; and Vanessa felt
only a sensation of extreme discomfiture as he blurted out his longings
to her.
"No, really not!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, but I had no idea you felt
like that about me."
He caught her arms. His hand was very hot, and she felt it through the
gauze of her sleeve.
She turned back quickly. "Come on," she said, "let's get back to the
house. They'll wonder what on earth we're doing."
He dropped his hand to hers, and pulled on it slightly.
"Listen," he pleaded. "Stop a minute and listen."
She screwed her hand deftly out of his, and drew aside.
"Oh, please leave me alone, Guy!" she cried. "It's no good. I couldn't
dream of it. I'm never going to marry."
Still he persisted incoherently, unattractively, and with the increasing
daring of swelling desire.
"No, I tell you," she ejaculated, laughing a little nervously. "Can't
you take 'no' for an answer? You are not going to annoy me just because
we happen to be alone, are you?"
He dropped his hands to his side, and was silent.
"Now, don't let's say any more about it," said Vanessa, feeling very
much relieved. She had the sound instinct that informed her that this
man's "clean-mindedness" was revolting, and breathed fast and
irregularly at the thought of the danger she imagined she had been in.
If he had kissed her with those uneloquent and untrained lips of his,
impure in their purity, she would never have forgiven herself.
"Look at the moon," she said, as she strode rapidly back to the house.
"It is beginning to wane. I wonder if the weather will change with it."
And so they reached the terrace,--she feeling that she wanted a wash; he
feeling only that he had bungled it, because she was too worldly, too
sophisticated to be natural.
Meanwhile, however, in another part of the grounds, a very much more
subtle, irresistible, and skilful proposal was being pronounced. True,
it was being made by a man who desired at all costs, and in good time,
to secure his achieved success from threatened assault, and who was
therefore a little desperate; but it was also the performance of a
creature who knew his subject, who understood its difficulties, and who
was not hindered by any of those scruples of ignorance and purity which
temper ardour and paralyse daring.
For Malster was in the condition in which a man's desire may truly be
said to have become a physical ache. A feeling of sick longing held his
heart and entrails as in a vise, a sort of cramp of violent tension
stiffened all his tissues. On Leonetta his eyes were fastened as if by
some powerful magnet. The rest of the world, as also its inhabitants,
was obliterated; they seemed nothing more than shadows passing and
re-passing,--shadows which, if need be, could be pushed aside, offended,
outraged. For what, after all, are shadows?
People are mistaken if they imagine that it requires any effort to
sacrifice position, power, friends, parents,--aye, even home,
nationality, and honour,--when a man is in this condition. For these
things are as nothing, beside the all-devouring anguish of so great a
desire. They are not sacrificed in such circumstances; they simply do
not enter within his purview.
If Leonetta had acted wilfully, deliberately, and with her object
clearly conceived before she began, she could not have achieved any
greater success; for Malster was her abject slave. Jealous of every look
or word she vouchsafed to another, hating even the kitten that her rosy
well-made fingers clasped, literally ill away from her presence, and
thrilled almost painfully by the sound of her voice when she returned,
the whole of Brineweald had become for him but a fantastic and hardly
material background, to a scene in which his emotions beat out their
gigantic throbs like Titans wrestling for freedom. He was not even in a
fit state to use an ordinary foot-rule with accuracy.
To speak to such a man of morals, of ethical duty, of certain
obligations to an elder sister, of responsibility to host or hostess, or
to society, would have been little better than to try to teach table
etiquette to a boa-constrictor. There was only one thing that could
force him to become sober for one instant and to reflect, and that was
the menace of successful rivalry. But even then his sober mood would
last only as long as he was maturing panic schemes to overcome the
difficulty.
Such a mood of sober reflection had, however, possessed him ever since
the advent of Lord Henry, and although he had not the slightest reason
either to suspect or to surmise that the young nobleman wished to
defeat him in any field, such was the magnitude of his desire for
Leonetta and the jealousy it provoked, that every minute that Lord Henry
spoke, every minute that his voice held the flapper's ears in attentive
subjection, were to him so many hours of agonising dread.
A glance at Leonetta would convince him that she was listening; further
observation would reveal the fact that she was also interested; and
finally he would recognise that her eyes were upon the young nobleman,
even when he was silent.
Denis Malster had perceived with female quickness the infernal charms of
Lord Henry's personality; he had measured almost exactly, despite the
natural tendency to exaggeration into which his jealousy led him, the
precise effect of Lord Henry's persuasive and emphatic tongue upon the
female ear. He had seen its effect on Mrs. Delarayne, on Vanessa, on
Agatha, on Mrs. Tribe. Was it likely that Leonetta would long remain
insensible to the difference between himself and the new arrival?
Already he had been obliged to abandon those daily contests on the
subject of the Inner Light with the wretched Gerald Tribe, because Lord
Henry promised to be too much for him. And yet they had been so
valuable,--such a splendid opportunity for exhibiting his proudest
achievements!
Things had come to such a pass that he literally did not dare to
organise again those pleasant little assemblies, in which he could
discuss anything and challenge all comers, with the perfect certainty of
shining as he vanquished them. It is true that he could have continued
them by carefully omitting Lord Henry from their midst; but he was by no
means a fool, and did not underestimate the intelligence of those about
him. Thus he realised the damaging effect it would be sure to have on
his prestige, if he persistently manoeuvred to leave Lord Henry out;
and he knew well enough how quickly women notice such things,--they who
are such past-masters at precisely this kind of manoeuvring.
Had Lord Henry not come upon the scene, Denis would have been content,
as was his wont, to prolong the delicious agony of his love
indefinitely, secure in the thought that at any moment he would be able
by a word to secure Leonetta for ever to him.
Now, however, there could no longer be any question of prolonging the
situation indefinitely. The only problem that occupied his mind was,
when and how to say that word to Leonetta which was to bind her for ever
to him, before she receded one hundredth of an inch from the summit of
ecstasy to which he imagined she too must have climbed in the last few
days.
Thus he had been moved by a thought similar to Guy Tyrrell's; but there,
as we shall see, the likeness ceased.
A girl of seventeen or eighteen is nearly always in danger when a man
of thirty pays attention to her,--in danger, that is to say, of
acquiescing too soon, too early in life, too unreflectedly and
ignorantly.
Leonetta had been intoxicated by Denis Malster's worship. It would
perhaps be unscientific here, and therefore untrue, to overlook the fact
that the conquest of her sister's beau, had been in itself a triumphant
achievement, apart from any particular claims he might have to
attraction. But is not human nature such that in any case it is always
partially subdued by devotion? Does not even the love of an animal make
an irresistible appeal to the most callous? Is not the common preference
for dogs before cats in England, largely ascribable to the fact that the
flattery residing in devotion and affection makes such an impelling
appeal to all vain people, that the superior animal is discarded for the
inferior? The dog is grossly and offensively obscene; he is dirty, he
pollutes our streets; he is a coward, and has the pusillanimous spirit
of a rather faint-hearted lackey. The cat, on the other hand, is decent,
clean, consistently sanitary, brave, and possessed of the great-hearted
self-reliant spirit of a born warrior. The cat, however, does not fawn,
it does not flatter, it shows no devotion, it knows none of the
sycophantic wiles of the dog; but since modern mankind in England is
animated chiefly by vanity, the dog with all his objectionable
characteristics and habits is preferred.
Now women, though by no means alone in the possession of vanity, are
perhaps a little more subject than men to its sway, and it is precisely
their vanity which is their greatest danger. Like the modern Englishman,
they all too frequently overlook the noble for the inferior animal,
because the latter is a better worshipper, and, particularly when they
are still in their teens, worship from the male, which is something so
novel, so exquisitely strange, and so stimulating to their self-esteem,
constitutes one of the greatest pitfalls they can encounter.
Why should it necessarily be a pitfall? Precisely because it may induce
them to decide too soon in favour of an inferior man.
Leonetta was therefore in danger, and Lord Henry knew it.
Everything he had said and done in her presence since he had come to
Brineweald, had been deliberate, premeditated, purposeful,--all with the
intention of averting the danger she was in, or at least with the view
of giving her time to collect her senses, and to obtain some breathing
space before coming to the fatal decision.
Denis Malster was sufficiently sensitive to be vaguely aware of the
element of an organised attack in the behaviour of the young nobleman,
upright and above-board as it had been; hence his hurrying of his
inestimable treasure,--the one creature that could give him
peace,--along the road to Headlinge that evening; hence too the tactics
he had resolved to adopt. For he felt instinctively, not only that Lord
Henry was moving against him, but also that Mrs. Delarayne was fast
becoming an open enemy.
They entwined fingers discreetly as they walked along, and the moment
they had plunged into the grove, he would raise her hand from time to
time, as he spoke, and kiss it fervently. It was cool and firm, a
beautiful symbol of her beautiful body, and he was racked with a
wildness of longing by the side of which the language of Cupid sounds
like the pipe of a bird in a hurricane.
It seemed to his resourceful mind that possibly the best way of securing
this girl's attachment to him, would be by a vivid appeal to her senses.
His prestige was at stake, and in this dilemma men have been known to go
to even greater lengths than when driven by sensuality alone. He did not
underestimate the vigour of her passions, and knew that in this
direction there was hope of uncontested victory.
"How heavenly it is," he said, "to have you quite alone for once, with
nothing but wild nature looking on! How I loathe that crowd when it
keeps us apart even for a moment."
He halted for a second, and they kissed.
"Oh, Leo, my darling," he continued, as they again walked slowly towards
Headlinge, "you don't know how I suffer to see you in your present
environment. You who are so natural, so essentially a creature of the
wilds, surrounded by things that are so artificial, so overheated, so
stagey. I shudder every time I hear you call the Warrior 'Peachy.' It
shows how grossly your true nature has been distorted to serve her
artificial ends. The beautiful word 'mother' would give the lie to the
deception she tries to practice daily upon all of us, with every means
that her art can supply. Excuse my speaking like this of your mother;
but I imagine you a wild creature of the woods, with flowing hair; your
mother a natural parent, who resigns herself cheerfully and becomingly
to age, whose face is coloured uniquely by the sun, despising as much as
you yourself surely do those petty tricks of make-believe,--those
cosmetics and hair-dyes, that don't even deceive the coarsest chauffeur
on the road,--and realising the charm of her years as much as she
admires the beauty of yours. It makes me boil to see you corrupted by
this atmosphere!"
He was careful at the end of each little speech to stop and fondle her,
and to press her cool firm fingers to his lips in an ecstasy of
devotion.
"You were not made to rear a town-street full of dandies, of Lord Henrys
and his like, but to be the proud dam of a stalwart race of yeomen. It
is in just such a wild setting as this that you, the Diana of a truly
British country-side, could shine to greatest perfection. You are a
child of freedom, a bird whose gorgeous wings they are trying to clip."
They sat down on a bank. The brilliance of the moon illuminated the
country beyond. The chimneys of Sir Joseph's house were visible far away
to the right.
He had another passionate outburst, convincing because he was genuinely
at his wit's end with longing. He smothered her with his embraces,
rained kisses on a face that was seductively screened by roughly
dishevelled hair, and which smiled back at him with a look of
intoxication almost equal to his own. And then at last, concluding
instinctively that the moment had come for complete forgetfulness, he
even thought he might proceed to discount bills of intimacy before they
had become due,--a practice not uncommon in England,--and he held her in
a way that was at least novel to the eager flapper.
Half fearfully he waited for the effect of his daring action. She said
nothing, but simply showed her magnificent white teeth in a smile that
betokened the most complete satisfaction.
"Leo, fly away with me, will you? Don't let us wait to ask. Let us go. I
have savings; besides, I am no fool. It would mean leaving Bullion's of
course, but why need we mind that? You can trust me, can't you? Let us
leave this hated place, with its people who do not understand us. We
might go to Canada, where wild nature has taught people to be more
natural than they are here. Oh, say you will come with me. It would be
heavenly!"
"Do you mean at once?" she exclaimed, laughing now at the transport of
devotion which had just made him kiss her feet.
"Well, I suppose we could not go actually now, but at the latest
to-morrow at this time. We might steal away while everybody's dressing
for the dance."
She was lying back on the bank, her eyes were keen with thought, her
mouth now closed in solemn reflection. Suddenly he recognised not fifty
yards away, fully revealed in the moonlight, the figures of Lord Henry
and Vanessa, walking slowly along the lower path which led to Headstone.
As he had seen Lord Henry with Agatha on the same path about an hour
before he could not at first believe his eyes. But the form of the
stylish young Jewess was unmistakable. Lord Henry must have gone back to
exchange companions. Where was Guy then? However, Leonetta had not seen
them, so it did not matter.
"Quick, tell me--yes or no! because I must make all the arrangements for
our flight immediately."
She made a movement to rise.
"No, don't get up," he said quickly. "You've no idea how beautiful you
look there."
"But I must," cried the girl, "one of my slides is sticking into my
head! If you _will_ handle me so roughly," she added, smiling with the
deepest contentment.
"Let me find it for you, don't get up!" he pleaded.
But what Delaraynes want, God wants; and in an instant his obstructing
hand was brushed aside and she was sitting up.
He looked into her eyes, hoping to fasten them on himself, and keep them
off the hateful spectacle not fifty yards away. For a few seconds he was
successful. He then proceeded to kiss her again in order to blot out the
vision for yet a while longer.
"Denis!" she exclaimed, "for mercy's sake let me put my slide right, and
then you can do what you like."
He desisted, shaken with overstimulated craving, and then all at once,
his heart sank; for her keen eyes had seen what he hoped would have
disappeared before she could notice it.
"Why, look!" she cried, "there's that little cat Vanessa walking alone
with Lord Henry!"
"Yes," he rejoined, with as much indifference as he could summon.
"What on earth can they be doing?" she demanded craning her neck to see
as much of them as possible.
"Oh, nothing--they're only walking. Slow enough in all conscience, I
should think."
Leonetta was silent, her eyes fixed upon the couple slowly proceeding
along the lower path. What could Lord Henry possibly see in that
Jezebel! She recalled his hauteur and studious coldness towards herself,
his air of deep understanding and mastery, his magic look of wizardly
youth, his eloquence, his immense self-possession, his mysterious
connection with Cleopatra's indisposition and recovery. What could it be
that made him so indifferent to her?
She rose.
"Oh, don't move!" said Denis irritably.
"I must see where that little cat is taking him," she muttered. And
creeping to the nearest tree, she peered round it.
Meanwhile Denis ground his teeth, and flung himself back on the bank in
a spasm of impotent loathing of Lord Henry. "They're holding hands!"
whispered the girl in angry surprise.
Denis craned his neck. "Nonsense!" he exclaimed, "he's only explaining
something to her. I suppose palmistry is another of his tricks or hers.
Can't you see?" He felt the spell had been broken, and was savage. "Come
and sit down, Leo!" he hissed.
"Half a mo!" she cried; and then after a while she added: "Oh, I say, do
look! He's got his arm round her waist!"
"She's only showing him the latest two-step!" said Denis. "Can't you
see--there--see? They're only practising a step.
"So they are!" gasped the girl. She recognised her own tactics in this
dancing tuition of Vanessa's, and was obviously annoyed. "Copy-cat!" she
murmured under her breath.
"Come on!" she cried at last, "let's go home."
"Oh, not yet!" he implored her.
"Yes, I want to," she replied with impatience.
"Oh, it's been such a gorgeous time!"
"Who would have thought!" she exclaimed, "that that young devil----!"
"Leo!" Denis remonstrated.
"Well, that's all she is!" snapped Leonetta, thrusting her arm roughly
into his, and jerking him forward towards the house.
Denis was beside himself with fury. "Well, what about to-morrow?" he
enquired lamely, feeling all the while that the effect had been missed.
"Oh, I'll tell you to-morrow," she replied. "Quick! I want to get home
and to bed before they do. I wouldn't let her know that I'd seen her
walking with Lord Henry for worlds!"