Lady Kingsmead was one of those piteous beings, a middle-aged young
woman. She was forty-six, but across a considerably-lighted room looked
thirty-six. The shock, when one approached her, was so much the greater.
Her plentiful, grey-streaked hair dwelt in disgrace behind a glossy
transformation, and her face had, from constant massage and make-up, a
curious air of not belonging to her any more than did the wavy hair
above it.
The lines that the mercifully deliberate on-coming of age draws on all
of us were, it is true, nearly obliterated, but in their place was a
certain blankness that was very unbeautiful indeed.
However, she liked herself as she made herself, and most people thought
her wonderfully young-looking.
The question of age, real and apparent, is a curious one that gives
furiously to think, as the French say. No one on earth could consider it
an advantage for a child of twelve to wear the facial aspect of a baby
of two, nor for a girl of twenty to look like a child of ten, but later
on this equation apparently fails to hold good, and Lady Kingsmead in
appearing (at a little distance) nearly ten years her own junior, was as
vastly pleased with herself as, considering the time and the care she
devoted to the subject, she deserved to be.
As she came downstairs the evening of the day of her daughter's
unusually confidential conversation with her son, Brigit joined her.
"Ugh, mother, you have too much scent," observed the girl, curling her
upper lip rather unpleasantly. "It's horrid."
"Never mind, ducky, I've only just put it on; it will go off after a
bit. It's the very newest thing in Paris. Gerald brought it to
me--_Souvenir de Jeunesse_."
Brigit looked at her for a moment, but said nothing.
Lady Kingsmead's unconsciousness was, as it always was when she was in a
good humour, both amusing and disarming. So the two women descended the
dark, panelled staircase in silence, crossed the hall and went into the
drawing-room. A man sat over the fire, his long, white hands held up to
the blaze.
"H'are you, Brigit?"
"How d'you do, Gerald?"
Carron turned without rising, and stared thoughtfully at the girl. He
was a big, bony man who had once been very handsome, and the conquering
air had remained true to him long after the desertion of his beauty.
This, too, "gives to think," and is a warning to all people who have
made their worldly successes solely by force of looks, and these are
many. Carron pulled his moustache and narrowed his tired-looking blue
eyes in a way that had been very fetching fifteen years before.
"You look pretty fit," he observed after a pause, as she gazed absently
over his head at the carvings of the mantelpiece.
"I'm--ripping, thanks," she answered with a bored air.
"You'll have to look out, Tony," he went on, frowning as he caught the
expression in Lady Kingsmead's eyes, "she is confoundly good-looking.
Beauties' daughters ought always to be plain."
Lady Kingsmead flushed angrily, and was about to speak, when her
daughter interrupted in a perfunctory voice: "Oh, don't, Gerald, you
know she loathes being teased. Besides, your praise doesn't in the least
interest me."
His smile was not good to see. "I think, my dear Brigit, that you are
about the handsomest woman I ever saw--that is, the handsomest _dark_
woman; but you look so damned ill-tempered that you will be hideous in
ten years' time."
The girl drew a deep sigh of indifference, and turning, walked slowly
away. She wore a rather shabby frock of tomato-coloured chiffon, and as
she went down the room one of her greatest charms appeared to striking
advantage--the lazy, muscular grace of her movements. She walked like an
American Indian youth of some superior tribe, and every curve of her
body indicated remarkable physical strength and endurance.
Gerald Carron watched her, his face paling, and as Lady Kingsmead
studied him, her own slowly reddened under its mask of paint and powder.
The situation was an old one--a woman, too late reciprocating the
passion which she had toyed with for many years, suddenly brought face
to face with the realisation that this love had been transferred to a
younger woman, and that woman her own daughter. The little scene enacted
so quietly in the pretty, conventional drawing-room, with its pale walls
and beflowered furniture, was of great tenseness.
Before anyone had spoken the door opened and the Newlyns and Pat
Yelverton came in, Mrs. Newlyn hastily clasping the last of the myriad
bracelets that were so peculiarly unbecoming to her thin red arms. She
and her husband both were bird-like in eye and gesture, and their
nicknames among their intimates were, though neither of them knew it,
the Cassowary and the Sparrow, she being the Cassowary. Besides being
bird-like, they were both bores of the deepest dye.
Pat Yelverton was a blond giant with a very bad reputation, a genius for
Bridge, and the softest, most caressing voice that ever issued from a
man's throat.
Meeting the new-comers at the door, Brigit shook hands with them and
returned, with an aimless air peculiar to her, to the fire.
She knew them all so well, and they all bored her to tears, except
Carron, whom she strongly hated. Everybody bored her, and everything.
With the utmost sincerity she wondered for the thousandth time why she
had ever been born.
As the others chattered, she went to a window and stood looking out
over the moonlit lawn.
"Lady Brigit!"
She turned, and seeing the smile of delight on the boyish face before
her, smiled back. "Monsieur Joyselle!"
Théo, who was twenty-two, and who adored her, flushed to the roots of
his curly hair--and who was it who decided that blushes stop there, and
do not continue up over the skull, down the back and out at one's heels?
"Yes, yes," he cried, holding her hand tightly in his. "Let us speak
French, I--I love to speak my own tongue to you."
He himself had a delightful little fault in his speech, being quite
incapable of pronouncing the English "r," rolling it in his throat in a
way that always amused Brigit.
As he talked, her smile deepened in character, and from one of mere
friendly greeting became one of real affection. He was nice, this boy;
she liked his honest dark eyes and the expression of his handsome young
mouth.
"Tell me," she began presently, "how is your father?"
"He is well, my father, but very nervous. Poor mother!"
"Poor _mother_?"
"But yes. The concert is to be to-morrow, and he is always in a furious
state of nerves before he plays. He has been terrific all day."
Brigit sat down. "How curious. One would think that he of all people
would be used to playing in public by now," she commented, observing
with a tinge of impatience the effect on him of her head outlined
against the pale moonlight.
He stood for a moment, unconsciously and irresistibly admiring her.
Then, with a little shake of his head, answered her remark. "No, no, he
is most nervous always. It is your amateur who knows no stage-fright.
Papa," he went on, using the name that to English ears sounds so
strangely on grown-up lips, "says he invariably feels as though the
audience were wild beasts going to rush at him and tear him to
pieces--until he has played one number."
"And after the concert?"
As she spoke dinner was announced, and while they went down the passage
to the dining-room at the tail of the little procession, he answered
with a laugh, "Oh, _afterwards_ a child could eat out of his hand. He is
honey and milk, nectar and--_ambrrrrosia_!"
The dinner was noisy. Lady Kingsmead always shrieked, as did Mrs.
Newlyn, and her other guests either bellowed or screamed, with the
exception of Yelverton, who was hungry and said little.
Brigit sat between him and young Joyselle. It was nice to have the boy
next her, but his adoration was too obvious to be altogether
comfortable.
Freddy Newlyn told some new stories, all delightfully vulgar; Carron
gave a realistic _résumé_ of a recent French play.
"Awful rot, isn't it?" queried Yelverton suddenly under cover of a roar
of laughter. "Why the dickens can't they talk quietly?"
"If you dislike it," she inquired unresentfully, "why do you come?"
"I beg pardon, Lady Brigit, I forgot that you belonged here; I always do
forget."
Then Joyselle turned to her, his face so eloquent that she felt like
warning him not to betray his secret. "I--I am so happy to be here," he
stammered.
Her very black, very well-drawn eyebrows drew a trifle closer together,
and with the quickness of his race he saw it.
"Forgive me, Lady Brigit," he said hastily in English. "I am sorry.
And--I will not say it again! Only----"
"Only--you _are_ glad? Well, I'm glad, too," she answered slowly. The
noisier the others grew as dinner progressed, the closer she and this
quiet-voiced boy seemed to draw together.
"Poor old Ponty, too bad he couldn't come," cried Mr. Newlyn, pecking,
sparrow-like, at a scrap of food on his plate. "Anything wrong, Lady
Kingsmead?"
"No, I don't think so. He telephoned just before dinner--_oh_!"
She broke off, and everyone turned towards the door as it opened noisily
to admit a stout, red-faced man, who stood hesitating on the threshold,
not as much apparently from shyness as from a kind of bodily stammer of
movement.
"Ponty!"
"Awfully sorry, Tony," explained Lord Pontefract, advancing towards his
hostess, "awfully sorry, but that idiot Hendricks got a telephone
message wrong, and I thought I couldn't come. So when I found out, I
thought 'better late than never,' though I _had_ dined. Please say
'better late than never.'"
"Better late than never," chanted the whole party dissonantly, and room
was made for the new-comer between Brigit and Yelverton.
"That fool Shover nearly broke my neck, too," he confided, sitting down
and lowering his voice confidentially. "I--I thought for a second I
should never see you again."
She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. He had been drinking.
No one had ever seen Oscar Pontefract drunk, but as time went on the
honourable body of those who had ever seen him perfectly sober
diminished rapidly.
"Haven't seen you for ten days. Damnedest ten days I ever lived
through," he continued, helping himself to whisky and soda, "and most
infernal ten nights, too. Can't sleep for thinking of you," he added
hastily, as she at last turned and looked full at him.
She was twenty-five, and had lived in this _milieu_ for the past seven
years. It had begun by disgusting her, then for a time she had been
indifferent to it, and now for the last year it had been growing
steadily unbearable.
"_Dites donc_, Lady Brigit," began Joyselle in her left ear, and as she
listened to him she instinctively drew away from Pontefract, closer to
him. At dessert Kingsmead came sauntering in, less with the air of a
little boy allowed to appear with the fruit than of a gently interested
gentleman come to take a look at the strange beasts it amused him to
keep in a remote corner of his park.
He ate fruit in, to the unaccustomed eye, alarming quantities, and his
mother's guests discussed him exactly as if he had not been there.
A very plain little boy, Kingsmead, with stiff fair hair and many
freckles. But for his mouth a most unremarkable-looking person, for his
eyes, quick as those of a lizard, were pale blue in colour, and small.
But his mouth turned up at the corners in a peculiar and faun-like way,
and gave much character to his face, which was otherwise impassive as
well as ugly.
"Boy ought to go to school," growled Lord Pontefract.
Lady Kingsmead shrugged her shoulders. "Of course he ought," she
assented shrilly, "but what am I to do? He simply won't go, will you,
Tommy?"
"No, I believe in self-education. The intelligent child gleans more from
the company and conversation of his elders----" Gravely he paused and
gazed round the table at the meaningless faces of most of those present.
The Cassowary burst into a scream of laughter. "Oh, Tommy, you _are_
such a quaint little being," she cried; "isn't he, Gerald?"
"Beastly child. Kingsmead always was an ass, but no one would have
believed that even _he_ could be such an imbecile as to leave that boy
entirely in his wife's hands."
"_So_ ducky, I always think him, though not pretty," returned the
Cassowary.
As they left the dining-room Kingsmead whispered to his sister, "I say,
Bicky, look out for Ponty. He's a bit boiled."