December Love Part 51

"Forgive me for a moment," said Braybrooke. "Lady Wrackley seems to want me."

Indeed, the electric-light smile was being turned on and off in the box opposite with unmistakable intention, and, glancing across, Craven noticed that the young men had disappeared, no doubt to smoke cigarettes in the foyer. Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde were alone, and, seeing them alone, it was easier to Craven to compare their appearance with Lady Sellingworth's.

Lady Wrackley looked s.h.i.+ningly artificial, seemed to glisten with artificiality, and her certainly remarkable figure suggested to him an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a corset designed by a genius with a view to the concealment of fat. Mrs. Ackroyde was far less artificial, and though her hair was dyed it did not proclaim the fact blatantly. Certainly it was difficult to believe that both those ladies, whom Braybrooke now joined, were much the same age as Lady Sellingworth. And yet, in Craven's opinion, to-night she made them both look ordinary, undistinguished. There was something magnificent in her appearance which they utterly lacked.

Braybrooke sat down in their box, and Craven was sure they were all talking about Lady Sellingworth and him. He saw Braybrooke's broad-fingered hand go to his beard and was almost positive his old friend was on the defensive. He was surely saying, "No, really, I don't think so! I feel convinced there is nothing in it!" Craven's eyes met Lady Sellingworth's, and it seemed to him at that moment that she and he spoke together without the knowledge of Miss Van Tuyn. But immediately, and as if to get away from their strange and occult privacy, she said:

"What have you been doing lately, Beryl? I hear Miss Cronin has come over. But I thought you were not staying long. Have you changed your mind?"

Miss Van Tuyn said she might stay on for some time, and explained that she was having lessons in painting.

"In London! I didn't know you painted, and surely the best school of painting is in Paris."

"I don't paint, dearest. But one can take lessons in an art without actually practising the art. And that is what I am doing. I like to know even though I cannot, or don't want to, do. d.i.c.k Garstin is my master.

He has given me the run of his studio in Glebe Place."

"And you watch him at work?" said Craven.

"Yes."

She fixed her eyes on him, and added:

"He is painting a living bronze."

"Somebody very handsome?" said Lady Sellingworth, glancing across the house to the trio in the box opposite.

"Yes, a man called Nicolas Arabian."

"What a curious name!" said Lady Sellingworth, still looking towards the opposite box. "Is it an Englishman?"

"No. I don't know his nationality. But he makes a magnificent model."

"Oh, he's a model!" said Craven, also looking at the box opposite.

"He isn't a professional model. d.i.c.k Garstin doesn't pay him to sit. I only mean that he is a marvellous subject for a portrait and sits well.

d.i.c.k happened to see him and asked him to sit. d.i.c.k paints the people he wants to paint, not those who want to be painted by him. But he's a really big man. You ought to know him."

She said the last words to Lady Sellingworth, who replied:

"I very seldom make new acquaintances now."

"You made Mr. Craven's!" said Miss Van Tuyn, smiling.

"But that was by special favour. I owe Mr. Braybrooke that!" said Craven. "And I shall be eternally grateful to him."

His eyes met Lady Sellingworth's, and he immediately added, turning to Miss Van Tuyn:

"I have to thank him for two delightful new friends--if I may use that word."

"Mr. Braybrooke is a great benefactor," said Miss Van Tuyn. "I wonder how this play is going to end."

And then they talked about Moscovitch and the persistence of a ruling pa.s.sion till Braybrooke came back. He looked rather grave and preoccupied, and Craven felt sure that the talk in the opposite box had been about Lady Sellingworth and her "new man," himself, and, unusually self-conscious, or moved, perhaps, by an instinct of self-preservation, he devoted himself almost with intensity to Miss Van Tuyn till the curtain went up. And after it went up he kept his chair very close to hers, sat almost "in her pocket," and occasionally murmured to her remarks about the play.

The last act was a panorama of s.h.i.+fting moods, and although there was little action they all followed it with an intense interest which afterwards surprised them. But a master hand was playing on the audience, and drew at will from them what emotions he chose. Now and then, during the progress of this act, Braybrooke sent an anxious glance to Lady Sellingworth. All this about loss, though it was the loss of a voice, about the end of a great career, about age and desertion, was dangerous ground. The love-scene between Moscovitch and the young girl seriously perturbed Braybrooke. He hoped, he sincerely hoped, that Adela Sellingworth would not be upset, would not think that he had chosen the Shaftesbury Theatre for their place of entertainment with any _arriere pensee_. He fancied that her face began to look rather hard and "set" as the act drew near its end. But he was not sure. For the auditorium was rather dark; he could not see her quite clearly. And he looked at Craven and Miss Van Tuyn and thought, rather bitterly, how sane and how right his intentions had been. Youth should mate with youth. It was not natural for mature, or old, age to be closely allied with youth in any pa.s.sionate bond. In such a bond youth was at a manifest disadvantage.

And it seemed to Braybrooke that age was sometimes, too often indeed, a vampire going about to satisfy its appet.i.te on youth, to slake its sad thirst at the well-spring of youth. He looked, too, at the women in the box opposite, and at the young men with them, and he regretted that so many human beings were at grips with the natural. He at any rate, although he carefully concealed his age, never did unsuitable things, or fell into anything undignified. Yet was he rewarded for his intense and unremitting carefulness in life?

A telephone bell sounded on the stage, and the unhappy singer, bereft of romance, his career finished, decadence and old age staring him in the face, went to answer the call. But suddenly his face changed; a brightness, an alertness came into it and even, mysteriously, into all his body. There was a woman at the other end of the wire, and she was young and pretty, and she was asking him to meet her. As he was replying gaily, with smiling lips, and a greedy look in his eyes that was half child-like, half satyr-like, the curtain fell. The play was at an end, leaving the impression upon the audience that there is no end to the life of a ruling pa.s.sion in a man while he lives, that the ruling pa.s.sion can only die when he dies.

Miss Van Tuyn and Craven, standing up in the box, applauded vigorously.

"That's a true finis.h.!.+" the girl said. "He's really a modern Baron Hulot. When he's seventy he'll creep upstairs to a servant girl. We don't change, I've always said it. We don't change!"

And she looked from Craven to Lady Sellingworth.

Moscovitch bowed many times.

"Well, Mr. Braybrooke," said Miss Van Tuyn, "I've seen some acting in London to-night that I should like to show to Paris. Thank you!"

She was more beautiful and more human than Craven had ever seen her before in her genuine enthusiasm. And he thought, "Great art moves her as nothing else moves her."

"What do you say about it, dearest?" she said, as Craven helped her to put on her cloak.

(Braybrooke was attending to Lady Sellingworth.)

"It's a great piece of acting!"

"And horribly true! Don't you think so?"

"I dare say it is," Lady Sellingworth answered.

She turned quickly and led the way out of the box.

In the hall they encountered the other quartet and stood talking to them for a moment, and Craven noticed how Miss Van Tuyn had been stirred up by the play and how silent Lady Sellingworth was. He longed to go back to Berkeley Square alone with the latter, and to have a long talk; but something told him to get away from both the white-haired woman and the eager girl. And when the motor came up he said very definitely that he had an engagement and must find a cab. Then he bade them good-bye and left them in the motor with Braybrooke. As he was turning away to get out of the crowd a clear, firm voice said to him:

"I am so glad you have performed the miracle, Mr. Craven."

He looked round and saw Mrs. Ackroyde's investigating eyes fixed upon him.

"But what miracle?" he asked.

"You have pulled Adela Sellingworth out of the sh.e.l.l in which she has been living curled up for over ten years."

"Yes. You are a prodigy!" said Lady Wrackley, showing her teeth.

"But I'm afraid I can't claim that triumph. I'm afraid it's due to Mr.

Braybrooke's diplomacy."

"Oh, no!" Mrs. Ackroyde said calmly. "Adela would never yield to his cotton-glove persuasions. Besides, his diplomacy would shy away from Soho."