A Comedy of Masks Part 11

The story, though incoherent, was possible; Rainham could see no motive for her deceiving him, and yet he believed she was lying. He merely shrugged his shoulders, with a rising la.s.situde. He seemed to have been infected by her own dreariness, to labour under a disability of doing or saying any more; he, too, gave it up. He wanted to get away out of the dingy room; its rickety table and chairs, its two vulgar vases on the stained mantel, its gross upholstery, seemed too trenchantly sordid in the strong August sun.

The child's golden head--she was growing intelligent now, and strong on her legs--was the one bright spot in the room. He stopped to pat it with a great pity, a sense of too much pathos in things flooding him, before he pa.s.sed out again into the mean street.

CHAPTER XIII

September set in cold, with rain and east winds, and Rainham, a naturally chilly mortal, as he handed his coat to Lady Garnett's butler, and followed him into the little library, where dinner was laid for three, congratulated himself that a seasonable fire crackled on the large hearth.

"I hardly expected you back yet," he remarked, after the first greetings, stretching out his hands to the blaze; "and your note was a welcome surprise. I almost think we are the only people in town."

Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of rich tolerance, as one who acknowledged the respectability of all tastes, whilst preferring her own.

"London has its charm, to me," she remarked. "We are glad to be back. I am getting too old to travel--that terrible crossing, and the terrible people one meets!"

Rainham smiled with absent sympathy, looking into the red coals.

"You must remember, I don't know where you have been. Tell me your adventures and your news."

"I leave that to Mary, my dear," said the old lady.

And at that moment the girl came in, looking stately and older than her age in one of the dark, high-cut dresses which she affected. She shook hands with Rainham, smiling; and as they went to table he repeated his question.

"It is difficult," she said; "we seem to have been everywhere. Oh, we have been very restless this year, Philip. I think we were generally in the train. We tried Trouville----"

"Detestable!" put in Lady Garnett with genial petulance; "it was too small. Half the world was crowded into it; and it was precisely the half-world----"

"I can imagine it," interrupted Rainham, with his grave smile; "and then?"

"Then we thought of Switzerland," continued the young girl. "We went to Geneva. We were almost dead when we arrived, because we had to go a very roundabout way to avoid Paris; we could not go to Paris, because we were afraid of seeing the Republic. It was very hot in Geneva. No place ever was so hot before. We lay on the sofa for three days, and then we were strong enough to run away."

"It was purgatorial!" said the elder lady; "it was full of English governesses and Swiss pastors."

"Then we went to look for cool places, and we had a charming week at Interlaken, and looked longingly at the Jungfrau, and contemplated the ascent."

Lady Garnett laughed her quaint, little laugh.

"Interlaken might have sufficed, my dear; but, unfortunately--it was one of Mary's ridiculous economies--we went to a _pension_; and we fell into the hands of an extraordinary woman with a fringe and a Bible, a native of North America, who endeavoured to persuade me that I was a Jewess."

"No, no!" laughed Mary, "not quite so bad as that. It was one of the other tribes she would have us belong to--one of the lost tribes.

It was not personal."

"Ah, _Dieu merci_! if they are lost," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her aunt; "but you are wrong; it was most personal, Mary."

"I will do her the justice to add that she only suggested it once,"

continued the girl with a smile of elision. "However, we had to flee from her; and so we came to Lucerne."

"That was worst of all," said Lady Garnett, arching her delicate eyebrows; "it was full of lovers."

The solemn butler had placed a pair of obdurate birds before Rainham, which engrossed him; presently he looked up, remarking quietly:

"Did you see the Sylvesters?"

"Ah yes! we saw the Sylvesters; we walked with the Sylvesters; we drank tea with the Sylvesters; we made music with the Sylvesters; we went on the lake with the Sylvesters. That handsome artist, Mr.

Lightmark, is it not, Mary? was there, making the running with Miss Eve. The marriage seems to be arranged."

She shrugged her shoulders; the precise shade of meaning in the gesture escaped Rainham; he looked over to Mary inquiringly.

"They seem very much attached to each other," she remarked.

"Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my dear, and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad to come away from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my Constant's _vol-au-vent_, which you don't seem to have tried; but lovers are the worst of all. Though I like that young man, Lightmark; he is a type that interests me; he seems----"

She looked round the room vaguely, as if the appropriate word might be lurking in some angle of the apartment; finally, the epithet proving difficult, she abandoned the search.

"_Il ira loin_!" she said tersely; "he flatters me discreetly, as they did when I was young, before the Republic."

The silent, well-trained man handed round caviare and olives; Mary trifled with some grapes, her brow knitted a little, thoughtfully.

Lady Garnett poured herself a gla.s.s of maraschino. When they were left alone, the girl remarked abruptly:

"I am not sure whether I quite like Mr. Lightmark; he does not seem to me sincere."

Lady Garnett lifted up her hands.

"Why should he be, my dear? sincerity is very trying. A decent hypocrisy is the secret of good society. Your good, frank people are very rude. If I am a wicked old woman, it is n.o.body's business to tell me so but my director's."

Mary had risen, and had come over to the old lady's side.

"But then, you are not a wicked old woman, my aunt," she observed gently.

"Ah!" she threw back, "how do you judge? Do me the justice to believe, _cherie_, that, if I tell you a good deal, there is a good deal, happily, which I don't tell you."

She pushed a box of cigarettes, which the man had placed on the table, toward Rainham. He took one and lit it silently, absently, without his accustomed protests; the girl looked up smiling.

"That means that you want your _tete-a-tete_, Aunt Marcelle? I know the signal. Well, I will leave you. I want to try over that new march of Liszt's; and I expect, by the time I have grappled with it, you will be coming up for your coffee."

"You are a good girl," answered the elder lady, stroking her hand.

"Yes, run away and make music! When Philip and I have had enough scandal and frivolity, we will come and find you; and you shall play us a little of that strange person Wagner, who fascinates me, though you may not believe it."

It was a habit of the house, on occasion of these triangular dinner-parties, that Lady Garnett should remain with Rainham in the interval which custom would have made him spend solitary over his wine. It was a habit which Mary sacredly respected, although it often amused her; and she knew it was one which her aunt valued.

And, indeed, though the two made no movement, and for a while said nothing, there was an air of increased intimacy, if it were only in their silence, when the door had closed on the girl and left them together. Presently Lady Garnett began holding up her little gla.s.s of crystal maraschino that vied in the light of the candelabra with the diamonds on her fingers.

"I had a conversation with that wearisome young man Charles Sylvester at Lucerne, Philip; he tried to sound me as to Mary's prospects and the state of her affections."

Rainham looked up with quiet surprise.

"Do you mean to say----?" he queried.

"It is very obvious," she answered quickly; "I saw it long ago. But don't imagine that he got much out of me. I was as deep as a well.

But what do you think of it?"