A Comedy of Masks Part 22

"The way of looking at life generally?" she hazarded.

"Precisely. True philosophy only admits one point of view--from outside. Aren't we always being told that life is only a play? Well, we clever people are the spectators, the audience. We look at the play from a comfortable seat in the stalls; and when the curtain drops at the end, we go home quietly and--sleep."

Mary looked at him for a moment silently.

"I'm not at all sure that we ought to feel flattered! You consider that you and I and her ladys.h.i.+p are spectators, then. Isn't it very selfish?"

"More or less. Of course, it's impossible to do the thing thoroughly without being absolutely selfish--a hermit, in fact. I sometimes think I was intended for a hermit."

Mary sighed covertly, though the smile still lingered in her brown eyes.

"I'm afraid I only take a kind of sideways view of things. I should like to--to----"

"To go up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly, "and get a bird's-eye view of life?"

"Exactly; and drift about. Only then one would never get really interested in anything or anybody. I should want someone else in the balloon."

"You must take me," said Rainham, still smiling.

Mary looked at him quickly, and then turned away, s.h.i.+vering a little.

"What nonsense we are talking!" she said suddenly. "And I'm afraid it isn't even original nonsense. We don't, really, want to be selfish, and we're not; you needn't pretend you are. And isn't it getting very, very late? Don't you think Mrs. Lightmark looks as if we ought to go? I don't mean that she looks inhospitable. But isn't she rather pale and tired? This sort of thing doesn't seem to suit her as well as her husband. Yes, I must really go."

When Miss Masters had deserted him, after extracting a promise that he would take an early opportunity of paying his over-due respects to her aunt, and had gone with Mrs. Lightmark in search of the old lady, Rainham made his adieux, leaving Lightmark still radiant, and protesting hospitably against such early hours; and as he walked homewards, with a cigar unlighted between his lips, he smiled rather bitterly, as he thought how little he was able to adhere to the tenets of his philosophy. Why else should he regret so much and so often the act which had been rung down when ... And how many more acts and scenes were there to be?

"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One isn't obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep their seats until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early disturbs the other spectators."

While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to her years and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a square, wainscoted little room, hung with pale gra.s.s matting, and decorated brightly with quaint Breton faence and old bra.s.s sconces.

"I was so glad to see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for him!"

"Almost as bad as too much society."

"Yes; it's only another form of dissipation."

"I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other people's society than too much of one's own."

"I don't think I ever regarded him from a--a society point of view.

You know what I mean--like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I was a child I always thought of him as a sort of fairy G.o.dmother--a person who was always dropping from the clouds to take one for drives in the country, or with a box for the pantomime."

Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her curiously for a moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness or disdain in the clear voice and the pretty, childish face.

"Philip was always like that, the kindest---- He has always been quite a hero for me--a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off rather suddenly, finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly.

"Isn't it curious that we should both have known him so long without knowing each other?"

"I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't think Philip talks about his friends very much...."

Lady Garnett interrupted the _tete-a-tete_ conversation at this point, and when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late guests had left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few minutes in the deserted drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty chairs, meditating, with her chin resting on one hand, and her eyes absently contemplating the scattered petals of a copper-coloured rose, which had fallen from some dress or bouquet upon one of the Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet floor.

"d.i.c.k," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against the rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it ever strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?"

Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window wonderingly, almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh.

"Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely.

"I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display of mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?"

"Not much. I was only thinking.... What a pity Charles wasn't here to-night!"

"Oh, you little enigma! Is it that dear Charles who is to be pitied, or who? We, for instance?"

But Eve a.s.sumed a superior air, and Lightmark, who hated riddles, dismissed the subject and the end of his cigarette simultaneously.

CHAPTER XXII

One afternoon, three months later, Rainham, finding himself in the neighbourhood of Parton Street, took the occasion of knocking at Lady Garnett's door, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that the two ladies were returned. Introduced into their presence--they were sitting in the library, in close proximity to a considerable fire--he learnt that their summer wanderings that year had been of no extensive nature, and that they had come into residence a week ago.

They had spent a month in a country house in Berks.h.i.+re, the old lady told him presently, adding, with an explanatory grimace, that it was a house which belonged to a relation--the sort of place where one had to visit now and again; where a month went a very long way; where one had to draw largely on one's courtesy--on one's hypocrisy (if he preferred the word), not to throw up the cards at once, and retire after the first week.

Rainham gathered from her resigned animadversions that the relations must be by marriage only: there was no Gallic quality in the atmosphere she described.

It was a very nice house--Jacobean, she believed--or, rather, it would have been nice if they had had it to themselves. Unfortunately, it was very full: there were a great many stupid men who shot all day, and as many stupid women who talked scandal and went to sleep after dinner; also there were several pairs--or did one say "brace"?--of young people who flirted, but they lived in the conservatories. When one did not go to sleep after dinner, one played round games, or baccarat. She herself had refused to play, although they had wished to make her; personally, she preferred to go to sleep, or to listen to Mary's music. Yes, Mary was more fortunate: they had a very good piano, and an organ. Mary's music was a great success, although her admirers were apt to confuse Offenbach with Chopin; and some of the women appeared to think it was not quite ladylike to play so well, with such a professional manner. Still, Mary's music was a success, and that was more than could be said of her own conversation. That had been a distinct failure! They seemed to think she wished to make fun of things--of sacred things, the game laws, and agriculture, and the Established Church. Of course, she had no such intention: it was only that she wished for information, for instruction in these difficult national inst.i.tutions, which, long as she had made her home in England, she feared she would never thoroughly comprehend.

Mary had sat silently, with her hands clasped across her knees, while her aunt placidly poured forth these and similar comments (which were interspersed by questions and sympathetic monosyllables from Rainham), not so much acrimoniously, as in the tone of the humorous reporter, who is too indifferent to be actuated by a sense of injury.

The girl struck him as having grown tired and listless--more listless than a merely physical fatigue would warrant. He interrupted now to ask her with a touch of compa.s.sion if she too had been very much bored.

Her fine eyes were averted as she answered him, smiling a little:

"I am rather glad to be back. It was a pretty place, and the gardens were charming, when it did not rain."

Lady Garnett was overheard to murmur into the black ear of Mefistofele that it always rained.

"But on the whole--yes, I was rather bored," the girl continued abruptly.

"The rain and the round games and the people?" Rainham echoed. "You have my sympathy."

"I believe I rather liked the round games," said Mary, with a little laugh. "They were less tiresome than the rest; and the organ was a great solace; it was very perfect."

"Ah, yes, she liked the round games," put in Lady Garnett; "and if two of her admirers had played them more, and turned over her music less, the organ might have been a greater solace."

"They were very foolish," sighed the girl rather wearily.

"Mr. Sylvester was there for the last fortnight," continued Lady Garnett, with some malice. "He succeeded Lord Overstock, as Mary's musical acolyte. In revenge, Lord Overstock wished to teach her baccarat, and Mr. Sylvester remonstrated. It was sublime! It was the one moment of amus.e.m.e.nt vouchsafed me."