Front matter (continued 2)

Brackenbury had the consideration to ask if I would not stay the night. I explained the very delicate position in which we had left Kathleen and Captain Laughton.

"Well, go if you feel up to it," said Brackenbury in what I thought was an off-hand manner to adopt to his sister. "Or send Will, if anybody can find what's happened to him. So long as they've some one to chaperon them, they're all right."

I would have stayed if Will could have stayed with me. I would have gone if that had been the only means of keeping by his side. Do you know, I had the feeling that in the length and breadth of that house he was the only one who cared whether I was well or ill, whether I lived or died ... almost...

"I'm not sure that I care to leave my mother while she's like this," said my boy rather timidly, when he was fetched in to join the council. It is unfashionable, I believe, for the modern son to shew his mother any overt tenderness...

"Well, some one's got to go," said Brackenbury with unnecessary impatience. "It's all up, if you leave those two without any one to keep them in countenance."

"We will both go," I said.

When the car was ordered, we went into the hall and waited... After about twenty minutes Brackenbury rang to find out the reason for the delay. The servant came back to say that part of what I think is called the magneto was missing. I chose my word carefully: not "injured" or "worn-out," but "missing"—as though some one had invaded the garage and removed the requisite part...

Brackenbury seemed to lose his head altogether.

"It's ten o'clock," he roared. "If you don't get to Hugely by mid-night, can't you see that you'll be too late to stop a scandal? If you want to stay the divorce, say so at once, say that you're scheming to tie up Spenworth in your own interests; and, by God, if it comes off, I'll say it until every decent man and woman will walk out of a room when any of your gang come into it... Phyllida," he shouted. "Order your car! Will can drive it..."

"Aren't you afraid he may lose his way?," asked Phyllida.

I don't attempt to reproduce her voice... It was silky ... oh, and wicked! I tell myself not to mind, I try to remember that she was overwrought and that her father was a criminal not to insist on her going away. Phyllida was deliberately charging us with a conspiracy to interrupt the divorce proceedings so that in time—goodness me, when Arthur and I are dead and buried!—our boy Will might succeed. Cheniston is a noble seat; the Spenworth title is old and was once honoured; but neither for my husband nor my son do I want them—at that cost.

I said nothing... I believe I murmured to myself: "You wicked child"; but, literally, I couldn't speak. I couldn't see ... or hear. Brackenbury was making furious arrangements. As in a dream I saw Ruth being wrapped in a fur-coat... A car came to the door and drove away... I asked my boy to ascertain which was my room and to lend me the support of his arm up the stairs...

Ruth telegraphed next day from Rugely—just two words—"All well." ...

Will and I returned to London by train. Phyllida was in the hall, reading the telegram, as I appeared.

"It nearly came off," she said. "I'm sorry—for your sake—that you've had a disappointment. Time, you will find, works wonders; and some day, perhaps, you will be more grateful than I can expect to find you now. If I were you, I would go right away..."

What she intended to convey I have no more idea than the man in the moon... The night before, her meaning was never in doubt; and I am waiting for her to put it into words, to charge Will or me or both of us with deliberately damaging our car...

But you will see that anything she says in her present state, poor child, must be accepted with charitable reserve.

IV LADY ANN SPENWORTH IS CONTENT WITH A LITTLE MUSIC

Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): I am easily satisfied, I ask for nothing better than a little music after dinner. If only the rising generation were rather less self-conscious... When I was a girl, it was a law of the Medes and Persians that, if any one asked us to play or sing, we at once complied. None of this modern absurdity of not playing in public, insisting on the hush of the grave, looking round the room first to see if by chance there is some great maestro present... When I tell you that I once sang before Jenny Lind, being too young and ignorant to know who she was... And no one could have been sweeter...

I am not a musician in any sense of the word. (I am almost tempted to add: "Thank goodness!") When one sees and hears the devotees at Covent Garden, talking a language of their own which I am quite sure half of them don't understand, ready to set one right in a moment if one presumes to offer an opinion... If any one said to me: "I want to be a social success and I don't know how to begin," I should answer: "Learn the musical jargon and use it rudely, especially to people who for one reason or another have not had to fight their way into any little niche that they may occupy." I won't mention names... But I see you have guessed! And do you not agree? That man, for all his millions, would be received nowhere but for his alleged love of music; but take a double box at the opera, go every night, allow yourself to be seen at all the concerts, give immense parties of your own, support and bring out three new geniuses a month—everything is forgiven you!

I did not know him before the war ... when, by the way, I understand he passed by the name of Sir Adolf Erckmann. One saw, indeed, his not very prepossessing beard and bald head protruding from his box—a red, anxious face and single eye-glass, positively scattering bows right and left at the people he had succeeded in getting to know in his upward progress. Originally, I believe, a German-Jewish banker, with immense interests of all kinds in every part of the world and a very unsavoury domestic reputation. He was nothing to me, nor I to him; and it would have been no true kindness for me to "take him up," as Connie Maitland was always urging me to do. No doubt we should have been surfeited with invitations to Westbourne Terrace and Rock Hill; but we are not yet reduced to scouring London for free meals, like some people we could think of, and, without being cynical, I always felt that the Erckmanns would try to use us as a means of getting to know Spenworth and Brackenbury so that in time their triumphal progress might carry them to Cheniston and the Hall. If I could have done any good, it would have been a different matter; but you remember the Erckmanns were a test-case before the war, in the days when the energy of Christine Malleson and my Lady Maitland and the rest had broken down so many barriers which hitherto had been at least a convenience. Not only Spenworth and Brackenbury, but a dozen more as good as said that they could not continue to know me if I consented to know Erckmann...

When the war came, things materially altered. The Erckmanns vanished—in every sense of the word. The old friends, who had plagued me to receive him, now denied with cursing and swearing, as it were, saying: "I know not the man." One or two of the radical papers made a bitter personal attack on him because harmless German hair-dressers and waiters were being interned while this wealthy international financier, who was in a position to collect information and influence opinion, was left at large, thanks to highly-placed friends and a title. They said that some of the Cabinet were absolutely dependent on him... Though I saw nothing of the man, I could not help hearing of him, for the mob broke his windows in Westbourne Terrace whenever there was an air-raid; they said he was shewing lights to guide the Zeppelins to Paddington. Whether there was a word of truth in it I can't say... And, when he erected an enormous hospital at Rock Hill, even this was not accounted to him for righteousness: the men there held him to ransom, his own patients. Some one would whisper that he had a secret wireless apparatus on his roof; and immediately Sir Adolf would build another ward or a recreation-room or a picture theatre...

And in another sense they disappeared: as Will said, "Plant an Erckmann in England, and up comes an Erskine." Poor souls, if they had changed their names before the war and if some one could have performed an operation to rid Sir Adolphus of that appalling guttural accent... I really began to feel sorry for them when all their friends—led, if you please, by my Lady Maitland—turned the cold shoulder. "Satisfy me," I said to Arthur, "that he is a truly loyal subject, and I should like to see if I could not shew him a little kindness."

"He's a noxious creature," said Arthur with his usual intolerance, "but all these stories of spying and of blackmailing ministers are sheer flumdiddle. It isn't worth his while. Whoever wins, Erskine will make money. He's technically loyal; but he's a man without patriotism, because the whole world is his country. For the Lord's sake, don't throw your mantle over him; as long as there are national distinctions, I object to the way these international Jew financiers settle in England for their own convenience."

"I am not," I said, "concerned with that. You may be right. Perhaps we should all of us have done better to hold aloof and offer him no welcome at the outset. But, do you know, I feel a certain responsibility? Having been received here, having poured money like water into the pockets of his so-called friends, will he not form a low view of our sincerity and goodwill if every one abandons him at a time like this? I am disinterested: we have accepted nothing from him, we can look to him for nothing; but there is a reproach which I feel it my duty to remove."

I could not make Arthur see that people like Connie Maitland, liée with the poor man one moment and throwing him to the wolves the next... We are not all of us like that in England.

"Well, for Heaven's sake, don't ask him when I'm here," was the utmost encouragement I got from my husband.

Truly honestly, I think this stubborn opposition drove me perhaps farther than I had first intended to go. A day or two later I found myself in the same house as Sir Adolphus and I spoke to him...

"You," I said, "do not know me; and I only know you by sight, though I have long been acquainted with your record of generous support to the cause of music. Will you allow a total stranger to tell you her disgust with the venomous attacks which have been made on you since the beginning of the war?"

Little enough, you may think; but I believe those were the first kind words that he had heard for three or four years. The man is not prepossessing, but we formed quite a friendship...

"Will not you and Lady Erskine," I said, "come and dine with me some night? I am not in a position to entertain in any sense of the word; my boy is at the front, my husband is away on business; but perhaps, if a family party would not bore you..."

Though I called myself a total stranger, he knew very well who I was; indeed he told me that he had always wanted to meet Brackenbury and Spenworth (the Cheniston Romneys were, of course, his excuse)... We arranged a night ... though, when the time came, there was not more than the three of us. My relations with Spenworth are not so cordial that I derive the least pleasure from seeing him at my table; and one truly honestly never knows how he is going to behave. Brackenbury... If you do not want to accept an invitation, it is surely possible to decline it civilly...

"That fellow!," cried Brackenbury. "He ought to be interned."

"You really must not talk such nonsense," I said. "He is as loyal as you are."

"I wouldn't touch him with a pole before the war," said Brackenbury with his wonted elegance. "But now, when even his best friends refuse to meet him—"

"Exactly," I interrupted. "You would like him to feel that that is our standard of sincerity and good-will."

"But how is it your concern?," he asked. "You've kept clear of that gang in the past, so why dirty your hands with it now? If you fancy you're going to get money out of him, or a job for Will, I warn you that you're no match for him. He'll use you readily enough, but he never does anything for anybody without looking for a return. We don't want these gentry in England."

"I met him," I answered. "I liked him, I was sorry for him. And, if I try to shew him a little kindness, I really cannot allow you, Brackenbury, to make yourself a ruler and a judge. Do I gather that you and Ruth would prefer not to dine?"

"If it's money you want, I'd almost pay you not to meet him. That's how I feel about it."

All this, you understand, about a man he hardly knew by sight! ... I found it in my heart to wish that Brackenbury had been present when the Erskines dined. Nothing could have been more charming. He talked too wonderfully about music; I asked him a little about himself, he asked me about myself—that delightful first exchange when you are laying the foundations of friendship. Having no children himself, he was of course most anxious to hear about Will—what he had done before the war, where he was in France at present, what he proposed to do when the war was over... As he had introduced the subject, I told him frankly that I found great difficulty in making up my mind and should be truly grateful if he would tell me, from his very wide experience, what he considered most hopeful. He promised to let me know; and, a few days later, when I was dining with him, he asked whether I expected Will home any time soon on leave, as he always had a certain number of openings in his own various businesses. This from the man who never did anything for anybody unless he expected a rich return, the man who used people but never allowed any one to use him... I had asked for nothing; in my haste I had told Arthur that we could look to him for nothing. And if you knew; the long agony of anxiety that I have endured... I may say, ever since we took Will away from Eton. I have seen my darling home in Mount Street threatened... The war was a god-send: something to keep him occupied, a little pocket-money; and, so long as he was not in danger, I prayed for it to go on...

"My dear Sir Adolphus," I said, "the first time he comes home you shall meet him."

That was in October. Suddenly, lo and behold! the armistice was upon us, and the whole world was looking out for jobs. I laboured and strove to bring Will home; and, the moment he arrived, I invited Sir Adolphus to dine. He telegraphed that he was at Rock Hill, but could we not spend a few days with him there? My maid was out. I began to pack with trembling fingers...

Is it not curious that difficulties always seem to come from the least expected quarter? Here was Will's whole future secured; he had woken up, as it were, with a golden spoon in his mouth. My dear, I had the utmost difficulty in persuading him to come at all. What he wanted was a holiday, he said; after all he had gone through, he was entitled to a good time. And, though he had never met the Erskines, he had formed an unreasoning prejudice against them which was incomprehensible in any one of his breadth of mind... I do assure you that we reached a deadlock.

"Will," I said very firmly, "I ask you to come."

"And I refuse point-blank," he answered.

"You will be sorry for it later," I warned him, "when the opportunity has slipped beyond recall."

"Something will turn up," he predicted. Then, perhaps, he saw how his refusal was paining me, for he added: "I've fixed up with some fellows weeks ago that we'd all meet and see life." ...

I had already begun a letter to Lady Erskine, asking if we might postpone our visit for a day or two, when Will came in—very much upset—to say that his friends had broken faith with him; one had already gone to the country, the other two were busy presenting letters of introduction and arranging interviews... As if I had not known all along that, the moment war was over, the whole world would begin looking for jobs...

"Now," I said, "you can have no objection to accepting the Erskines' invitation."

"Barring that I don't want to go," Will rejoined. "I draw the line at Jews at all times and I don't in the least want to start work till I've had a holiday."

"But others are already in the field," I urged. Lady Maitland shewed the sublime assurance to reestablish communications and to ask Sir Adolphus, in the name of their old friendship, to find an opening for her second boy! "You can have all the holidays you want later."

To my delight I saw Will weakening.

"What's the management like?," he asked.

"Oh, my dear, everything is incredibly perfect. The house, the food, the music—"

"You may 'ave the music—fer me," said Will. (It was some allusion which I did not understand.) "Oh, all right! I'll come. But I intend to have my fun out of it."

You have stayed at Rock Hill? No? Well, I am not exaggerating when I use the word "perfection." A seventeenth-century Italian palace with gardens that put Cheniston and my brother-in-law Spenworth to shame; pictures that one somehow always thought were in the National Gallery... And, if you care for material comfort, as—I am not ashamed to say—I do, not having enjoyed enough of it to become blasée... "If you cannot be rich yourself, know plenty of rich people," as Will said the first night... In jest, of course...

If I wanted to make a criticism, I should say that Lady Erskine might have chosen her party on less catholic lines. As patron of the arts, Sir Adolphus is of course brought into contact with an entire world of artists, musicians, actors and the like which is outside my ken. He confessed that he liked "mixing people up" and trying to break down the very rigid barriers which separate the artistic people from the rest of us. I have not the slightest objection to that on principle, but, when it necessitates meeting a number of half-naked young actresses who truly honestly have no place in the artistic or any other world... And when they are allowed to set the tone of the house...

I reminded myself that, with the exception of Brackenbury Hall, I had not stayed in a country-house for I don't know how long. Nothing, I determined, should surprise me; in Rome... And so forth and so on. We arrived in time for dinner, and almost the first thing I knew was that Sir Adolphus was pressing upon me something which I think he called a "Maiden's Sigh", which of course I imagined was the well-known hock of that name. Why hock before dinner? Sherry, if you like... But I had determined that nothing should surprise me. I drank it—what it contained, I do not know, but it was cold and, I suppose, very strong, for it went straight to my head! I could drink nothing at dinner until I had consumed an entire tumbler of cold water. Indeed, I hardly knew what I was saying, but Sir Adolphus was talking so interestingly about Rossini that I only wanted to listen... Later, when I had proved myself a good listener, it would be my turn to talk about Will...

Now, you dine out very much more than I do. On those rare occasions when you meet somebody who can talk, is it not heart-breaking to have the conversation interrupted before you have half finished it? In the old days, when one turned like an automaton to one's other-hand neighbour half-way through dinner, it was sufficiently exasperating; but one did hope that, if one had not wearied one's companion too unwarrantably, he would come up in the drawing-room and resume what he had been saying. Nowadays dinner is little more than a bribe offered to so many women and men to induce them to play bridge with you rather than with some one else. The tables were already set, when we left the dining-room; Lady Erskine's last words were: "You won't be long, will you?"

I do not play. Even in old days I never mastered whist. And I hope you will not cry "Sour grapes", if I say that I do not wish to learn. I ask nothing better than a little music after dinner. If not too modern, it does not interfere with conversation, whereas the sight of a card-table freezes the most eloquent lips...

"What about a rubber before the others come up?," asked one of these young actresses. I had not caught her name and perhaps I am doing her a grave injustice; but, if I had not Lady Erskine's implied guarantee, I should have considered her... Well, let me say I should have been very much surprised at being asked to meet her...

"I am afraid you must not count on me," I said.

The young woman reckoned up the numbers present and asked:

"What about poker, then?"

Here, I am thankful to say, Lady Erskine came to my rescue, and we contrived to exist with nothing more exciting than conversation until the men joined us. Then, I think, something must have been whispered to Sir Adolphus, for he said:

"I don't think we'll have any cards to-night; they're so unsociable."

Now, I wanted, above all things, to draw Will and Sir Adolphus together and allow them to become better acquainted. And Sir Adolphus, I knew, wished to talk to me, for he had begun to ask at dinner whether I thought it would interest Spenworth to see his pictures. I therefore suggested that, if I might express a wish, it would be for a little music. Sir Adolphus assented at once and asked one of these rather ambiguous young women to play, while I made room for him on the sofa and beckoned to Will. The Maitland boy—it was not very tactful of the Erskines—had been invited for the same week-end, but he was mooning about like a lost soul, looking at the pictures and talking to Lady Erskine...

"You asked me," I began, "to contrive a meeting—"

"Won't you wait until this is over?," suggested Sir Adolphus, with a nod towards the piano.

"I don't mind it," I said. "Now, Will has been away at the war since the beginning of 1916..." I won't weary you, but I gave him a little account of my boy's work on the staff, what were his tastes and ambitions ... and so on and so forth. I really don't know what this girl had begun to play, but she must have changed suddenly, for the noise became deafening... "I really can't talk against that," I protested.

Sir Adolphus went to the piano and whispered something, but the noise only increased.

"And she can't play against your talking," shouted Will. "That's Elsie Creyne, in case you don't know, and I'll bet she doesn't much care about people talking when she's playing. I've been watching her to see what would happen."

"Then I think, in ordinary kindness, you might have warned me," I said. "I have no wish to hurt the young woman's feelings."

"I thought it might be rather a rag," was all Will would say. "I'm rather bored with this place. I kept going at dinner because there was plenty of champagne; but, if somebody doesn't do something, I shall have to brighten things up by pulling old Herr von Erckmann's leg. He had the cheek to criticize the staff at the end of dinner; I switched the conversation on to repatriation of aliens, but I haven't done with him yet."

It is this boyish irresponsibility that may be Will's undoing! Mere high spirits... Before I could utter a word of warning, the music had changed again, every one was dancing and Will had jumped up to join them. I looked on—and marvelled; I had not seen any of these modern dances. And, when I could bear it no longer, I turned my back and began reading a paper...

That did in time have an effect; or perhaps they merely tired of their revels. But truly honestly, if I had not made a protest, no one would. Nothing was said, but there was what I can only call an atmosphere of guilt. Then Sir Adolphus discovered that dancing, too, was "unsociable" and enquired whether there was not something that we could all do...

Goodness me, are we so bankrupt in intelligence that we need to be given childish games to help us kill time? Has conversation died out in England? And you will remember that I was being invited to meet "artists" of every shape and size, who are never so happy as when they are sneering at the uncultured Philistines. These "artists", apparently, unless you encouraged them to dance or gave them rattles, would have sat down and cried. The others—including, I am sorry to say, Will, who was quite carried away by them—walked about saying very loudly "What I want is a drink." ...

And I had not had a word alone with Sir Adolphus...

"What about Consequences?," asked some one.

We live and learn, as they say. I have discovered from my experience that week-end that a certain class cannot make a suggestion or ask a question without introducing it with the words "What about." ... They put me on my guard now; I feel, when I hear them, that I know where I am... But can you imagine a greater confession of failure than to propose such a game to fifteen or twenty grown men and women, all—presumably—in possession of their faculties?

"What about Characters?," asked some one else. "That knocks spots off Consequences."

I give you their argot in all its native elegance. You surely would not have me paint the lily...

Before one had time to enquire or protest, one had been set at a table and furnished with a pencil while the rules were explained. A list of qualities, characteristics, whatever you like to call them, was written down; a name was chosen, and we had each of us to award marks. Thus: you might choose the Prime Minister and set out your qualities—statesmanship, force, honesty, courage, eloquence, amiability, good looks, personal charm and so on and so forth; each of us had ten marks for each quality, and, if you liked, you might give two for statesmanship and four for eloquence and ten for courage; then, when we had all expressed our opinion—it was in secret, and no one saw what marks any one else was allotting—the totals were added and read out. That was the man's "character." ...

An absurd game! But, as they were too unintelligent to talk and too disobliging to play or sing... Will was writing down the questions, and there seems no limit to the number that may be asked.

"And what is to be the first name?" I enquired.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," he said. "You must take the whole lot in turn. Begin with me, if you like."

Then indeed I had to make a protest. I had never imagined that we were to play with the names of the people actually in the room at that moment! More execrable taste... I was only thankful that Will had not proposed so detestable a game and was sorry to see him taking such a lead in it. Personalities of all kinds I abominate; there is a new school of humour which fancies that it has been very clever when people of better breeding would only say that it had been unpardonably rude. Spenworth? Exactly! You could not have chosen a better example. And games of this kind always end in one way...

"Surely," I pleaded, "we need not run the risk of hurting any one's feelings. If you take people who are known to us all by reputation..."

"Oh, it's much more fun this way," I was assured by Will. "And there's no need for any one to be offended; all the questions are about good qualities—charm and eloquence and so forth. If you think I have no charm, shove down a nought; that's much better than having 'Bad temper' and being given ten marks for it by everybody. I'll start, anyway, to give you all confidence."

I ought to have resisted more strongly, but I could not let them feel that I was what Will calls a "wet blanket" to everything they proposed. Already they had abandoned cards and interrupted their dancing out of deference to me... We began to play, and I confess that I found the game mercilessly tiresome. Imagine! A list of thirty or forty questions, which you had to answer fourteen or fifteen times over! Then a pause, while the papers were collected and the marks added; then the totals and a great deal of discussion and laughter and sometimes rather ill-natured facetiousness. And then the whole thing over again!

It would have been wearisome enough if they had played conscientiously; but, when the game was treated as a joke or a means of being malicious in secret, it was sheer waste of time. When my turn came, I was let off with quite a good character; but I am not vain enough to attribute this to anything more than luck or carelessness. I was not one of the intimates; they were in a hurry to put down any marks anywhere and move on to their next victim. At the same time I found it exceedingly unpleasant when the totals were read out—or, let me say, it would have been unpleasant if the whole game had not been so ridiculous. A hundred and fifty marks was the maximum; and, when "Love of Music" was given, I found that I had been accorded—twenty! I, who had been clamouring for music when every one else wanted to gamble or indulge in negro dances... And I have no doubt that I am indebted for the princely total of twenty to the chivalry of my host and hostess, who could not very well criticize a guest—at least on that score... Will? You think that Will came to my support? I do not know what had overtaken him that night; his surroundings reacted on him until he was unrecognizable. When we reached "Sense of Humour", he called out:

"Oh, I say, here's a lark! 'Sense of Humour; grand total, nought.'"

All I can say is, I was glad to have enough humour to see the absurdity and to join in the general laugh. But I was furious with Will...

You might have thought that, after I had been pilloried and held up to the scorn of young women whom I would not allow to enter my back-door, artists or no artists, I might have been suffered to go to bed. But no! That would upset the totals! I must stay to the bitter end, though my head was aching with fatigue and I could see that the game was growing more and more ill-natured...

I heaved a sigh when we reached Sir Adolf, for his name completed the circle. I don't know whether the others were even trying to give an honest opinion, but I did my best according to my lights. "Good looks"? I really think he would be the first to admit that he is not prepossessing. "Moral character"? I'm not a scandal-monger, I hope, but he has been twice divorced. "Loyalty"? I gave him full marks for that; otherwise I should not have been staying in his house. "Hospitality"? He meant well, but a guest has certain moral claims; I could only give him two for hospitality. "Love of Music"? Five for that, so far as I remember. "Sense of Humour"? Nought! I couldn't give him any marks for humour. "Amiability"? ... But I cannot recall the questions; there were nearly forty of them.

I sighed again when Will collected the papers and added the totals. Then came the reading. My dear, I had been led to suppose that what we had written was all in secret, but I felt that Sir Adolphus was guessing how we had marked him. "Good looks"? He received nothing for that, not a single mark from the fifteen of us who were eating his food and drinking his wine. "Amiability"? About twenty, obviously given him by his wife and the Maitland boy, who was very busy ingratiating himself; or perhaps by one of those ambiguous young women who seemed to be on terms of such extraordinary freedom with him... "Humour"? Four or five. "Honesty"? Not more than fifteen or twenty. It was too terrible! He tried to laugh it off; but, when he got no marks, we were all exposed, and I saw him glaring at one after another. And there was one question—"Personal Charm", I think—when Will read out "Minus ten." ...

I knew it would happen. There always is some kind of unpleasantness when you begin playing with personalities and taking risks with other people's feelings. I don't think I have ever spent a more distressing quarter of an hour. Oh, I was thankful when he said:

"Well, so that's what you all think of me, hein? We-ell, what about a drink, what?"

I felt—we all felt—that he was really taking it in very good part... The men trooped off to a side-table. I made my way to Will in the hope of whispering just a word... He had rather taken the lead in this ridiculous game, and I wished him to be extra sweet to the Erskines for the rest of our visit...

"Well, I call it rather a frost," I heard him say, as I drew near. "I'd back 'Characters' to break up any house-party in England, but everybody's taken it lying down to-night..."

I was distressed, for I really thought we had narrowly escaped some great unpleasantness. And then I found that we had not escaped it after all. Sir Adolphus came up to see that the others were looking after me properly and asked if he might have back the pencil that he had lent me. I surrendered it, he looked at it, pocketed it—and passed on. The others surrendered theirs, he looked at them... Then he came to Will...

"I was just wondering," I heard him say.

"Wondering what?," asked Will.

"Who gave me minus ten for—'Personal Charm', wasn't it? And nought for 'Loyalty', nought for 'Honesty', nought even for 'Hospitality' ... Just wondering."

"It's a secret ballot," said Will.

"Some one gave me nought for everything except 'Personal Charm', and there I received minus ten... I was wondering who it was."

"D'you suggest I did it?," asked Will.

"Oh, I respect the secrecy of the ballot," answered Sir Adolf. "But I noticed that you were using an indelible-ink pencil and I was clumsy enough to spill some soda-water over some of the papers, including the only one written with an indelible-ink pencil... But it is all a game, is it not?"

I have never felt so uncomfortable. Sir Adolphus said nothing more; he and Lady Erskine were too sweet for the rest of the time we were at Rock Hill. But I felt—perhaps quite wrongly—that I could not place myself under an obligation to him, I could not invite a rebuff...

Will was in no sense of the word to blame. It was entirely my fault for not protesting more vigorously against a game in which there would inevitably be some unpleasantness, some one's feelings hurt. If we had been treated as rational beings and allowed to talk... Or music. I am easily satisfied, I ask for nothing better than a little music... If only the rising generation were rather less self-conscious...

V LADY ANN SPENWORTH REFUSES TO BECOME A MATCH-MAKER

Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): If you will give me a moment to set my thoughts in order, I think I can furnish the whole story. Indeed, if you are to skate in safety this week-end at Brackenbury, it is well to know where the ice will bear... Goodness me, I don't suggest for a moment that there is anything to conceal—I can assure you I should have had something to say before ever receiving the girl or allowing my nephew Culroyd to meet her—my boy Will can take care of himself—; I meant that there is so little to tell. Surdan the name is; Hilda Surdan—and no relation to our dear old admiral, nor to the Lacey-Surdans, nor to that wild, eccentric tribe of Surdans who have spread over so much of Mayo... If I may give you a hint, that is just the sort of question that you have so particularly to avoid. I've no doubt that in a few years they will have concocted a most convincing pedigree, linking themselves to all and sundry, but the idea has not occurred to them yet...

Homely, unspoiled people I thought them... The mother very capable, but endearing... Immensely rich—I believe it is shipping, but the history books are silent... Have you observed a significant change in the biographies of the present day? We are always plunged into the heart of things, as it were: "called to the bar in seventy-something, under-secretary for this or that, entered the cabinet as secretary for the other and, on retiring, was raised to the peerage with the title of"—something rather far-fetched and pretentious, as a rule. After that it's plain sailing. But, if one suggests that even a successful barrister must have had some kind of father and mother, one is considered to have been tactless... I believe it was shipping... They talked a great deal about "yards", which one always associates with that sort of thing.

I met Mrs. Surdan on one of my committees during the war. When my niece Phyllida was working at that hospital, she befriended the girl—Hilda—; and Mrs. Surdan made this an excuse for introducing herself. I recognized her at once as one of the nameless, efficient women who impose their wills on a committee; earnest and hard-working, but occasionally rather difficult, with their assurance and massed information. One feels that there is no subject on which they will not put one right if one has the temerity to open one's mouth. Judge of my surprise when Mrs. Surdan wrote that she would like to come and ask my advice. My advice!

"This is your lucky day," said Will, when I shewed him the letter. "Perhaps they want a house in London for the season."

Until that moment I had thought of telling this Mrs. Surdan I was so busy that we must really postpone our meeting. Will's quick brain warned me to do nothing hasty. I don't know, whether you remember the condition of Mount Street; we had not touched the house, inside or out, since the beginning of the war; and, whenever I spoke to my husband, he put his hands in his pockets and said: "Will you please tell me where the money's coming from?" I'm not going to burden you with my own sordid cares; but we are not well-off, and, what with taxation and the rise in prices, Mount Street is rather a responsibility. I retain it because it is my frame and setting; any little niche that I may occupy is in Mount Street; and, when I part with the house, you may feel that I have indeed abdicated. This morning my tea was brought me on the tray that the princess gave me as a wedding-present. But you know: the house is a museum of memories... But it is a responsibility. Arthur's directorships are good so far as they go, but he says there is a reaction against what he calls "figure-head directors". Will is not yet earning anything; and I was cruelly disappointed by Sir Adolphus Erskine when I approached him for an appointment... So our income is not increasing, and the cost of living is...

I told Mrs. Surdan that I should be delighted to see her at any time. Arthur saw at once the desirability of considering a good offer...

"She can have this place for the season," he said, "or for eternity. With the plate and linen. And the servants. And Will, if she'll take him."

When Arthur speaks like that, I never argue with him. It is curious—one has seen the same thing a thousand times between mothers and daughters, but men always pride themselves on being unpetty—; Arthur is really jealous of his own son. If Will and he are left together for any time, Arthur becomes a different man, querulous, impossible to please. With his directorships and his clubs and his journeys to and fro, my husband—as you must have seen—does not give me very much of his society; I am left to support the burden of domestic empire single-handed, but, when Will is at home, I am glad for Arthur to be away. When our boy applied for a commission, all that Arthur would say was, why hadn't he applied for it before? When he joined the staff, why hadn't he refused to join the staff? When he left it, why hadn't he stayed there? Picking a quarrel... If only I could find him some suitable employment! But when a man like Erskine or Erckmann or whatever his name is... A broken reed, a mere "climber" who hoped to use me for securing an invitation to Cheniston and the delectable friendship of my brother-in-law Spenworth... I have lost the thread...

Ah, yes! For all its shabbiness, the dear old house looked more than attractive when Mrs. Surdan arrived for dinner. Just the two of us... I always think tea is such an inhospitable meal, and luncheon is hardly practicable when every gleam of sunlight shews you something more to be patched and painted... As a matter of fact I might have spared my pains, for she was not interested in the house.

"Now, Lady Ann," she said, with the brisk, efficient manner which always rather puts me on my guard. "Let's come to business. I want your advice. My husband has closed down his department and is going north immediately. I shall go with him, of course, and I want to know what you would advise me to do with Hilda. After all the work she's done in hospital I should like her to have a few months' complete holiday and to enjoy herself, but obviously I want to entrust her to some one who will look after her. Hilda is a thoroughly sensible girl, but London is a big place, and I suppose there is no harm in saying that she is very attractive and will have a good deal of money later on. You know far better than I do the importance of her meeting the right people. What do you suggest?"

Now, do you know, I felt so certain what she wanted me to suggest that it was on the tip of my tongue to read her one of those abominable advertisements in the morning papers: "A Lady of Title is willing to chaperon a young girl; introductions..." and so forth and so on. People putting any position they may have up to auction! Are you surprised that London is what it is? I have always wondered, when I see the really and truly inexplicable young women with whom Connie Maitland is liée from time to time, whether she augments her income in this way. Otherwise I fail to understand how she keeps on that great house in Eaton Place and entertains as she does. But that is her business... If Mrs. Surdan had dared to propose such a thing, I really think I should have asked her to leave the house...

"Surely," I said, "you are the best person to look after Hilda. I go out very little; but, so far as I can judge, there is never any difficulty about getting to know people in London. If you were to take a house in some good neighbourhood and entertain a certain amount—"

"I should only be a handicap to Hilda," she interrupted.

Do you know, I thought that dear of her... It is the Lancashire "burr", is it not? She had that—not disagreeably, but it was there. And her directness, never rounding the edge of anything she said... The girl, you will find, has been polished without being made genteel. If you catch them young, a good school ... or a governess whose ear has been trained to detect and suppress those tell-tale oddities of speech... But you don't often find a mother with the wisdom to recognize that and keep herself out of sight...

"I don't know what to recommend," I said. "It would be no kindness to ask her to stay here. I am a dull old woman; there are no girls to keep her company; and my husband and I have long found that, in entertaining, it is useless to compete with those who think in pounds when we are forced to think in pennies."

"I should like Hilda to enjoy herself," said Mrs. Surdan. "If some one entertained on her behalf... I should like her to be given a ball, for instance... But, of course, it wouldn't be fair to ask you."

"It wouldn't be fair on Hilda," I said.

"May Hilda's parents not judge of that?," she asked.

A woman with a quite conquering smile... I wish you had met her.

It was really like a struggle not to be first through the door...

"If Hilda would care to come," I said at length, "as my guest..."

"I can never thank you enough," said Mrs. Surdan. "She is very tractable. Young, of course... And inexperienced about money..."

The best method of control, she thought, would be for me to suggest a sum which would cover all her expenses of every kind and for her husband to pay that into my account... "Hilda's pocket-money," we agreed to call it...

It seemed an admirable arrangement, but then Mrs. Surdan has the practical brain of a man in some ways...

I took Arthur completely into my confidence...

Will...

I had great difficulty in deciding on the right method of approach with Will. State the bald fact that the girl was coming—irrevocably and without appeal; Will might have taken a dislike to her and made my already difficult task harder. Make any mystery about it, and she might have become the fruit of the one forbidden tree, as it were, a sort of morbid craving. And that was the last thing I wanted... In the end I told him frankly: she was young, pretty and the only child of very rich parents who wanted to launch her on "the great world", as the literary people call it...

"And I expect you to help me," I told Will. "I don't know the young men of the present day."

"I must have a look at her before I wish her on to any of my friends," said Will, not very encouragingly.

You know, there are some people who feel they owe themselves a grumble... As soon as Hilda arrived, Will behaved charmingly. You have seen her about in London, I expect? Oh, well, she is really pretty: small, exquisitely finished, with that "look-you-straight-in-the-eyes" air which so many girls seem to have acquired during the war. I felt—pace her mother—that she was thoroughly well able to take care of herself. Except, perhaps, in dress. The first night she came down in a frock which hardly reached her knees and seemed to stop short at the waist—bare arms, bare shoulders, bare back; I was quite shocked for a moment when Will came into the drawing-room without knocking... However, so long as it did not set him against her... You see, I was simply not equal to taking her out to daily luncheons, dinners, plays, dances; inevitably a good deal devolved on Will, but he was truly sweet about it... Seeing how répandu he is...

At the same time, I was in a difficult position, for, while I never dreamed he would look at her as a wife, I should have liked him to establish some sort of claim on the girl's father; and, if Will did not marry her, I was not doing much to help the Surdan fortunes. You know what men are! So long as Will was considered her natural protector, the others kept away for fear of "poaching", as it were. I felt it was a pity for them to be about together so much. I'm not ashamed to call myself old-fashioned... And these garish new restaurants and poor Hilda's "uniform undress", as Will rather wittily expressed it, made them very conspicuous...

The girl felt it, too. One day, when he'd devoted half the night to looking after her at a ball, she came to me—in real trouble, I thought—, and we had a serious talk. I told her that, if she had not spoken, I should have; Will was devoting himself to her so good-naturedly that he was neglecting his own prospects and doing nothing to secure an appointment.

"As his mother," I said, "I cannot bear to see his abilities wasting... He needs a good appointment; and I don't even know where to begin looking for one. But you are not to bother your head about my affairs. Tell me, dear child, what is troubling you."

So far as I could make out—she spoke very simply and nicely—, she was afraid of getting into a false position with Will if she went about with him so much. Affichée... At this ball—I had handed on her mother's request that we should be most careful whom we introduced—Will had very unselfishly played cavalier the whole evening; and, as she put on her cloak, some girl had asked one of those silly, impertinent questions which do such incalculable harm...

"My dear, you must not distress yourself," I said. "You know the old saying—'There is safety in numbers'—; for the future..."

It was quite evident to me now that Will did not intend to marry her. He was furious when I even hinted at such a thing... And I will tell you that I was glad. She would not have made a suitable wife, and no amount of money will overcome those little hardly perceptible angularities of breeding which make the difference between a happy and an unhappy marriage. While there was any possibility of such a thing, I had to hold my peace...

That night I improvized quite a big party for her. Will was not able to be present, as he had a long-standing engagement to dine with a man at his club. We had encroached on his time so much that for the first week of the new régime I hardly saw him; he was simply making up arrears with his other friends. I was lucky enough to get hold of Culroyd, however; and, though he was hardly a substitute for Will—I hate to say this about my own nephew, but I always feel that my poor sister-in-law Ruth imported a bucolic strain into the blood—, he did his best and made quite an impression on Hilda...

Indeed, I think you may say that it all started from that night... I never imagined that Culroyd would fall a victim. Hilda is undeniably pretty and, of course, she is an heiress; but, beyond that, she brings nothing. Culroyd is heir to an earldom, and one would have thought he might have done rather better... It's not as if he needed money. When my brother Brackenbury sacrificed himself for the good of the family, he did it on such a scale that there was no need for any one to follow in his footsteps for several generations. Culroyd and Phyllida, for their age, are very well provided for; and, of course, there is a great deal more to come. No! I could not help feeling that he must have inherited a taste for money with his mother's blood. It is extraordinary how rich people seem to attract rich people. The Jews, for example... And vice versa. I am sometimes so much afraid that Will may throw himself away on some one whom he'll simply have to support all his life. And, short of selling the roof from over my head and the clothes from off my back, I have done all that I can do... I have lost the thread....

Ah, yes! Culroyd! I fancy I told you that for a few months my niece Phyllida chose to fancy that she had a grievance against me. A young war-soldier tried to trap her into marriage, glamoured no doubt by the title and a fair presumption of money. If I could feel that I had done anything to check a most imprudent alliance, I should be proud of the achievement; I know, however, that I have no right to throw myself bouquets. The young man did not acquit himself well under cross-examination, and you may judge of this "life's passion", as poor Phyllida would like to consider it, by the fact that from that day to this she has never heard from him. The entire family held me responsible! Hitherto, I had been on the best possible terms with my relations—except, of course, my brother-in-law Spenworth, and that is an honour which I would sooner be spared—; now I was the universal scapegoat. Without yielding in any way to cynicism, let me say that I was amused, after my Lord Culroyd's first meeting with Hilda Surdan, to find that he did me the honour to make my house his own.

"Let me know some night when he and Hilda are not dining here," said Will, when I reproached him for always now deserting us for his club.

For some reason there has never been any great cordiality between the cousins. Perhaps Culroyd is a little bit consequential in the way that he insists on his own dignity—a sort of instinctive attitude of self-preservation, as though he realized that he owes everything to an accident of sex and that, if Brackenbury and I changed places, he would have to change places with Will... And Will may very well have been galled by the light-hearted way in which Hilda could not get on without him one day and got on quite comfortably without him the next. No one likes ingratitude, though it was on the tip of my tongue to say that he need not grudge his leavings to poor Culroyd.

It was not so easy to find a free night, as the young people seemed to have made arrangements for days ahead, and in the end I told Will to leave them to their whispering and silliness and talk to me.

"Why you ever invited her I don't know," he grumbled; and I could see that the strain of playing cavalier for so long was telling on him.

"It was an opportunity for doing her a little kindness," I said.

"And is she going to marry Culroyd?," he asked, "or is she simply playing with him until she finds something better worth her while?"

"Isn't it rather a question whether Culroyd will marry her?," I suggested. "After all, she doesn't bring very much... They seem to get on quite well together."

"I haven't seen them," said Will. "It would be amusing to watch..."

When they all met, I can't say that it was very amusing for me. Will can be rather a tease when he likes, but I think it a pity to go on with that sort of thing if other people haven't enough humour to take it in good part. Culroyd and Hilda were so tremendously in earnest that they couldn't bear to be chaffed; and, the stiffer they became, the more irresistible they were to Will. I intervened once or twice, when I thought Culroyd was losing his temper, but the situation seemed to get suddenly out of hand; there was something very like a scene.

"If you don't know how to behave," said Culroyd—very rudely, I thought, "do hire some one to teach you. Your manners would disgrace a privates' canteen."

"Would they? I'm afraid I'm not a good judge," said Will.

It was neat; but, though I'm his mother, I feel he ought not to have said it. I expect you know that Culroyd was still at Eton when the war broke out. Brackenbury positively forbade him to take a commission before he was eighteen, so Culroyd ran away and enlisted. It was in the regular army, you understand, and they had every kind of difficulty in getting him out. He joined the Coldstream afterwards, but for a time he was a private...

"A better judge of draft-dodgers, perhaps," said Culroyd.

The word was new to me, and I had to ask for enlightenment. When it came, I was beside myself with anger. The term is American and applies to a man who "dodges" the "draft", which is their word for conscription. A wickeder or more reckless charge could not be made. Will applied for a commission within the first year and a half of the war. "You can try," I said, "but I don't think the doctor will pass you." He did, however, and Will served for three years with great distinction and was quite invaluable to his general. It was the fashion at one time to sneer at the staff, but I have yet to learn that war can be carried on without one; and I sometimes wonder whether the sneers were not mingled with a little envy on the part of men who were not efficient enough to be selected.

"Culroyd, you have no business to say that," I told him.

"Will doesn't deny it," he said.

And then I thought my boy shewed both wit and dignity.

"If any one thought it worth while to call me a homicidal maniac," he said, "I doubt if I should bother to deny it."

"They'll never accuse you of even a tendency to homicide—even in war," muttered Culroyd, but he shewed that he had got the worst of it.

I did not like to take Hilda upstairs and leave them a chance of reopening the wrangle; but, when I suggested that we should all go up together, Will remembered that he had promised to meet a man at his club.

"I'm sorry," said Hilda very nicely, though I felt that I really ought to apologize to her for the little scene. "I wanted to talk to you and him privately... There's no harm in speaking before you, Lord Culroyd, because you're one of the family. My father wrote to ask if I knew of any one suitable for a position which is being created in one of his yards—rather a good appointment. He would like to give it to a man who has been in the army, he says. I have the letter upstairs and I remember that the starting salary would be a thousand a year. I think it is the Morecambe yards." ...

My dear! ... I said to myself, "Ann Spenworth, you must keep your head." For a dozen reasons I wanted to get Will out of London. If Culroyd continued to haunt my house, I was thankful to get Will out of the way, though I cannot imagine that this ever entered Hilda's little love-lorn head. And an appointment, when we had waited so long! Besides, London is not good for Will's health. He wakes up with a head-ache and without an appetite—as a matter of course....

I telegraphed as soon as the office opened. Mr. Surdan is a man of business, and the appointment was settled before night. Next day I went up to help find the boy a comfortable home. Don't be shocked now! I am simply echoing Will when I say: "Morecambe is a God-forsaken place." Rooms were out of the question, because he must have some one to look after him. I was recommended to a worthy old clergyman, when everything else failed; and, though Will protested beforehand, he resigned himself when we reached the house. Just the father, the mother and two daughters, who seemed quite fluttered on meeting Will and hearing who he was. Quite pretty girls in a "left-to-run-wild" way... Which I, personally, did not mind. After a month of dear Hilda's nakedness it was a comfort to drop into a world where you saw more clothes than jeune fille... Oh, I don't think Will runs any risk from them; he does realize that love—in the homely old phrase—doesn't pay the butcher's book; and, after that, one has only to school oneself not to fall in love carelessly. But they will give him pleasant, bright companionship in the long evenings...

When I returned to London, Hilda was in bed. An internal chill... She wouldn't see a doctor, she said, as a few days' rest and warmth were all that she needed. I was not sorry to have a few days' rest too. First Will and then Culroyd... I found my little visitor a greater strain than I had anticipated... My "rest" was "nothing to write home about", as Will used to say, for I found myself required to cope with a lioness which had been robbed of its cub—Culroyd, I mean. He came as usual expecting to see Hilda—and pretending he only wanted to see his poor old aunt! And left the moment he had swallowed his coffee! It's a good thing I'm not vain, isn't it? Next day he came again... At first it was habit, I think; he had got into the way of meeting this child every day. Then it became more serious. If we are going to bless this union, I think we must also bless Hilda's influenza. (It developed into that. And a nice time I had! Responsible to her mother—and day after day the girl refused to see a doctor.) These boys and girls go about together so freely that there is little inducement to bring things to a head, as it were. Goodness me, when I first met Arthur, he would have liked to go about with me everywhere, but my dear mother put her foot down very firmly on that. And, when he found that it was almost impossible for us to meet, Arthur suddenly discovered that I meant more to him than he had suspected... So with Culroyd; history repeating itself, so to say... Hilda was a habit; and, when the habit was broken by influenza, she developed into a need. Culroyd had never taken much trouble before, but now he called every afternoon with flowers and wrote to her morning and evening. She was quite bewildered. A very simple child...

When she was well enough to sit up on a sofa, Culroyd fumed with impatience to see her. He insisted on coming upstairs with me, though I told him I wasn't at all sure... And so it proved: Hilda said she really wasn't equal to meeting any one. The next day she was rather stronger, and I prevailed on her just to let him bring the flowers into her room.

"Aunt Ann, will you leave us alone for one moment?," he asked.

"Really, Culroyd," I said....

Oh, I know it's done, but I was brought up in a different school. All this popping in and out of young people's bedrooms...

"Please! I beg you!," he said.

And then, before I knew where I was, he had kissed me on both cheeks, tapped at the door and disappeared... I went to see about some vases for the flowers; and, when I came back, he was on his knees by the bed and Hilda was stroking his head. My old heart warmed... I am not ashamed to confess it. A radiance that you see before young people have time to become hard, worldly...

They announced it next day to Brackenbury, though I am sure Hilda was imprudent to travel. Though I could not fairly be saddled with any responsibility, I was a little nervous to see how he would take it; every family has its scapegoat, and at the Hall they have so long found it convenient to dignify me with that position...

"Were you surprised?," I asked.

"Well, yes," Brackenbury admitted. "It was commonly reported that you were keeping Hilda up your sleeve for Will. People told me that it was impossible to walk into a restaurant or theatre without meeting them. You won't deny that you did rather throw them at each other's heads?"

"Brackenbury," I said. "If any one thought it worth while to call me a homicidal maniac, I doubt if I should bother to deny it... But are you pleased?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "They seem quite happy; and that's all that matters."

And I preferred to leave it at that. It is not a great match. Ruth, of course, is delighted, because it supports her own conduct in marrying Brackenbury....

Even Phyllida had a good word for me—which was so gratifying!

"I hope you're all as pleased as we are," she said, with a funny, unsmiling expression. Almost antagonistic...

I noticed that she had Hilda's trick of looking you straight in the eyes—a sort of challenge ... quite fearless ... and ready to change in a moment to impudence.

"I am," I said. "Your uncle Arthur is away and has not been told yet. Will is away too."

"What's Will doing?," she asked.

"He was offered a post at Morecambe," I told her. "Hilda's father wanted some one of experience and position, who was used to handling men—"

She seemed to find something to smile at in that.

"What does he get?," she interrupted.

This absorption in pounds, shillings and pence comes to them entirely from their poor mother...

"A thousand a year—to start on," I told her.

"And cheap at the price," said Phyllida.

I had to beg her to enlighten me.

"Well," she said, "I don't call a thousand a year excessive to secure Will—in Morecambe..."

Mrs. Surdan was naturally pleased. For them, at least, it is a great match.

"I little thought that it would end like this, when you asked me to take charge of Hilda for three months," I said.

And that reminded me that what they called "Hilda's pocket-money" was lying almost untouched at the bank in Arthur's name. There had been no ball, hardly anything... But I could not get Mrs. Surdan to say what should be done with it...

"I'm sure you didn't," she answered.

"So, if it's a failure, don't blame me," I said. "And, if it's a success, don't thank me."

"I shall always thank you for your kindness to Hilda," she said, "especially when she was ill."

"That was nothing," I said.

"Hilda's parents don't think so."

And then she did a difficult thing very gracefully. We must have the girl's room properly disinfected, she told me; I assured her that Arthur had already received an estimate for redecorating the whole house. Thanks to them, we were now in a position... Hilda's room, she insisted, must be her province. I have told you that in the old committee days she positively imposed her will on the rest of us; so now. She would not leave the house until she had dragged the estimate out of me by main force.

The work has recently been completed. There was the usual letter to ask if we were satisfied, and Arthur wrote out a cheque. It was returned. Mr. Surdan had asked to have the account sent to him... I was beside myself with anger at such a liberty...

I tell this against myself, because, having gone to curse, I stayed to pray, as it were. Mrs. Surdan wouldn't let me speak.

"Hilda is our only child, as Mr. Will is yours," she said. "If anything had happened to her, you can imagine what we should have thought. Is it altogether kind to say that we must not thank you for your devotion to our little girl?"

There you have the woman—clever, direct, going straight to my weak place...

What could one say?

VI LADY ANN SPENWORTH HOLDS THE Corps Diplomatique TO ITS DUTY

Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): I feel—don't you?—that, if the embassies can give no enlightenment, they might just as well not be there. Paris is different, of course; nowadays it is hardly more than a suburb of London; with that vast cosmopolitan army always coming and going, one is hardly expected to be one's brother's keeper. And Washington is unlike any other capital; one goes there en poste—or not at all. But in Vienna or Rome... Goodness me, in the old days when my father was ambassador, it was a matter of course. When a new star swam into your ken, you made enquiries in the English colony; if not known there or at the embassy, a wise woman stayed her hand until she had a little something to go on.

In London the corps diplomatique is more diplomatique than corps. Just a swarm of warring atoms, some of them very charming, all of them invaluable if a man fails you at the last moment—a word by telephone to the Chancery: "Two men; I must have them; golf and bridge; the 4.20 from Waterloo; not to bring a servant." ... And so on and so forth. Indispensable for entertaining on Connie Maitland's lines. They are so nice and tractable; but worse than useless if you go officially, as it were, for a whispered word of guidance. As witness Mrs. Sawyer...

I cannot remember where I first met her; probably at Lady Maitland's... Sooner or later one meets everybody there; and, with all respect to dear Connie, I, personally, should not mind if some of her protégés came a little later and left a little sooner ... before I had time to be involved, I mean. It is all this craze for collecting money and, incidentally, carving a niche for oneself as the great organizer. One pictures Connie standing blindfold over a map of England and spearing it ruthlessly with a knitting-needle. "I, Constance Maitland," you can hear her saying, "ordain that here and here and here I will erect hospitals, libraries and wash-houses." ...

Whether the locality likes it or not, as it were. If the needle pierces Grasmere, so much the worse for Grasmere. It shall have its hospital—in mid-lake, regardless of the needless additional expense. I am serious about that, because I feel that, if Connie spent more judiciously, she would not have to appeal so persistently; some of us did contrive to keep the machine running even before my Lady Maitland descended upon us... It does not affect me much, because I am never able to contribute more than a trifle; one cannot undertake her new charities indiscriminately without doing an injustice to the old. Others are more happily placed, and my only quarrel with Connie is that I must either drop her or else consent to embrace all her new friends. This Mrs. Sawyer, for instance...

I forget whether you were in London at the time... No, of course not. Well, I can testify to you that her arrival created quite a stir. The rastaquouère type is not unknown to me by any means, but I thought Mrs. Sawyer a very favourable specimen. Not more than two or three and twenty, though these South American women reach their prime very early—and pass it; jet-black hair and eyes, dead-white face, scarlet lips, really beautiful teeth; altogether a very striking young woman, with just enough of a foreign accent to give an added charm—for those who like that sort of thing. She had a wistful, mysterious manner which accorded well with the ensemble ... and with the story they told about her. I never heard her maiden name, but I was told at once that she was one of the greatest heiresses in Peru—or it may have been Argentina. This Sawyer was a ne'er-do-well Irishman who had been sent to South America ... as one does have to send these people sometimes; he fascinated her, married her, beat her (I should think) and drank himself to death, leaving her utterly broken-hearted and disillusionized—not with him alone, but with the world... She had come to Europe to find a new life. Such was the story that Connie Maitland shouted at one; and, if poor Mrs. Sawyer overheard it, so much the worse for her...

A romantic setting, do you not agree? If you had seen her come into a room with those great, tragic eyes sweeping face after face as though she were looking for the one man who would gather up the fragments of her broken youth... If I had been a man... Superb diamonds, I need hardly say; and almost an arrogance of mourning, as though she would not be comforted... All the young men followed her with their eyes—spell-bound. And some men no longer young...

Do you see much of that pathetic class of over-ripe bachelor which my boy rather naughtily calls the "Have-Beens"? They are common, I suppose, to every age and country, but England seems to contain more than her fair share. Between thirty-five and fifty, not particularly well-connected, not a parti among them, not even extravagantly popular, but useful—apparently—and ubiquitous. I could give you the names of a dozen... Several of them have been in quite good regiments at some time or other. I understand they belong to the usual clubs; most of them dance quite competently; all of them play extremely good bridge, I am told... Several women I know make out a stop-gap list of them; then, if they're short of a man—it is several grades lower than the embassies, of course, and you are not expected to give even a day's notice—, the butler can telephone to them in turn until he finds one disengaged. Delightfully simple, is it not? Having no personalities of their own, they accord well with every one; having no pride, they never resent an eleventh-hour invitation; they are too discreet to pay unduly marked attention to a married woman, they know their place too well to attempt any intimacy with the girls.

I am not ashamed to confess that I have an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of a man who is a man; but the kind I am describing seem to ask nothing more of life than invitations and more invitations—and this strange modern privilege of being "Bunny" and "Chris" and "Theo" to women who are old enough to have outgrown such nonsense. If you entertain—I do not, as you are aware—, I believe it is essential to have some such list as I have indicated; and I am told that the men repay you by running errands and being useful in a thousand ways. For their sake I hope they never hear what other men say about them, even the fellow-members of their little community—there is no more contemptuous critic of "Bunny" than "Theo"—or what the women say, for that matter. We may, if we are built that way, ask "Bunny" or "Theo" to come and look at frocks with us; but we don't respect the man who does... If any girl dared ask Will to waste a morning, talking to her while she sat for her portrait...

"Bunny" and "Theo" and "Chris" all pricked up their ears when they heard about Mrs. Sawyer. It was another house for them to lunch or dine at; and, of course, they were expected to come to the old houses primed with all the gossip they could pick up about her. I don't know whether any of them thought seriously that they had a chance with her; they must surely realize that a woman prefers a man of some spirit... And, if they do, they have no excuse for standing in a ring and keeping every one else away. Of course, they were useful to her. Major Blanstock found her a house in South Audley Street and helped her furnish it and found servants for her and so forth and so on. He even introduced her to Connie Maitland—as a short cut to knowing everybody, which I gather was her ambition.

Certainly there is no one to equal Connie for that. You have seen men in the street, unloading bricks from a cart and tossing them, three or four at a time, from one to another? Should Connie ever sustain a reverse, she will always have a second string to her bow... Major Blanstock tossed this Mrs. Sawyer to Connie, Connie tossed her to me... I was expected, I presume, to toss her on to some one else, but I happen to have been brought up in a different school; before I undertake the responsibility of introducing a complete stranger, I like to know something about her. Goodness me, I don't suggest that my recommendation counts for anything, but for my own peace of mind, when somebody says "Oh, I met her at Lady Ann's"—there is an implied guarantee—, I want to feel that my friends' confidence is not misplaced.

"Now, Major Blanstock," I said, "I want you to tell me all about your lovely young divinity, the rich widow. If I am to befriend her, I must know a little about her."

I imagine that I was not the first enquirer, for he answered with an impatience which in other days some of us might have considered uncivil.

"Is she rich?," he asked. "I know nothing about her. I don't even know she's a widow. I met her on the boat coming home from Buenos Aires; and, as she'd never been in London, I tried to make her feel at home and asked Lady Maitland to give her a helping hand."

And that was literally all I got out of him—the fountain-head. Connie knew nothing and wanted to know nothing. It was enough that Mrs. Sawyer was presentable in herself and would attach her name to any subscription-list for any amount. The others—people who are usually well-informed—simply handed on the gossip which they had themselves made up overnight. It was then that I approached my diplomatic friends.

The difficulty was to know where to start. I couldn't commit myself, I felt, by one dinner, so when my Will came back... From the north, yes. You knew that he was home? Oh, yes! Well, at the moment he is not doing anything. The Morecambe experiment was not a success; the place didn't suit him, and he didn't suit the place. That is all I care to say on the subject. Half-truths are always misleading; and I cannot tell you the full story, because I do not know it. Should it not be enough to know that for days my spirit was crucified? And the end is not yet... I have lost the thread... Ah, yes. We dined à trois: Will and Mrs. Sawyer and I. She was fascinating, magnetic. For the first time Will forgot all about the odious clergyman's odious daughter... No, it slipped out. That belongs to the unhappy Morecambe episode, and I really do not think it very kind of you to keep trying to pump me when I have said I prefer not to discuss it... When he returned after seeing her home, Will wanted to know all about her, and in such a way... I mean, if his voice and manner meant anything, they meant that he had met his fate, as it were. I could tell him little. For one thing, I didn't know; for another, his excitement had gone to my head, I saw ten things at once and, breaking through them all, this splendid, untamed creature with the flashing eyes walking side by side with my Will. Such a contrast ... and such a combination...

"Well, hadn't you better find out something about her?," said Will.

I promised to do my best, but one was sent from pillar to post in a quite too ridiculous way. I thought some one had told me she came from Buenos Aires (perhaps it was only Major Blanstock's saying he had met her on the boat coming home from there); I tried the Argentine colony and the Legation, only to be referred to the Brazilian Embassy; and there, though I am sure they had never heard of her, they were certain that she came from Peru. Until then, I had never realized how many republics there were in South America; I went from Colombia to the Argentine and from Ecuador to Chili. Invariably the first question was: "What was her name before she became Mrs. Sawyer?" And that, of course, I did not know.

There is such a thing as trop de zèle, sometimes hardly distinguishable from making oneself ridiculous...

"Surely," I said to Will, "our judgement of this person or that is a better criterion than the bald (and perhaps inaccurate) statement that a person was born here and married there. Connie Maitland has asked us to shew some little kindness to our friend; and I am not ashamed to confess that it seems grudging to insist too much on credentials. In a favourite phrase of your own, Will, she is "good enough" for me; and, if any one says: "I met her at Lady Ann's," I should be tempted to answer: "I hope you do not need a better recommendation."

"I don't want to look a fool, that's all," said Will.

"My dear boy," I reassured him, "if she were a complete impostor, does one make a fool of oneself by asking her to dinner once or twice? If so, I am afraid I rank hospitality above my own personal dignity."

As a matter of fact, it was all the other way. Mrs. Sawyer developed a mania for entertaining. I went gingerly at first, for one had seen so many rastaquouères treading that road, but no fault could be found with her methods. Either through Connie Maitland or others, she seemed to know every one, and you went to the little réunions in South Audley Street with the certainty that, if you did not meet all your friends there, at least every one that you met would be a friend. I enjoyed her parties; indeed, I only hope that she enjoyed them as much as we did, though I confess I sometimes looked at those tragic black eyes and wondered what amusement it could give her.

Stay! There was one blot: her hospitality left one no opportunity of making an adequate return. Where there is a marked difference of means, I am the last to suggest that one should proceed on the principle of "a cutlet for a cutlet and a quail for a quail", but it is uncomfortable to feel that everything is coming from one side. My own conscience is clear, for we had done our part; Mrs. Sawyer had in fact dined with us once in Mount Street—just Will and me; I am not in a position to entertain in the old sense of the word—, we had asked her again at least once, and she had never been able to come. It was always: "Oh, won't you come to me? And whom shall I ask to meet you? And would you prefer just to dine or shall we go to a play?" All in that charming almost-broken English of hers. It would have been ungracious to refuse...

I confess that I never saw and do not see to this day how some of the "Have-Beens" justified their existence. I mean, Will and I dined or lunched or went to a play with her three and four times a week, simply because Major Blanstock told us that she was alone in London and Connie Maitland had asked me to look after her. I can assure you, we never went to South Audley Street without finding a little cluster of "Bunnies" and "Theos" and the rest.

I tackled one of them about it... This is between ourselves, but it was Mr. Gorleigh—"Reggie" Gorleigh, I suppose I should call him, to be in the fashion.

"You seem a great friend of Mrs. Sawyer," I said. "I am always meeting you here. Tell me; I don't know how long she is staying in London, but one would like her to take away a pleasant memory of such hospitality as one can shew her. Is there anything we can do to make a little return? I hardly like to go on taking with both hands."

"Well, I felt that from the first," said Mr. Gorleigh. "Geordie Blanstock introduced me, and I came here once or twice... Then I felt ... as you do; and I cried off. The only thing is, she hasn't many friends, and I thought it wasn't quite fair, perhaps, to stay away out of a sort of false delicacy. The poor little woman wants companionship."

"Your feelings do you credit," I said as gravely as I could.

Really, it would have been laughable if it had not been so disgusting. A man who lives by sponging on his friends for free meals to pretend that he was coming, against his will, to give "the poor little woman" the inestimable privilege of feeding him... But, if you please, that was the accepted "eye-wash", as my boy would call it. In a spirit of pure mischief, I am afraid, I went from one to another: "Bat" Shenstone, "Laurie" Forman, "Theo" Standish, "Bunny" Fancroft. Always the same story! They didn't come to the house for what they could get out of it; I must understand that they were Mrs. Sawyer's friends. Hoity-toity! Friends with a capital "F"...

Very soon it was "Consuelo's" friends. Looking back on it all, one seems to hear a series of commands: "on the word 'loot', quick march; on reaching South Audley Street, halt and enter; on the word 'love' ..." and so forth and so on. No, it's not mine; Will drew a most amusing picture... But that is literally what happened: first of all, they were "Consuelo's" friends, then they were all in love with her.

I have suggested that men of that stamp are incapable of being serious about anything—except the next meal; but any one who was genuinely fond of the poor woman could not help seeing that this formal persecution was more than a joke. Will came to me after one of her parties and said that it was high time for us to do something.

"Get her away from all that gang," he cried; and from the agitation of his voice I could see that he was taking this to heart.

And, you know, it was rather dreadful to see that lovely creature with the tragic eyes standing like a bewildered child with all these young-old men baying round her...

"It's easier said than done," I told him.

"Uncle Tom Brackenbury's going north for the Twelfth," said Will. "Get him to lend you the Hall and ask Consuelo down."

My brother, as you know, is of so curious a temper that I have always been more than chary of even seeming to put myself under an obligation to him. One had the feeling, don't you know, that, if he did not place a wrong construction on one's request, my niece Phyllida would... Since Culroyd's engagement, however, poor Aunt Ann's shoulders have been relieved a little of their burden; the family persists in thinking that I contributed to bring it about, whereas I rigidly set my face against any planning of that kind and was only responsible to the extent that Hilda Surdan was staying in my house when my nephew Culroyd met her... The point of importance, however, is that Aunt Ann is now embarrassingly popular. Brackenbury lent me the house almost before I asked for it...

Then I had to think how the invitation might be made most attractive to Consuelo. After the excitement of her life in London, undoubtedly the best thing would have been to give her all the rest and quiet that we could. There is, however, a strain of something restless and untamed about her; one pictures her running bare-foot through the woods or plunging into the surf by moonlight; and, though she would overcome that in time, I could not conceal from myself that, on the one occasion when she had dined with us en famille, she had flagged... I told her that I hoped to secure some of our common friends; and Will and I worked hard to arrange relays of the people who would best accord, so to say...

I started with Major Blanstock, as he seemed her oldest friend. To do him justice, after the first meeting at Connie Maitland's house, I had never seen him with the jackals; he didn't pretend to be in love with her, he didn't talk about the pearls of his friendship and he didn't even refer to her as "Consuelo".

"I shall be delighted to come, if I can get away," he said.

"Your fascinating young widow is coming," I said, as a bait—though I felt that he had long ago lost interest in her.

"My widow?," he repeated. "I am alive—and unmarried, Lady Ann."

"Silly man! Our Brazilian heiress," I explained.

"Oh! Mrs. Sawyer," he said. "Is she Brazilian? I didn't know that. But it's not fair to embarrass her with my friendship. She is almost a stranger to me; I don't know that she's an heiress, I don't even know that she's a widow."

"But," I said, "surely her husband drank himself to death."

"Some one told me that he drank," said Major Blanstock. "Whether he drank himself to death I can't tell you. I didn't feel it was my affair..."

I forget whether any one was with us at the time, but this story spread... At least, it wasn't a story; several people, knowing nothing of the facts, had chosen to assume that a certain woman was a widow; one man, equally knowing nothing, said that he did not know whether she was a widow or not. Goodness me! Did it matter two pins one way or the other, so far as we were concerned? I should have been sorry to find out afterwards that there had been any kind of scandal, because one had thrown one's mantle over the woman and given an implied guarantee, as it were. That was why I did attempt to learn a little something from my diplomatic friends... But it is hardly too much to say that a panic ensued among the "Bunnies" and "Theos".

"They tell me," said Mr. "Bat" Shenstone, "that Mrs. Sawyer's husband is still living."

"Oh?," I said. That phrase—"They tell me"—! It always puts me on my guard.

I nearly told him that, if he was only a friend to her, it did not matter whether she had a husband or not... I noticed that she was "Mrs. Sawyer" now...

The stories that I met for the next few days were so fantastic that I really think some one must have been deliberately making them up. At one moment the husband was in a home for inebriates, at another he was alive and well with a formidable revolver ready for any one who became too "friendly" with his wife; at another he was supposed to be in prison for actually shooting a man; then she was said to have divorced him, then he was said to have divorced her. Finally I was assured that she had never had a husband and was an adventuress who had come to exploit London. The money, I was told, was a decoy, and in reality there was no money; she had been left a few thousands by some man with whom she had been living; and she was pouring it out right and left in the hope of ensnaring some one else before it was all spent.

I really did not know what I should be required to believe next.

"We must clear this up," said Will one night when we were all down at the Hall.

"Which story in particular?," I asked.

"All of them," he answered very decisively; and at once. I'm not thinking of us, but we can't afford to let Consuelo have these lies circulating about her. Why don't you talk to her and find out the truth?"

I am not ashamed to confess that I rather shrank from the prospect. Mrs. Sawyer had always been so singularly uncommunicative that it seemed impertinence to peer behind the veil. And the more so when she was one's guest. I don't think I could have screwed up courage, if Will's forethought had not shewn me the way; but I did tell her as gently and sweetly as I could that there was always a certain idle curiosity about foreigners who came to live in England and that, in her case, the curiosity was increased by her beauty and immediate success. I coaxed her to tell me a little about her life...

"What do you want to know?," she asked.

Those great black eyes—-how I wish you had seen her!—became cold as stone. I was frightened...

"Your husband..." I began.

"He is dead."

Truly honestly, do you know, I couldn't go on. I did find out that he had been dead eighteen months and they had been married for less than a year and there were no children. That, at least, was her story; one had no opportunity of testing it or catching her out ... even if one had wanted to. Who she was before, where the money came from, if there was any money—not a word! To this day I don't know whether she hailed from Paraguay or Venezuela...

"She is a widow," I was able to tell Will; and indeed I took great pains to scotch these ridiculous stories which had been swirling round London when I left. It was cruel that any one should say such things of any woman; and, if my boy ever thought fit to drop the handkerchief, I did not want to have any explaining-away to do. She was greatly attracted to him, and I fancy that the one doubt in his mind was the immense difference in blood and breeding: Roman Catholic (I presume; I have no certain knowledge even of that) and Anglican, Latin and Anglo-Saxon ... and so forth and so on. We really knew so very little about her that my boy prudently and properly did not seek to press his advantage with her prematurely...