GENERAL STORIES (continued 2)

Gradually, craftily, a reef at a time, Violet allowed her friend to let out her sails. She left her flat at the Ritz and rurally installed herself in a spacious house in the middle of Regent’s Park. There was a big field attached to the house, and, yielding to a severe attack of Americanism, which she thought it might be dangerous to suppress, Violet permitted her to give a haymaking party of the Newport type. Hay was brought in from the country and scattered over the field, and mixed up with roses and gardenias, while the guests on arrival were presented with delightful little ebony pitchforks with silver prongs, or cedar-wood rakes. But this symptom caused her a little uneasiness, for it was obvious that Amelie thought her haymaking party a much brighter achievement than the previous concert.

The expansion continued. Amelie and her friend strolled into Christie’s one morning, and found a tussle going on between two eminent dealers over the possession of a really marvellous string of pearls. At a breathless pause, after the first “Going!” that followed a fresh bid, Amelie said in her most ringing American voice, “I guess I’ll sail in right now,” and began bidding herself. The crowd of dilettante London, which delights in seeing other people spend large sums of money, parted for her, and she moved gloriously up the auction-room and took her stand just behind one of the Mosaic little gentlemen who wanted the pearls so badly.

The recognition of her spread through the place like spilled quicksilver, and the auctioneer, with an amiable bow, caused the pearls to be handed to her for her inspection. With them still in her hand, as if it was not worth while returning them to the tray, she sky-rocketed the price by three exalting bids, the third of which was as a fire-hose on the ardour of her competitors. Her cheque-book was fetched from her car outside, and she left the room a moment afterwards, having drawn her cheque on the spot, pausing only to clasp the pearls round her neck.... And Violet, with a strange sinking of the heart, felt as if her pet tiger-cub had tasted blood again after the careful and distinguished diet on which she had been feeding it.

Amelia had a fancy to leave London early in July, and give a few parties at an immense house she had taken near Maidenhead for the month. She had had some gondolas sent over from Venice, with their appropriate gondoliers, and London found it very pleasant to float about after dinner, while the excellent string band played in an illuminated barge that accompanied the flotilla. Exciting little surprises constantly happened, such as the arrival one evening of artists from the Grand Guignol, who played a couple of thrilling little horrors in the ballroom, while on another night the great Reynolds picture belonging to the Duke of Middlesex was found to have put in an appearance on the walls. Amelie said that it was her birthday present to her husband, and made no further allusion to it. The frame had gone to be repaired, and it was draped round in clouds of silvery-grey chiffon that extended half over the wall. And had Violet Brackenbury known the outrage that her friend had planned, the frenzy of suppressed Newportism that was ready to break forth, it is probable that she would gladly have returned the cheque which she had that morning received from Amelie.

As it was, she felt wholly at ease, and inclined to congratulate herself on the unique and signal character of Amelie’s success. Never before, so she thought, had a woman so dominated the season; never, certainly, had one of her countrywomen so “mattered.” And all this, with the exception, perhaps, of the haymaking party and the incident of the pearls at Christie’s, had been gained in quiet, unsensational ways; and, lulled to content, she did not realize that the spirit that inspired the queen of hostesses was ready to flare up like an access of malarial fever. Poor unsuspecting godmother, who fondly believed that those gondolas from Venice, those Grand Guignol artists from Paris, this gem of Reynolds’s pictures, were a safety-valve, not guessing that they were but as oil poured on the flame!

The cotillion that night was to begin at twelve. Amelie was leading it herself with one of the Princes, and the big ballroom was doubly lined with seated guests, when on the stroke of twelve she entered, dressed in exact facsimile of the glorious Reynolds. As she advanced with her partner into the middle of the room, the band in the gallery struck up, and simultaneously a tongue of fire shot through the flimsy draperies round the picture, instantly enveloping it in flames. The canvas blistered and bubbled, and in ten seconds the finest Reynolds in the world was a sheet of scorched and blackened rag.

The crowd leaped to its feet, but before the panic had time to mature, the cause of it was over. There was nothing inflammable within range of the swiftly-consumed chiffon, and only little fragments of burned-out ash floated on to the floor. But the fervent and instantaneous heat had done its work.

Then for a moment there was dead silence, and Amelie’s voice was heard in its quietest, most English tones.

“Oh, isn’t that a pity!” she said.

Then arose a sudden hubbub of talk, drowning the sound of the band, which, at a signal from Amelie, had started again.

* * * * *

Violet stood with her friend before the blackened canvas next morning in the empty room, drawing on her gloves.

“I don’t think you understand yet the effect of what you have done,” she said. “No one doubts that the fire was intentional, and—and I think that Lady Creighton will be of more use to you in the future than I can possibly be.”