Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel

"Quite true. And if you were anybody else's wife, I should not mind how much you were talked about. But you are mine – it happens you are mine."

Marie did not reply.

"Somehow the matter has grown to larger dimensions than I had intended," he added. "I only meant to give you quite a friendly and, in a way, insignificant word of warning. But somehow you have put it all into capital letters. There, go out for your drive. Really, Marie, I had not the slightest conception you would make such an affair of it."

"You think I have been unreasonable."

"I do."

She made a great effort with herself.

"Very well, I will forget all about it. You see, we rub each other up the wrong way, Jack. It is a great pity."

"Yes. But it's not worth bothering about."

The paper appeared to have nothing much in it, and it was only a few moments after his wife had left him that Jack put it down, and finished his cigar without other employment than his own thoughts. This short scene with Marie had disturbed him in the same way as a fall in the barometer may disturb a picnic-giver: it may come to nothing, but there is a hint of the fair weather breaking. At the same time, he was perfectly well accustomed to be utterly at variance with her, and never contemplated any divergence of opinion between them which could result in his having to give way. It is only selfish people who cannot believe that they are selfish, and Jack never passed moral judgments on himself or anybody else. To be critical of any behaviour that did not annoy him personally he held to be an absurd attitude to adopt; it was only behaviour that might prove inconvenient to one's self that could reasonably be criticised, or, rather, not so much criticised as corrected. He knew quite well that the small but well-dressed fragment of the world that at all concerned him, was perfectly aware that his marriage with Marie had not been a romantic success, though personally he considered it quite up to the average. To a nature like his, unbroken constancy and devotion to one's wife is not only an achievement never aimed at, but an achievement not even contemplated. He had married, as many men do, simply because many men do marry, and an heir is certainly the natural complement to estates and a title. But no heir had been born, and, in a manner of speaking, Marie had made his estates and title appear ridiculous and lopsided; she had not fulfilled her part of the bargain.

It is not meant to be understood that he stated these things to himself with the foregoing baldness, but none the less, if he had analyzed the springs of action that determined the course of the life he led, he would have admitted that they represented its ground-motives with sufficient accuracy. But Jack was not in the habit of analyzing anything: inquiry into the reasons for conduct seemed to him a profitless pursuit, since – again to put the matter baldly – he did not care at all whether a person acted wickedly or not. In fact, as his wife had said, there were many people who simply stared if you talked of wickedness. Her husband was among them, but he did not even stare.

It is commonly said that modern life is too full and too complex, but this generalization requires limiting. Certainly to a man, or in particular a woman, not belonging to "the world," a sudden plunge into that frothy mill-race would be complex to the verge of distraction. But there are many ways of simplifying this complexity, and one of the most convenient and efficient is to strike out, without further consideration, all moral obligations, positive and negative. When once one no longer thinks it necessary to reflect whether one ought or ought not to do or to avoid a thing, the saving of time and tissue is quite enormous. For it is not so much doing things as thinking about them which consumes the minutes and the nerves, and once having made an unalterable rule to do a thing if it is pleasant, and refrain from it if it is not, one can get into a single day a number of delightful experiences which would appear to those who do not know the recipe quite incredible. Again, as among wild beasts, so in the world, the weak go to the wall. There is no place for them, and no use for them. Every one has to look out for himself, and fight for his own possessions and those of other people. Not to recognise this spells failure. Such, at any rate, was Lord Alston's experience, and he was generally understood to have had a good deal of it.

But as he sat now with the stale paper on his knees he had a vague sense of being balked. He knew his own section of the world fairly well, and having broken his rose-coloured spectacles a long time ago, and not having desired to get new ones, he realized that people certainly remembered Jim Spencer's attachment to his wife, and that piecing together with their habitual amiability, their opinion of the ill-success of his own marriage with her, her frankly low opinion of the world, and the possibility of the renewed intimacy of his wife and this man, they would say things which would annoy him personally. He had hoped that Marie would see this, or if not that, at any rate learn it by heart, so to speak, from a few well-chosen remarks of his. But she had done neither the one nor the other; she had taken the well-chosen remarks, so he considered, remarkably ill, and the only amende had been to say that she would forget all about it. To Jack's mind this was but poor wifely conduct.

CHAPTER II

Andrew Brereton, Mildred's husband, was a man about whom little was known and hardly more conjectured, since he was most emphatically of that type of man who arouses in none the remotest feeling of curiosity. There seemed to be no doubt that he was of humble origin, but his origin, whether humble or haughty, he had completely built over with the tall edifice of his subsequent achievements, which had resulted in the amassing of a fortune large enough to satisfy the requirements even of his wife. It is generally supposed that brains of some kind are necessary in order to make a very large quantity of money, and these must be postulated for him; but having made a fortune, brains – or so a study of this particular millionaire would lead one to suppose – thenceforth become a superfluity. Certainly it appeared that Mr. Brereton, on his retirement from business, either locked his up, or, perhaps, as a concluding bargain, disposed of them, no doubt at a suitable valuation, to his house, which dealt largely and wisely in sound mining concerns in South Africa. Physically he was thin and meagre in build, and habitually wore a harassed and troubled look, especially in his own house, where he sat at the head of the table, and, for all the attention that was usually paid him, might as well have been sitting on the area-steps. But inasmuch as he really had an immense fortune, and his wife had the spending of it, the privilege of being present when she entertained her friends in his house was accorded him without question, and the further advantage of his sitting on the area-steps instead of at his table was never seriously weighed by any one.

To-night there was only a very small party, all the members of which, with the exception of Jim Spencer, had probably met five or six times a week since they came up to London, and during the winter had been together more often than not in each other's houses. There was, therefore, no sorting and resorting of groups required; conversation could either be general, or in a single moment split up like broken quicksilver and roll away into appropriate corners. For the moment it was general, or rather everybody was listening to Arthur Naseby, a stout young man, fresh-faced, but prematurely bald, who, standing on the hearth-rug, harangued the room in a loud and strident barytone.

"The most awful party I ever was at," he was saying. "Mrs. Boneman was there, the wife of our eminent artist, wearing a sort of bird's-nest on her head with three Union Jacks and some Easter eggs stuck into it. She was dressed in a sort of Brussels carpet trimmed with what looked like horsehair. I'm sure it was not horsehair really, but probably some rare and precious material, but it looked like it; and she wore what I understood to be the famous Yeere diamonds. They were about as large as pen-wipers, and were plastered round her neck and pinned on to the shoulders; others were scattered about her back. I imagine she stood in the middle of the room, and her maid threw them at her, and they stuck in the horsehair."

Mrs. Brereton shrieked with laughter.

"You are too heavenly!" she cried. "Go on, Arthur. Who else was there?"

"All the people whom one always sees coming out of the door of the Cecil at Brighton, and all those who ask one to supper at the Carlton, in order to inquire apparently who is sitting at the other tables. It is a sort of passion with a certain kind of person to know who is supping at the other tables at the Carlton, and his, or usually her, limitation that he never does. It appears to them of far greater importance than who is supping at their own. Well, they were all there, Princess Demirep, and the Linoleums and Lincrustas. Hosts of them! I assume it was most brilliant."

"Whom did you go with?" asked Lady Davies, who always wore an air of intent study when Arthur Naseby was talking, because she was trying to remember all he said in order to repeat it as original.

"I went with Blanche Devereux. I was dining with her, and she insisted on my coming. We are both going again on the 16th."

"So am I. Dear Blanche! what did she make of it all?"

"She said she had never felt so humbled in her life. You see, this was a particular party of intimes; the 16th is an omnibus. The brilliance of the gathering overwhelmed her, just as it did me. We really knew nobody there, and sat in a corner alone in London, till Mrs. Maxwell herself left her commanding situation at the head of the stairs where she received her guests and came and talked to us. I know she thought she was being kind. So she was, but not in the way she meant."

"She is too wonderful," said Mildred, "Was she dressed in red satin?"

"I should have said bound, not dressed. Very tightly and neatly bound with silk-markers and gilt edges. She thanked Blanche for coming, and just stopped herself saying she felt much honoured; also she had hoped to see her husband as well. Now, I have heard many tactful things in my life, but I think never anything quite so tactful as that. A strange fatality pursues poor Mrs. Maxwell; she says unerringly and loudly the only thing which it is absolutely impossible to say. Blanche is not a prude, I think we are all agreed, and therefore not easily shocked. Poor Mrs. Maxwell might have said almost anything, however improper, without offending her. Again, Blanche is a woman of the world; she can usually make some sort of reply to the most awful put-your-foot-in-it. But she was completely outclassed by that one simple sentence. Mrs. Maxwell was first, and nobody else anywhere."

Lady Davies was so far carried away by this brilliance as to laugh, and thus completely forgot all she had learned by heart from Arthur's previous conversation.

"Then poor Mrs. Maxwell turned to me," he went on, "and remarked that I looked far from well. When any one says that to me, I am always ill for the next three days; in fact, I hardly thought I could get here to-night. Of course, that spoiled the rest of my pleasure, and I hardly knew what happened, except that Dick turned up later in the evening, and – and pursued his impetuous path. I fancy that poor Mrs. Maxwell imagined that he was Blanche's husband. But I don't wonder at that."

Marie's nerves were a little on edge to-night, and both what Mr. Naseby said and the roaring volubility with which he said it jarred on them. At this particular moment certainly she was possessed with a longing of an almost passionate kind to cover him up like a canary with a piece of green baize. But, as there was no baize to hand, she got up from where she was sitting in the canary's immediate vicinity, and sought a safe distance in the window-seat. Jim Spencer, who had been sitting at the other side of the room, got up also, and, crossing the hearth-rug where Mr. Naseby stood, followed her into her retreat. The latter, seeing a secession from his audience, cast one pained and pitying glance at them, and then covered their retreat by the continuation of his monologue.

"So you, like me, find it a little trying, Jim," said Marie, when they were seated together; "but you will have to get used to it."

"Is there much of that sort of man?" asked Jim. "I don't remember anything quite like it when I was in London last."

"No, he is a recent invention. He invented himself, in fact. Mildred thinks she invented him, but she only detected him. The truth is, I think, that on the whole people have grown rather stupider in the last year or two, or perhaps it is only lazier, and Arthur Naseby saves them the trouble of having to talk themselves. In fact, he makes it impossible."

"Is he always like that?"

"As far as I know, always."

"How odd that he doesn't find it fatiguing! Or perhaps it is even odder that other people don't find it fatiguing. Tell me something about him."

"I know nothing whatever about him more than what you can see and hear," said Marie. "Indeed, I don't believe there is any more. He is very rich, and declines to marry."

"Then the man is a husk, a husk with a tongue," said Jim.

"Probably about that; at least, I never heard that any one had reason to believe there was anything more than the husk. Jim, I wonder how many of us have real people inside. I expect there are lots of husks and nothing more."

"Do you think so? I rather believe that most of us have got something real, though perhaps nothing very wholesome or very pleasant. That being so, one tries to conceal it, though sometimes it pops out like a lizard from a crevice. I think I would give anything to get inside anybody else, just for a minute, to see what he was really like."

"You would be rash to do it. It is quite certain that if you could get inside anybody, as you say, you would never speak to him again. Good gracious! could you imagine writing down all that had been in your mind during a normal half-hour?"

"It depends who was to read it."

"You mean you would let a friend read it?"

Jim laughed.

"Well, if I am as bad as you think, it would clearly be a dangerously stupid thing to show it to an enemy."

"Ah! you would sooner lose a friend than give a handle to an enemy," said Marie. "I entirely disagree with that. I would choose to make or keep one friend, even at the risk of arming a whole regiment of enemies against myself. Enemies matter so little."

"Certainly friends matter more," said Jim, "and perhaps acquaintances less than either. The worst of having been away from London so long is that one finds so many of the latter and so few of either of the others!"

"What are your general impressions at present?" asked Marie.

The stream of talk from Mr. Naseby was apparently beginning to run dry; the pressure was diminishing, and Jim spoke lower.

"I hardly know what to think at present," he said. "London seems to me to have changed extraordinarily during the last few years. As far as I can make out, it does not matter now how dull and stupid a man is, how vulgar or vicious a woman is, as long as he or she is rich enough."

Marie raised her eyebrows.

"Why, of course," she said calmly. "What else did you imagine?"

"That is not all. Apparently, also, you can go to a man's house or a woman's house, eat her food and drink her wines. Then you hurry on to the next and tell them that it was the most awful party you ever were at. But still, apparently, you can go there again on the 16th."

Mildred Brereton had joined them, and lit a cigarette from a fire-breathing Japanese dragon. She blew out a great cloud of laughter and smoke together, with her mouth very wide.

"Dear Jim, you are too delicious!" she shrieked. "Really, I shall get you to come and talk to me instead of Mr. Naseby, for you amuse me much more. Arthur, you are dropped; Jim is funnier. Of course we are all going on the 16th, because Pagani and Guardina are both going to sing, and they sing too divinely for words. Also, considering what we all know about them, and considering that they know we all know it, it is exceedingly amusing to see them look at each other with frigid politeness. Why, only the other day Mrs. Maxwell introduced them to each other, saying she must make two great artists acquainted. Too screaming! But you are too delightful and old-fashioned. Your idea about the obligations entailed by hospitality is a savage notion, dear Jim, like cannibalism, and vanishes before the march of civilization. I believe there is an excessively native tribe in Java or Japan, or somewhere, which still practises it. If you eat their salt, they stick to you through thick and thin."

Arthur Naseby had joined them.

"How too dreadful!" he exclaimed. "Fancy having a lot of assorted savages, thick and thin, sticking to one! It sounds as if one was a kind of superior fly-paper."

"Arthur, you mustn't begin talking again, or we shall never get any Bridge," said Mrs. Brereton. "Won't you play, Marie?"

"No, I really haven't got time," she said. "I told you I have to go on at half-past ten. Please what time is it, Jim?"

"Close on eleven."

"Then I must really be moving, Mildred. But Jack will play; he isn't coming on with me."

"Where are you going, Lady Alston?" asked Arthur.

"To see Blanche Devereux."

Arthur Naseby's face fell.

"I never knew she was giving a party," he said.

Marie laughed, rising.

"She isn't; don't be frightened; it is still possible that she has not dropped you, like Mildred. I'm only going to see her about the soldiers' bazaar. In fact, it is because she isn't giving a party that I am going."

Jim Spencer got up too.

"Will you give me a lift?" he asked. "I am going to Eaton Place also."

"Certainly. Good-night, Mildred. Yes, I know my carriage is here. They told me half an hour ago. Jack is stopping to play, I suppose. Please tell him I have taken the carriage."

The two went out, and Mrs. Brereton and Naseby stood still looking at them. When they had disappeared they looked at each other.

"Dear Marie!" said that lady effusively, "how delighted she evidently is to see Jim Spencer again! Oh, dear, yes, they were very great friends in the old days, very great friends indeed. Come, Arthur, they are waiting for us."

"You always have such delightful people at your house," said Arthur, "and you always have something interesting to say about them. And that stiff young man is very rich, is he not?"

"Beyond the dreams," said Mrs. Brereton. "I wonder whom he will find to make his money fly for him?"

"One can never tell. He looks to me as if he might spend it on Corots or charity or something of that imperishable kind. Doesn't it strike you as odd that whereas the perishable nature of money is always dinned into one, yet one can apparently purchase imperishable treasure by being charitable with it? No, I can't imagine any one making his money fly. Some one might make it march away, very solemnly and in good order, but not fly. He is a little stiff, is he not?"

"Perhaps a little reserved. But when reserve breaks down, it is so very unreserved. I like seeing a reserved person having a real holiday."

"How many days would you say it was to the holidays?" asked Arthur, in a low voice, as they reached the card-table where Jack and another were waiting.

"I can't tell. I shouldn't wonder – no, I can't tell."

Marie and Jim Spencer meantime were driving down from Grosvenor Square towards the Park. The night was warm, and hosts of stars burned very large and luminous in a sky that was beyond the usual London measure of clearness. After the heat of the rooms, in particular after a certain feverishness of atmosphere, not physical so much as moral, a sense of extreme hurry and pressure, the night air and the cool steadiness of the stars were refreshing, not only physically but morally. Perhaps from their years of early companionship and intimacy, perhaps from a certain more deeply seated sympathy of mind, each was very conscious of the thoughts of the other, and the swift silent motion through the glare of the streets seemed to isolate them from the world. It was with something of this in her mind that Lady Alston spoke to the other.

"Yes, put down my window, Jim," she said, "and your own, too, if you are not afraid of catching cold. We are both outdoor people, I think."

"We used to be," said he.

"Do you mean you have changed? Or do you find I have?"

"I find you have. But I am quite willing to believe that it may be some change in myself that makes me think so."

Marie unwound the light shawl which she had thrown over her head, and undid the fastening of her gold-thread cloak, so as to let the air play on her uncovered neck. In another woman, he felt, this might have indicated some suspicion of coquetry, but he did her the justice to feel that no such imputation was possible.

"No, if you feel that you are probably right," she said, "for you do not seem to me to have changed at all. We both agree, in fact, about you. There remains then me. How have I changed?"

He looked at her in the dusk of the carriage for a moment without replying.

"You seemed so much in harmony with those people," he said. "I felt that you felt yourself to be one of them. But I, obviously, I am afraid, felt that I was not. That is how I think you have changed; in the old days you would have appeared to yourself as alien to them as I do."

She gave him one glance.

"Ah, the old days!" she said with some impatience. "It is absurd and ridiculous to want to remain as one was. Indeed, not to change shows that one has a nature incapable of development. It implies a sort of moral torpor, an atrophy of one's nature not to get older as one gets older. And one of the biggest, and perhaps best effects of age is to give one tolerance, to make one realize that it takes all sorts to make a world."

He laughed.

"Why this sudden vehemence?" he asked.

"Oh, for a variety of reasons! One is because you judge me correctly, another because you judge me incorrectly. You are perfectly right to say that I have changed, but perfectly wrong to imply, even tacitly, that one is the worse for changing. And you do me the grossest injustice when you suppose that I am in harmony with those people. I am not any more than I ever was. But it is absurd to coil one's self up like a hedgehog, and run your spines into everything you come across. As a matter of fact I often do, but it is a mistake."

They drove on some way in silence. At last she spoke again.

"Many of the people with whom I appear to you to be in harmony I consider wicked," she said; "and many of them, I am sure, are vulgar in the largest sense of that wonderful term. England is a plutocracy, let me tell you, Jim. It worships wealth. It will certainly worship you. How will you like it? It will really be very interesting to see how you behave. It is an awful position for you: if you refuse to smile on your worshippers, they will write you down a miser; if you do smile on them, you will make yourself as vulgar as they."

He laughed.

"You frighten me," he said. "Is there no place in London for a quiet millionaire?"

She leaned forward with a sudden eagerness.

"Ah, Jim, make one, make one!" she said. "That is the root of the matter. Try if you can spend your money without encouraging either vice or vulgarity. It is worth an effort."

She leaned back again, laughing lightly, and drew her cloak round her again.

"Dear me, I have been vehement," she said; "but don't be afraid; I will treat you to no more outbursts. Only this afternoon my husband told me how absurd they were."

"Well, reserve them for me," he said; "I rather like them. You are an inspiring person, Marie. You know I always found you inspiring."

"Many thanks. But no inspiration will make any one do anything. One's motive has to come from within, not without, if it is worth anything."

"I am not so sure of that."

They stopped at Lady Devereux's house in Eaton Place, and until the bell was answered sat silent. Then, as the footman opened the carriage-door, "I am delighted you have come back, Jim," she said – "I really am delighted. Come and see me often. Come to lunch to-morrow, for instance. Yes! That is right. Thirty-one, you know, and lunch at one-thirty."