Читать книгу A Comedy of Masks - Arthur Moore - Страница 7

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A day or two later, as Rainham sat in his river-bound office struggling, by way of luncheon, with the most primitive of chops, his eyes, wandering away from a somewhat mechanic scrutiny of the Shipping Gazette, fell upon the shifting calendar on the mantelpiece.

The dial noted Thursday; and he reminded himself that on that day his friend, Lady Garnett, had a perennial habit of being at home to her intimates, on the list of whom Rainham could acknowledge, without undue vanity, his name occurred high. There was a touch of self-reproach in his added reminder that a week had elapsed since his return, and he had not already hastened to clasp the excellent old lady's hand. It was an unprecedented postponement and an infringement of a time-honoured habit; and Rainham had for his habit all the respect of a man who is always indolent and often ill; though it must be admitted that to his clerks, who viewed the trait complacently, and to the importunate Bullen, who resented it, he seemed to be only regular in his irregularity. He decided that at least this occasion should not be allowed to slip; a free afternoon would benefit him. He was always rather lavish of those licenses; and it seemed to him that the tintinnabulation of teacups in Lady Garnett's primrose and gray drawing-room would be a bearable change from the din of a hundred hammers, which had pelted him through the open windows all the morning. They were patching a little wooden barque with copper, and he paused a moment in the yard, leaning on his slim umbrella to admire the brilliant yellow of the renewed sheets, standing out in vivid blots against the tarnished verdigris of the old. To pass from Blackpool to the West, however, is a tardy process; and when Rainham reached the spruce, little house in one of the most select of the discreet and uniform streets which adjoin Portman Square, he found the clatter of teacups for the most part over. There were, in fact, only two persons in the long room, which, with its open Erard, and its innumerable bibelots, and its plenitude of quaint, impossible chairs, seemed quite cosily exiguous. An old lady with a beautiful, refined face and a wealth of white hair, which was still charming to look at, sat in an attitude full of comfortable indolence, with a small pug in her lap, who bounced at Rainham with a bark of friendly recognition. A young lady, at the other side of the room (she was at least young by courtesy), who was pouring out tea, stopped short in this operation to greet the new visitor with a little soft exclamation, in which pleasure and surprise mingled equally. The old lady also looked up smiling. She seemed both good-natured and distinguished, and she had the air—a sort of tired complacency—of a person who has been saying witty things for a whole afternoon, and is at last in the enjoyment of a well-deserved rest. She extended both hands to Rainham, who held them for a minute in his own, silently smiling down at her, before he released them to greet her companion.

She was a tall, pale girl in a black dress, whom at first sight the impartial observer might easily declare to be neither pretty nor young. As a matter of fact, she was younger than she seemed, for she was barely five-and-twenty, although her face and manner belonged to a type which, even in girlhood, already forestalls some of the gravity and reserve that arrive with years. As for her beauty, there were those who disputed it altogether; and yet even when one had gone so far as to declare that Mary Masters was plain, one had, in justice, to add that she possessed none the less a distinct and delicate charm of her own. It was a daisy-like charm differing in kind from the charm of Eve Sylvester, which was that of a violet or a child, perpetually perfuming the air. It could be traced at last—for she had not a good feature—to the possession of a pair of very soft, and shy, brown eyes, and of a voice, simply agreeable in conversation, which burgeoned out in song into the richest contralto imaginable, causing her to be known widely in society as "the Miss Masters who sings." Indeed, she had a wonderful musical talent, which she had cultivated largely. Her playing had even approved itself to the difficult Rubinstein; and, although she had a certain reputation for cleverness, the loss to society when she left the music-stool to mingle in it was generally felt not to be met by a corresponding gain; and, indeed, as a rule, people did not consider her separately. The generality were inclined simply to accept her, in relation to her aunt, Lady Garnett, with whom she had lived since she was a girl of sixteen, as any other of that witty old woman's impedimenta—her pug Mefistofèle, or her matchless enamels, or her Watteau fans. As she came towards him now with a cup in her hand, her pale face a little flushed, her dark hair braided very plainly and neatly above her high forehead, Rainham could not help thinking that she would make an adorable old maid.

"You look well, Mary," he remarked, holding her at arms' length critically, with the freedom of an old friend. "You look insultingly well—I hope you don't mean it."

"I am afraid I do," laughed the girl. "I wish I could say as much for you."

Rainham shook his head with burlesque solemnity, and sank down with his fragile cup into the most comfortable of the Louis Quinze chairs which he could select.

"It's delightful to be back again," he remarked, letting his eyes wander round the familiar walls. "I know your things by heart, Lady Garnett; there's not one of them I could spare. Thanks, Mary, no sugar; cream, if you please. After all, I don't know anyone who has such charming rooms. Let me see if there is anything new. Yes, those enamels; introduce me, Mary, please. Yes, they are very nice. By the way, I picked up some old point for you at Genoa, only I have not unpacked it yet. But the Gustave Moreau, where is that? Ah, I see you have shifted it over the piano. Yes, it is exactly the same; you are all precisely the same; it's delightful, such constancy—delightful! I take it as a personal compliment. But where are all the delightful people?"

Lady Garnett smiled placidly.

"The delightful people have gone. To tell you the truth, I am just a little glad, especially as you have dropped in from the clouds, or the Riviera di Ponente—which is it, Philip?"

"To be frank with you, from neither. I have it on my conscience to tell you that I have been back some days. I wanted to come here before."

"Ah well, so long as you have come now!" said the old lady.

"Your knock was mystifying, Philip," put in the girl presently; "we expected nobody else but the Sylvesters, and when we heard your solitary step our hearts sank. We thought that Charles Sylvester had taken it into his head to come by himself."

"He is a terrible young man," said Lady Garnett; "he is almost as limited as his mamma, and he takes himself more seriously. When he is with his sister one can tolerate him, but alone——"

She held up her thin wrinkled hands with a little gesture of elision, at which her expressive shoulders assisted. She was of French extraction, the last survivor of an illustrious family; and reconciled as she had become to England—for years she had hardly left London—a slight and very pretty accent, and this trick of her shoulders, remained to remind people that her point of view was still essentially foreign. Rainham, who had from his boyhood found England somewhat a prison-house, adored her for this trait. The quaint old woman, indeed, with her smooth, well-bred voice, her elaborate complexion, her little, dignified incongruities, had always been the greatest solace to him. She had the charm of all rococo things; she represented so much that had passed away, exhaling a sort of elegant wickedness to find a parallel to which one had to seek back to the days of the Regency. Of course, in society, she passed for being very devout; and, indeed, her little pieties, her unfailing attendance at Mass on days of Obligation, at the chapel of the French Embassy hard by, struck Rainham as most edifying. Really he perceived that her devout attitude was purely traditional, a form of good manners. She remained the same wicked, charming old Sadducee as before: her morocco-bound paroissien might appear on festivals and occasions; she still slept as often as not of nights with "Candide" under her pillow.

The knowledge of a certain sentiment which they shared towards the limitations of London (they were both persons strikingly without prejudice) lent a certain piquancy to their old-established relations, an allusive flavour to their conversation—it was always highly seasoned with badinage—that puzzled many of their common acquaintance enormously.

Mary Masters, as a shy and serious maiden, fresh from a country parsonage, remembered well the astonishment, mingled with something not unlike awe, with which she had first heard them talk. Philip Rainham had been calling, as it might be now, when she arrived, and Lady Garnett had promptly introduced him to her as her godson, because, as she remarked lightly, if he is not, he ought to have been. To which Philip had replied, in a like humour, that it was all the same: if they hadn't that relation, at any rate their behaviour implied it.