Читать книгу The Laslett Affair - Edward Harold Begbie - Страница 5

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Mrs. Laslett and her daughter Phillida awaited Stephen in the lounge of the Ritz Hotel, where the family was staying till their house in Belgrave Square had recovered from its dedication to War work.

They were both beautifully dressed, and were not undistinguished-looking—Mrs. Laslett, a brunette, upright and vivid; Phillida, a blonde, delicate and pale.

“Stephen is very much en retard,” said his mother, who was unmistakably a lively lady, and might have been described as all eyes and appetite. She leaned forward to look down the long corridor, which was comfortably warm and pleasantly populated. “I must smoke another cigarette,” she announced, and opened her vanity-bag. “Shall I order my little lambkin a cocktail?”

Phillida replied languidly, “Let’s wait till Stephen comes.” She was watching with absorbed interest a group of laughing and loud-voiced young things in the distance.

“He oughtn’t to be late to-day,” Mrs. Laslett declared, with a certain amount of impatience.

A smiling waiter came forward to light madam’s cigarette, after which he moved the table between the two ladies a shade nearer to Mrs. Laslett, wiped it with his cloth, and slid an ash-tray in her direction.

“Shall I bring you a cocktail?” he insinuated.

“We are waiting for Mr. Stephen.”

“Ah! I will come again.”

The orchestra began to tune their strings.

“I wonder what’s keeping him,” Mrs. Laslett complained, glancing at the watch on her wrist. “He was so excited this morning, and told me that I mustn’t be a moment late for lunch.”

“I can tell you what’s keeping him,” Phillida replied. “He has gone to be photographed, and he is choosing a Christmas present for Susan Anstey.”

“Then he’s wasting his money,” retorted Mrs. Laslett, rather angrily, tipping the ash from her cigarette into the tray at her side. “Ridiculous! But London will soon put that childish sloppiness out of his head. Susan’s a plotting and intriguing hussy. She irritates me now every time I see her.”

“She appeals to his clever side,” said Phillida. “They talk books.”

Mrs. Laslett blew a long cloud of smoke from her pursed lips, beat it away from her eyes with a quick movement of her left hand, and exclaimed, “Don’t encourage that idea. For goodness’ sake, don’t do that. I want him to marry usefully. Fancy spending one’s life talking about books! Besides, Susan is after his money—nothing else; books are merely one of her dodges. Look at that old man staring at you. Just look at him. Horrid old thing!” She laughed, partly at the absurdity of the spectacle, and partly out of an indefinable sympathy with the ways of the world, whatever they might be.

Phillida laughed too. “If it amuses him, poor old dear,” she said, with a half-challenging glance at the offender, “it doesn’t worry me. I’m quite used to it now. In fact, I’m rather blasé in that matter.”

“Well, that’s the proper way to take such affairs,” agreed Mrs. Laslett, and almost immediately, growing excitedly serious, she touched Phillida’s arm, and whispered, “Look: now, that’s a man I could love!”

The man to whom so suddenly and excitedly she drew her daughter’s attention was tripping with great animation towards the restaurant in the company of two extravagantly dressed women, one of whom was glancing with affected boredom in her made-up eyes at her own over-painted reflection in a hand-mirror.

Phillida looked, and was so slightly interested by the man, who seemed to her a very commonplace little foreigner, that she almost immediately gave her attention to the two women, who were certainly attractive to a degree almost amazing. But her mother’s whisper came to her again, and then she did look at the man as he passed, eagerly and ardently, before it was too late to see him.

“That’s Leo Daga,” Mrs. Laslett had whispered.

At that name Phillida started, for, like every one else in the world of fashion, she loved the comedies with which Mr. Leo Daga had just recently begun to startle London—delighting in their flippancies, amused by their irreverence, and fascinated by the frankness of their sensuality.

She was disappointed to discover that the author of these notorious plays was a person insignificant in stature, disposed already to corpulence, and of a colour that suggested the need of soap and water, if not of a razor as well. For a moment she wished that she had never seen him, or that her mother had not known his identity, but an impassioned exclamation from Mrs. Laslett—“That man knows women through and through”—dissipated every feeling of disappointment, and sent her gaze after the fashionable playwright with a determination to see him steadily and see him whole.

His face, the olive-coloured face of an Eastern-European, seemed to her to suggest the psychological drama of a divided mind—the dark, luminous, and searching eyes expressing, in spite of their habitual smile, a disposition towards melancholy and reflection, while the coarse mouth expressed nothing, so far as she could see, but a ribald and rejoicing gluttony. What a difficult character to understand!

She was puzzled and confused, and felt herself infinitely green and inexperienced, because she could not begin to understand this man, of whom her mother had just said that he knew women through and through.

“To understand women,” Mrs. Laslett dogmatised, gazing after the departing dramatist, “a man must be half a woman himself. If you notice, Leo Daga has the waist and hips of a woman, and walks with the small steps of a woman. A man like that can enter into all the delicacy and refinement of a woman’s mind. Goodness, what a lover he must be! I hear that scores of women are mad about him. They say his flat is always full of flowers and that there’s no room on his dressing-table for the gifts of his admirers. I wonder who those two women are. I rather think that one of them——”

At this moment Stephen appeared, having changed into a grey suit and carefully chosen harmonious linen and hosiery.

He was now no longer bashful and disconcerted. Here the setting perfectly harmonised with his expensive appearance, and if people stared at him, particularly pretty girls, he knew that it was with no surprise or amusement. Moreover, he responded with delight to the gay welcome of his lively mother and his admiring sister. In a moment, then, he was man of the world in charge of womenfolk. The polite waiter, already at his side, was greeted by name and with a friendly word, cocktails were ordered, cigarettes were lighted, and with smiles and laughter, the three voices often clashing together, mother, son, and daughter chattered, gossiped, and delighted in themselves.