"I don"t say that, necessarily. But I"ve seen a great deal of life. I"ve lived everywhere, and just the very households--_menages,_ as we say abroad--that seem most calm and peaceful, sometimes--It would be, anyhow, very dreadful, wouldn"t it--to live a double life?"
Edith thought her friend rather enjoyed the idea, but she said:
"You don"t imagine, I hope, that there"s anything in the nature of an intrigue going on between me and Mr Mitch.e.l.l?"
"No, no, no--not now--not yet--but you don"t quite know, Edith, how one can be carried away. As I was sitting up in my room--thinking--"
"You think too much," interrupted Edith.
"Perhaps so--but it came to me like this. I mean to be the one to put things right again, if I can. My dear child, a woman of the world like myself sees things. You two ought to be ideally happy. You"re meant for one another--I mean you and Bruce."
"Do you think so?"
"Absolutely. But this--what shall I say?--this fascination is coming between you, and, though you don"t realise it, it"s saddening Bruce"s life; it will sadden yours too. At first, no doubt, at the stage you"re in, dear, it seems all romance and excitement. But later on--Now, Edith, promise me you won"t be angry with me for what I"ve said? It"s a terrible freedom that I"ve taken, I know. Really a liberty. But if I were your"--she glanced at the mirror--"elder sister, I couldn"t be fonder of you. Don"t think I"m a horrid, interfering old thing, will you?"
"Indeed I don"t; you"re a dear."
"Well, we won"t speak of it any more till after Tuesday," said Madame Frabelle, "and take my advice: throw yourself into other things."
She glanced round the room.
"It"s a splendid idea to divert your thoughts; why don"t you refurnish your boudoir?"
Edith had often noticed the strange lack in Eglantine of any sense of decoration. She dressed charmingly, but with regard to surroundings she was entirely devoid of taste. She had the curious provincialism so often seen in cosmopolitans who have lived most of their lives in hotels, without apparently noticing or caring about their surroundings.
Edith made rather a hobby of decoration, and she had a cultured and quiet taste, and much knowledge on the subject. She guessed Madame Frabelle thought her rooms too plain, too colourless. Instead of the dull greys and blues, and surfaces without design, she felt sure her friend would have preferred gorgeous patterns, and even a good deal of gilt. Probably at heart Madame Frabelle"s ideal was the crimson plush and stamped leather and fancy ceilings of the lounge in a foreign hotel.
"I rather like my room, you know," said Edith.
"And so do I. It"s very charming. But a change, dear--a change of _entourage_, as we say abroad, would do you good."
"Well, we must really think that out," said Edith.
"That"s right. And you"re not cross?"
"Cross? I don"t know when I"ve enjoyed a conversation so much," said Edith, speaking with perfect truth.
CHAPTER V
The Ottleys and Madame Frabelle were in the drawing-room awaiting their guests. (I say advisedly their guests, for no-one could help regarding Madame Frabelle as essentially the hostess, and queen of the evening.) One would fancy that instead of entertaining more or less for the last twelve years the young couple had never given a dinner before; so much suppressed excitement was in the air. Bruce was quiet and subdued now from combined nervousness and pride, but for the few days previous he had been terribly trying to his unfortunate wife; nothing, according to him, could be good enough for the purpose of impressing Madame Frabelle, and he appeared to have lost all his confidence in Edith"s undeniable gift for receiving.
The flowers, the menu, the arrangement of the eight people--for the dinner was still small, intimate and distinguished, as he had first suggested--had been subjected to continual and maddening changes in its scheme. Everyone had been disengaged and everyone had accepted--then he wished he had asked other people instead.
When Edith was dressed Bruce put the last touch to his irritating caprices by asking Edith to take out of her hair a bandeau of blue that he had first asked her to put in. Every woman will know what agony that must have caused. The pretty fair hair was waved and arranged specially for this ornament, and when she took it out the whole scheme seemed to her wrong. However, she looked very pretty, dressed in vaporous tulle of a shade of blue which only a faultless complexion can bear.
Edith"s complexion was her strong point. When she was a little flushed she looked all the better for it, and when she was pale it seemed to suit her none the worse. Hers was the sort of skin with a satiny texture that improves under bright sunshine or electric light; in fact the more brilliantly it was lighted the better it looked.
Madame Frabelle (of course) was dressed in black, _decolletee,_ and with a good deal of jet. A black aigrette, like a lightning conductor, stood up defiantly in her hair. Though it did not harmonise well with the somewhat square and _bourgeois_ shape of her head and face, and appeared to have dropped on her by accident, yet as a symbol of smartness it gave her a kind of distinction. It appeared to have fallen from the skies; it was put on in the wrong place, and it did not nestle, as it should do, and appear to grow out of the hair, since that glory of womanhood, in her case of a dull brown, going slightly grey, was smooth, scarce and plainly parted. Madame Frabelle really would have looked her best in a cap of the fashion of the sixties. But she could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.
Edith had been allowed by her husband _carte blanche_ in the decoration of their house.
This was fortunate, as _mise-en-scene_ was a great gift of hers; no-one had such a sense as Edith for arranging a room. She had struck the happy mean between the eccentric and the conventional. Anything that seemed unusual did not appear to be a pose, or a strained attempt at being different from others, but seemed to have a reason of its own. For example, she greatly disliked the usual gorgeous _endimanche_ drawing-room and dark conventional dining-room. The room in which she received her guests was soft and subdued in colour and not dazzling with that blaze of light that is so trying to strangers just arrived and not knowing their way about a house (or certain of how they are looking).
The room seemed to receive them kindly; make them comfortable, and at their ease, hoping they looked their best. The shaded lights, not dim enough to be depressing, were kind to those past youth and gave confidence to the shy. There was nothing ceremonious, nothing chilly, about the drawing-room; it was essentially at once comfortable and becoming, and the lights shone like shaded sunshine from the dull pink corners of the room.
On the other hand, the dining-room helped conversation by its stimulating gaiety and daintiness.
The feminine curves of the furniture, such as is usually kept for the drawing-room, were all pure Louis-Quinze. It was deliriously pretty in its pink and white and pale green.
In the drawing-room the hosts stood by one of those large, old-fashioned oaken fireplaces so supremely helpful to conversation and _tete-a-tetes_. In Edith"s house there was never any general conversation except at dinner. People simply made friends, flirted, and enjoyed themselves.
As the clock struck eight the Mitch.e.l.ls were announced. Edith could scarcely control a laugh as Mr Mitch.e.l.l came in, he looked so utterly unlike the dangerous lover Madame Frabelle had conjured up. He was immensely tall, broad, loosely built, large-shouldered, with a red beard, a twinkle in his eye, and the merriest of laughs. He was a delightful man, but there was no romance about him. Besides, Edith remembered him as a black poodle.
Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l struck a useful note, and seemed a perfect complement to her husband, the ideal wife for him. She was about forty-five, but being slim, animated, and well dressed (though entirely without _chic_), she seemed a good deal younger.
Mr. Mitch.e.l.l might have been any age between sixty and sixty-five, and had the high spirits and vitality of a boy.
It was impossible to help liking this delightful couple; they fully deserved their popularity. In the enormous house at Hampstead, arranged like a country mansion, where they lived, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l made it the object of his life to collect Bohemians as other people collect Venetian gla.s.s, from pure love of the material. His wife, with a silly woman"s subtlety, having rather lower ideals--that is to say, a touch of the very human vulgarity known as social ambition--made use of his Bohemianism to help her on in her mundane success. This was the principle of the thing. If things were well done--and they always were at her house--would not a duke, if he were musical, go anywhere to hear the greatest tenor in Europe? And would not all the greatest celebrities go anywhere to meet a duke?
Next the two young Conistons were announced.
Miss Coniston was a thin, amiable, artistic girl, who did tooling in leather, made her own dresses, recited, and had a pale, good-looking, too well-dressed, disquieting young brother of twenty-two, who seemed to be always going out when other people came in, but was rather useful in society, being musical and very polite. The music that he chose generally gave his audience a shock. Being so young, so pale, and so contemporary, one expected him to sing thin, elusive music by Debussy, Faure, or Ravel. He seemed never to have heard of these composers, but sang instead threatening songs, such as, "I"ll sing thee Songs of Araby!" or defiant, teetotal melodies, like "Drink to Me only with thine Eyes!" His voice was good, and louder and deeper than one would expect.
He accompanied himself and his sister everywhere. She, by the way, to add to the interest about her, was said to be privately engaged to a celebrity who was never there. Alice and Guy Coniston were orphans, and lived alone in a tiny flat in Pelham Gardens. He had been reading for the Bar, but when the war broke out he joined the New Army, and was now in khaki.
But the _clou_ and great interest of the evening was the arrival of Sir t.i.to Landi, that most popular of all Italian composers. With his white moustache, pink and white complexion, and large bright blue eyes, his dandified dress, his eyegla.s.s and b.u.t.tonhole, he had the fresh, fair look of an Englishman, the dry brilliance of a Parisian, the _navete_ of a genius, the manners of a courtier, and behind it all the diabolic humour of the Neapolitan. He was small, thin and slight, with a curious dignity of movement.
"Ah, t.i.to," cried Bruce cordially. "Here you are!"
The dinner was bright and gay from the very beginning, even before the first gla.s.s of champagne. It began with an optimistic view of the war, then, dropping the grave subject, they talked of people, theatres, books, and general gossip. In all these things Madame Frabelle took the lead. Indeed, she had begun at once laying down the law in a musical voice but with a determined manner that gave those who knew her to understand only too well that she intended to go steadily on, and certainly not to stop to breathe before the ices.
Sir t.i.to Landi, fixing his eyegla.s.s in his bright blue eye, took in Madame Frabelle in one long look, and smiled at her sympathetically.
"What do you think of her?" murmured Edith to Landi.
Hypnotised and slightly puzzled as she was by her guest, she was particularly curious for his opinion, as she knew him to be the best judge of character of her acquaintance. He had some of the capriciousness of the spoilt, successful artist, which showed itself, except to those whom he regarded as real friends, in odd variations of manner, so that Edith could not tell at all by his being extremely charming to Madame Frabelle that he liked her, or by his being abrupt and satirical that he didn"t. An old friend and a favourite, she could rely on what he told her.
"C"est une bonne vieille," he said. "Bonne, mais bete!"
"Really?" Edith asked, surprised.