"Politically no; but I have a good deal of influence with him. You see those reviews he mentions; I went through a lot of heavy French and Italian reading for him--sociology, industrialism--and saw the result in his last speech."
"Really."
"Ah, really. Don"t be sarcastic, Alceste, to me. One of those men will probably be Prime Minister some day. You can"t deny that they are eminent men."
"And therefore you are an eminent woman. Well, the logic isn"t too lame.
I"ll conclude, Camelia, that you may do quite a lot of harm in the world."
"You don"t believe that a woman"s influence in politics can be for good?"
"Not the influence of a woman like you--a--a _femme bibelot_."
"Good!" cried Camelia, gently clapping her hands.
"It is as that, you know, that these men court you. An _objet d"art_ for their drawing-rooms."
"You are mistaken, Alceste."
"If I am mistaken--if they cherish ideals, they are unlucky devils."
"No, Alceste, I am well justified in keeping my self-respect intact. It is not for my _beaux yeux_ that I am courted--yes, yes--that wry look isn"t needed! I know in what hideously bad taste I am talking, but one can"t use artistic methods with you. As I say, I have my finger in any number of pies besides the pie political. You should see the respect in which I am held by the writers and painters. And I _have_ good taste; I know that. You can"t deny it, since you helped it to grow. What other woman in London has a collection to equal mine? Degas--Outamaro--Oh, Alceste, don"t look so funnily! Do you really imagine that I am not conscious of the baldness of my exposition? But what is the good of putting on a wig for you!"
"And all this to convince me----"
"Yes, to convince you."
"Of what, pray?"
"That I am not a little insignificance to be pa.s.sed by with indulgence."
"Should you prefer severity?" and Perior, conscious that she had succeeded in "drawing" him, could not repress "You are an outrageous little egotist, Camelia."
Camelia, her hands clasped over her knee, contemplated him with more gravity than he had expected.
"No," she demurred, "selfish, but not egotistic. There is a difference, isn"t there? Egotism is subjective, selfishness objective. I wonder,"
she added, "what you _do_ think of me. Not that I care--much! Am I not frank? I must care, since I am shuffling about before you; getting a cuffing for my pains!" She rose suddenly, laughing, not in the least bitterly, and walked to the window.
"Mamma and Mary," she announced. "Did Frances evade them? They disconcert her. Frances, you know, goes in for knowingness--cleverness--the modern vice. Don"t you hate clever people? Frances doesn"t dare talk epigrams to me; I can"t stand it. You saw a lot of Mamma and Mary last winter, didn"t you? Took Mary out riding. Now, come here, Mr. Perior, and tell me _how_ she looked on horseback."
Camelia was smiling irrepressibly as he joined her, and they watched the approach of the two ladies across the lawn. Certainly the angular, thick-set form of the younger gave no hint of pleasing possibilities under circ.u.mstances so trying as the equestrian.
"_I_ never could wheedle Mary into the saddle. I should like to see her on horseback immensely." Camelia"s eyes twinkled: "A sort of cowering desperation, wasn"t it?"
"No, she rode rather nicely," said Perior concisely. There was something rather brutal in Camelia"s comments as she stood there with such rhythmic loveliness of pose and contour.
"I wish Mary did not look so much like a milk pudding," she went on; "a raisinless milk pudding--so sane, so formless, so uneventful."
Perior did not smile.
CHAPTER IV
Lady Paton was a thin, graceful woman, her slenderness emphasized, like her daughter"s, by a very small head. Since her husband"s death she had worn black, and even now it seemed to invade her delicate whiteness rather overwhelmingly, rising closely about her throat, falling over her fragile hands, enfolding her with a soft solemnity. Her white hair was smoothed thickly under the transparent cambrics of an exquisite cap, and framed the sweetness of a faded face, in profile like Camelia"s.
Camelia"s eyes were her father"s, and her smile; Lady Paton"s eyes were round like a child"s, and her smile half-frightened, half-explanatory.
With all the gentlewoman"s mild dignity, her look was timid, as though it besought indulgence for a lifelong sense of insignificance, a look that aroused in Perior his grimmest scorn for a world in which such flower-like moral loveliness is inevitably victimized by garish egotisms. He had known Sir Charles, a charming companion, a good fellow--in the somewhat widely licensed sense the term implies, but not fit to untie his wife"s shoe-strings when it came to a comparison.
Camelia now had stepped upon her father"s undeserved pedestal, and Perior, watching the new epoch of incense-burning, had smiled more and more grimly. He was devoted to Lady Paton, and had been so since the days when a raw, sensitive, high-strung youth, fresh from college, her Madonna head had roused in him poetical idealizations, and her husband"s gay indifference a chafing resentment. With years he had grown rather fond of Sir Charles, could make allowances for him, and, too, had no longer idealized Lady Paton; but though he now saw her, sweet but dull, lovely in unselfishness, yet weak in all except a submission n.o.ble in its own way, the fragrant charm still stirred him with an almost paternal tenderness, a pity, even a reverence. She was too obtuse to see her own cramped and imprisoned life, but he saw it, and her unconsciousness was part of the pathos. He was very fond of her, and she of him, so that with all his protective partisanship there was, too, a willing filial deference.
This little corner of appreciation and affection was the softest spot in Perior"s character. He took both her hands now and said, looking at her with a whimsical gentleness, "So you are back at last! And glad to be back, too, are you not?"
"Oh, very. And Camelia seems to like it so much," she smiled round at her daughter; "she was beginning to look quite f.a.gged; already the country has done her good."
Camelia smiled back with a humoring lightness.
Mary Fairleigh stood quietly behind her aunt. Her expressionless face certainly did suggest a lacteal dulness. The Fairleighs were not responsible for her short nose and clumsily-cut mouth. Impecunious Maurice Fairleigh, third son, had "done for himself" when he married his younger sisters" nursery governess. Maurice had no money--and not many brains, and poor Miss Hockey had neither brains nor beauty, nor family nor money. Her flaxen hair and vacant blue eyes captured Maurice"s vagrant fancy during a lazy summer. He was very young, that fact was the only excuse possible; but, as the Fairleighs said, there was no accounting for Maurice"s folly. Maurice himself, after a very little time, could no longer account for it. He was a good-natured fellow, and his wonder at himself did not become too painfully apparent to his wife; but the short years of their married life were by no means a success.
Maurice was very delicate, and the struggle to make both ends meet was but grudgingly aided by disapproving relatives. Lady Paton, only, was sympathetic, practically sympathetic too; but during the greater part of Maurice"s matrimonial venture she was in India, and, as the other Fairleighs said, Angelica never had the wit to resent anything. Maurice died at Davos-Platz, and Mrs. Fairleigh, when her daughter was sixteen, departed her seemingly very pointless existence. Her last years had been sweetened by Lady Paton"s devoted kindness, and she left Mary to this guardian angel. Since that time Mary had lived at Enthorpe Lodge; a grave, good little girl, solemnly submissive to her cousin, painstaking in dutiful grat.i.tude toward her aunt. Camelia had always found this grat.i.tude irritating, and Mary"s manner--as of one on whom Providence had laid the patiently-borne burden of obscurity and dependence, very vexing. Camelia intended as little as her mother to recognize a difference, and did not realize that her own dominant characteristics necessitated Mary"s non-resistance.
She laughed at Mary"s gravity, tried to tease her out of her stolid acceptance of the role of poor relation, but, inevitably, she came to treat Mary with the tolerant carelessness she seemed only to expect. As for Lady Paton, she never surmised about Mary, nor a.n.a.lyzed her. Lady Paton accepted people and things as they appeared, and without conjecture. Mary was a dear, good girl. It was indeed impossible that her uninteresting virtues should arouse enthusiasm, and her aunt"s appreciation from its very fulness was calmly unemotional.
Lady Paton having become in these latter days a sort of decorative adjunct to her daughter--for Camelia used her mother to the very best advantage,--lace caps, sweetness and all,--it was upon Mary that the duller duties fell. Mary managed bills and servants, and household matters; wrote little notes, ran little errands, chose embroidery silks, and sent for the books to Mudie"s,--the tender books with happy matrimonial endings that Lady Paton liked. She read these books aloud, and talked to her aunt--as Camelia never did, never could. Lady Paton listened to her daughter, but she and Mary talked about her. Mary"s conversation required no adjustment of amazed faculties, no quelling of old-fashioned alarms, nor acceptance of a wondering incompetence.
The little prattle of gardening and gowns, and Camelia"s doings went on happily, unless hushed in an absorbed observance of that young heroine herself,--flinging pretty missiles of speech far above the heads of her mother and cousin.
Both dull dears; such was Camelia"s realistic inner comment, but Mary was an earthenware dear, and Mamma translucent porcelain. Camelia, who appreciated and loved all dainty perfection, appreciated and loved her mother, with much the same love that she would have given a slender white vase of priceless ware, displayed on a stand of honor in her knowingly grouped drawing-room. She was a distinctly creditable and decorative Mamma. As for Mary, she was not decorative; a harmless, necessary hot water jug.
Camelia, now, as her mother spoke to Perior, went to her side and gave the muslin that fell over her shoulder a little touch and settling.
"You have had a nice walk round the garden?" she said, smiling, "your cheek is just the pink of a sweet-pea."
"And how are you, Mary?" Perior asked, turning to Miss Fairleigh. "You might have more color I think."
"Mary has a headache," said Lady Paton, the fluttering smile with which she had received her daughter"s commendation fading, "I think she often has them and says nothing."
"You must play tennis with the Mappuck girls. You need more exercise,"
Perior continued. "They are at it vigorously from morning till night."
"Oh--really," Mary protested, "it is only Aunt Angelica"s kindness--I am quite well."
"And no one must dare be otherwise in this house," Camelia added. "Go and play tennis at once, Mary. I don"t approve of headaches." Mary smiled a modest, decorous little smile.
"Nor do I," said Perior, and then as Lady Paton had taken a chair near her work-table, he sat down beside her, while Mary sank from her temporary prominence, and, near the window, took up some sewing. Camelia remained near her, looking out at the smooth green stretches of the lawn, lending half an ear to the talk behind her, but keeping up at the same time a kindly little flow of question and reply with her cousin.
How were the flowers getting on? and the hay making? Had she seen that morning her poor village people? The questions were rather perfunctory; and while she spoke Camelia aided the faltering march of a burnished little beetle up the window, and helped him out on to the fragrant branch of syringa that brushed the pane.
"I hear that you are embarked on a season of parties," said Perior to Lady Paton.
"Yes, Camelia has so many friends. She thought she would like it here if she could keep it gay with people."