"Beauty and cleverness in rags have a sorry time of it in this world.
But money, of course, especially if not too new, buys friends, power, good taste, morality. Poverty makes people base and cringing--makes criminals. One is jumped on in this world, scrunched into the earth, into the dirt, if one hasn"t money, and yet the hypocrites talk of compensation! Of all the sloppy, canting optimism with which people try to make themselves comfortable that is the sorriest! And while they talk they go on scrambling and scrunching for all they are worth; nasty beasts! They kick a man on the head, and say "the stupor compensates for the pain." That is the current theory about the lower cla.s.ses."
"Yet you enjoy the world, Camelia."
"I am not jumped on."
"You jump on other people, then?"
"Not in a sordid manner; I don"t have to soil my feet. Why shouldn"t I enjoy it?"
"And you think that Sir Arthur"s millions would emphasize the enjoyment?"
"Widen it, certainly. But don"t be gross, Frances. A great deal depends on him. I am not offering myself for sale, you know."
"No, I don"t think you would. You have no need to."
"He would really be glaringly golden, wouldn"t he, were he not draped with the mossy antiquity of his name?" said Camelia, drawing a white magnolia flower within the window frame, and bending her head to the scented cup.
"An ideal husband, from every point of view," Mrs. Fox-Darriel resumed; "clever, very clever, and very good--rather overpoweringly good, Camelia."
"I think goodness a most charming phenomenon, I shouldn"t mind studying it in a husband."
"Mrs. Jedsley is good. Why don"t you study her?"
"There is nothing phenomenal in her goodness, it is a product of circ.u.mstance only. There is Mary," Camelia added, tipping her chair a little towards the window for a clearer view of the lawn below. "Mary in a Liberty silk, of yellow-green, and smocked. Why, Mary, why wear a Liberty gown, especially smocked?"
"I have sometimes suspected that your colorless little cousin is here to play the part of a discord that resolves into and heightens your harmony," said Mrs. Fox-Darriel; "or is it the post of whipping-boy that she fills?"
Camelia continued to look from the window placidly, only raising her eyebrows a little.
"No, Mary never gets a whipping, not even when I deserve one. Mamma is very fond of Mary; so am I," she added. Mrs. Fox-Darriel took up her book with a little yawn that Camelia for all her placidity resented.
"How can you read that garbage?" she inquired smilingly, glancing at the t.i.tle.
"The _bete humaine_ rather interests me."
"Even interpreted by another? The man is far more insupportable than Zola, inasmuch as he is clever, and an artist."
"That"s why I read him. You seem to know a good deal about garbage, my dear."
"I know a good deal about everything, I fancy!" said Camelia, with her gayest laugh. "I took a course of garbage once, just enough to make up my mind that I did not care for the flavor. We have a right to choose the phases of life we want to see represented."
"I like garbage," Mrs. Fox-Darriel said stubbornly.
"Yes, you are very catholic, I know. I am more limited." Camelia still eyed the lawn, sniffing at the magnolia. Now she rose suddenly and went to the mirror.
"Mary puts on a sailor hat--so," she said gravely, setting hers far back at a ludicrous angle. "Poor Mary!" She tilted the hat forward again, and briskly put the pin through it. "I am going down to harry Mrs. Jedsley.
Good-bye, Frances."
"Good-bye. I shall be down to tea presently."
"The _bete humaine_ will spoil your appet.i.te!" laughed Camelia as she went out.
Mrs. Fox-Darriel heard her running down the corridor and the light rhythm of her feet on the stairs.
"Pretty little minx!" she said good-humoredly; and her thoughts turned to Sir Arthur. What a lucky girl was Camelia! It was rather tiresome, perhaps, to sit by and watch her triumphs. Mrs. Fox-Darriel found the role of second-fiddle a little dull; still, it was well worth while to play it. She got up and went to the window, where the magnolia still swayed faintly from the suddenness of Camelia"s departure. Tapping the sill lightly with her finger-tips, Mrs. Fox-Darriel looked out, yawning once more, at the translucent blue of the sky, the still shining of the little lake beyond the trees, the sun-dappled lawn, and at Mary Fairleigh on the lawn in the funny Liberty dress. Mr. Perior was walking beside her, in riding costume, a whip in his hand. Mrs. Fox-Darriel surveyed them as they walked slowly away from the house. He had evidently just joined Mary; and as Camelia herself appeared on the lawn her departure took on an amusing aspect.
Now it really was too bad of Camelia, she could have no use for him herself. The sun flashed from her hair as she bounded gaily across the turf and caught Perior"s arm with a schoolgirl familiarity. Mrs.
Fox-Darriel drew back sharply, but still observed from the screen of magnolia leaves Mary"s slow return to the house, and Camelia"s skipping step as she led Mr. Perior towards the garden. He held the whip clasped in his hand behind his back, and, as he walked, switched his calf in its leather gaiter. Mrs. Fox-Darriel fancied some temper in the action.
CHAPTER VII
When Mrs. Fox-Darriel descended to the drawing-room a quarter of an hour later, she found Lady Paton and Mary alone with Mrs. Jedsley, who as yet showed no intention of departing. Mrs. Jedsley was very stout, but of a vigorous bearing. Her firm, wide face was dashed with rather choleric notes of red on cheeks, chin, and eyebrows. Her eyes were witty and humorous. Mrs. Fox-Darriel, very indifferently, felt these quickly travelling eyes taking in every gleam and glitter of her tea-gown. Mrs.
Fox-Darriel always jingled a little as she walked; she was one of those women who dangle lorgnettes at the ends of swaying neck-chains, and circle their wrists with a mult.i.tude of bangles, and now, as she sank into a chair beside Lady Paton, and smiled a languid acceptance of tea, the infinity of pendent jewels and the linked gold that draped her person, chimed out quite a harmonious clatter. Mrs. Fox-Darriel always gave Lady Paton a fluttered look, the look of a child shrinking from a too persistently obtrusive rattle, and she handed her the tea and bread and b.u.t.ter with gently scared glances.
"What delicious tea," said Mrs. Fox-Darriel affably, "and the pouring of tea is an art in its decadence. Really, dear Lady Paton, you have spoiled me for all cups poured by other hands. Your aunt"s hands add a distinct charm, do they not?" she added, looking at Mary,--"and her cap." Indeed Lady Paton"s caps and hands resembled one another in blanched delicacy.
"Oh yes," Mary replied hastily; she was not accustomed to this suave mode of address from Mrs. Fox-Darriel.
"I saw you walking in the garden just now," pursued that glittering personage; "you made quite a picture in your pretty dress, I a.s.sure you."
"Oh! do you like it?" Mary"s face was transfused by a blush of surprised pleasure.
"It is really charming," said Mrs. Fox-Darriel unblinkingly, while Mrs.
Jedsley"s eyes travelled up and down poor Mary"s ungainliness.
"Against the deeper shades of green, you know, and with your golden hair, you looked quite--quite like an Albert Moore. Has your friend, Mr.
Perior, gone? I saw him with you." There was a subtly delightful intimation in this question that filled Mary with a half painful, half delicious embarra.s.sment.
"Mr. Perior is with Camelia," she said, the crude fact hardly jarring on the dulcet echo of Mrs. Fox-Darriel"s question. He was her friend, Mary knew, felt it with a wave of grat.i.tude that quieted many aches, but was it then so evident--so noticeable?
"Ah yes! Camelia is rather fond of teasing him, I am afraid," said Mrs.
Fox-Darriel, observing Mary"s flush, and noting as an unkindness of nature that her hair, the only grace she possessed, should grow so thickly at the back and with such unbecoming scantiness around the high brow. Mary"s whole being had been quivering with the pain of her dispossession, but a grateful warmth now stole through the chill of bereavement.
Her flush had not died when Camelia came in, Perior following her.
Camelia"s face was imperturbably gay, but from a certain severity and tension in Perior"s expression, Mrs. Fox-Darriel surmised that the pastoral promenade had not been altogether peaceful.
It was hardly possible, of course, that the indifference of this stiff provincial should pique Camelia into an att.i.tude that might compromise real interests; no, hardly possible; yet Mrs. Fox-Darriel, with some acuteness, determined that all her efforts should tend to make such an absurdity impossible indeed.
Ugly Mary was evidently in love with the unattractive Diogenes; but Camelia need not know that. Mrs. Fox-Darriel almost laughed at herself while she meditated; Camelia could hardly intend more than the purposeless capturing of Diogenes; Camelia"s head was perfectly sound when it came to decisive extremes. Only--well--women, all women, were such _fools_ sometimes. That bounding, pursuing step across the lawn had given Mrs. Fox-Darriel a new impression of Camelia.
"Look, Mamma, is not this beautiful? Look, Frances." Camelia held out a branch of white roses, buds and leaves climbing on lovely curves to a heavy, swaying flower;--"it is such a perfect spray that I am going to attempt a j.a.panese arrangement with this bit of pine. Mary, will you fetch me that bronze vase out of the morning room--with its little stand, you know--and have it filled with water; and, Mary,--" Mary was departing obediently, "a pair of scissors--don"t forget. If there is anything I dislike," Camelia went on, hers was always a temperate manner of speech, "it is a heavy ma.s.s of flowers bunched together with all the individuality, all the form and vitality, of line quite lost."
She smiled at Mrs. Jedsley as she spoke, skimming caressing finger-tips over her rose branch, and adding, "You may see me at your place to-morrow, Mrs. Jedsley. Mr. Perior has been giving me a dreadful scolding on my neighborly deficiencies. To-morrow I make a conscientious round of calls--and pour balm into all the wounded bosoms." Mrs.
Fox-Darriel glanced quickly at Perior to see how he relished this offensive obedience; Perior, as he stood before the fireplace, was looking at his boots. Mrs. Jedsley"s eyebrows grew very red.