"I will not be put with the vulgar crowd like that. I do not care for lions. Tigers are my taste."
He laughed.
"Do come then. But remember, there are plants which can only grow in darkness. And I believe this is one of them."
When Max Elliot had gone, Charmian sat for two or three minutes looking into the fire, where pale, steely-blue lights played against the prevailing gold and red. All the absurdity, the nonsense, had dropped away from her.
"Max Elliot seems quite afraid of me," she said at last. "Am I so very vulgar?"
"Not more so than most intelligent young women who are rather "in it" in London," returned her mother.
"Surely I"m not a climber, without knowing it!"
"No, I don"t think so. But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort to keep your head above water."
"How very awful! I don"t know why it is, but your head always is well above water without your making any effort."
"I don"t bother as to whether it is or not, you see."
"No. But what has it all to do with this Mr. Heath?"
"Perhaps we shall find out to-morrow night. Max may think you"ll be inclined to rave about him."
"Rave about a cropped head that composes away from the piano!"
"Ah, that Brighton tradition!" said Mrs. Mansfield, taking up Steiner"s _Teosofia_.
CHAPTER II
In the comedy of London Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter did not play leading parts, but they were, in the phrase of the day, "very much in it." Mrs. Mansfield"s father had been a highly intelligent, cultivated, charming and well-off man, who had had a place in the Isle of Wight, and been an intimate friend of Tennyson, and of most of the big men of his day. Her mother had possessed the peculiar and rather fragile kind of beauty which seems to attract great English painters, and had been much admired and beloved in Melbury Road, Holland Park, and elsewhere. She, too, had been intelligent, intellectual and very musical. From Frederick Leighton"s little parties, where Joachim or Norman Neruda played to a chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at which might be met the _creme de la creme_ of the intellectual and artistic worlds, and at which no vulgarian, however rich and prominent, was ever to be seen.
Mrs. Mansfield, quite instinctively and naturally, had carried on the family tradition; at first with her husband, Arthur Mansfield, one of the most cultivated and graceful members of their "set," and after his death alone. She was well off, had a love of beauty and comfort, but a horror of display, and knew everyone she cared to know, without having the vaguest idea who was, or was not, included in "the smart set."
Having been brought up among lions, she had never hunted a lion in her life, though she had occasionally pulled the ears of one, or stroked its nose. She had been, and was, the intimate friend of many men and women who were "doing things" in the world. But she had never felt within herself the power to create anything original, and was far too intelligent, far too aristocratic in mind, to struggle impotently to be what she was not meant to be, or to fight against her own clearly seen limitations.
Unlike Mrs. Mansfield in this respect Charmian struggled, and her mother knew it.
On the following evening, when Charmian and her mother were dining together before going to Max Elliot"s, she said rather abruptly:
"Why didn"t Mr. Elliot invite us to dinner to-night, do you think?"
"Why should he have invited us?"
"Well, perhaps it wasn"t necessary. But surely it would have been quite natural."
"Probably he wanted to prepare the new note for you."
"Why should I require preparation?"
"The new note!"
"Why should the new note require preparation against me?"
"I said for you. Possibly we may find out this evening. Besides Delia is in a rest cure as usual. So there is no hostess."
Delia was Max Elliot"s wife, a graceful nonent.i.ty who, having never done a stroke of work in her life, was perpetually breaking down, and being obliged to rest expensively under the supervision of fashionable doctors. She was now in Hampstead, enclosed in a pale green chamber, living on milk and a preparation called "Marella," and enjoying injections of salt water. She was also being ma.s.saged perpetually by a stout young woman from Sweden, and was deprived of her letters. "No letters!" was a prescription which had made her physician celebrated.
"Oh, the peace of it!" Mrs. Elliot was faintly murmuring to the athletic ma.s.seuse, at the very moment when Charmian said:
"There very seldom is a hostess. Poor Max Elliot!"
"He"s accustomed to it. And Delia must be doing something. This time she may be cured. Life originally issued from the sea, they say."
"Near Margate, I suppose. What a mystery existence is!"
"Are you going to be tiresome to-night?"
"No, I won"t, I won"t. But if he plays his Te Deum I know I shall sleep like a tired child."
"I don"t suppose he will."
"I feel he"s going to."
"Then why were you so anxious to go?"
"I don"t like to be left out of things. No one does."
"Except the elect. How thoughtful of you to dress in black!"
"Well, dearest, you are always in white. And I love to throw up my beautiful mother."
Mrs. Mansfield put an arm gently round her as they left the dining-room.
"You could make any mother be a sister to you."
Just before ten their motor glided up to the Elliots" green door in Cadogan Place.
Max Elliot was the very successful senior partner of an old-established stockbroking firm in the City. This was a fact, so people had to accept it. But acceptance was made difficult by his almost strangely unfinancial appearance and manner. Out of the City he never spoke of the City. He was devoted to the arts, and especially to music, of which he had a really considerable knowledge. All prominent musicians knew him.
He was the friend of _prime donne_, a pillar of the opera, an ardent frequenter of all the important concerts. Where Threadneedle Street came into his life n.o.body seemed to know. Nevertheless, his numerous clients trusted him completely as a business man. And more than one singer, whose artistic temperament had brought her--or him, as the case might be--to the door of the poorhouse, had reason to bless Max Elliot"s shrewd business head and generous industry in friendship. He had a good heart as well as a fine taste, and his power of criticism had not succeeded in killing his capacity for enthusiasm.
"_He"s_ not begun yet!" murmured Charmian to her mother, as the butler led them sedately down a rather long hall, past two or three doors, to the music-room which Elliot had built out at the back of his house.
"I never heard that he was going to begin at all. We haven"t come here for a performance, but to make an acquaintance."
Charmian twisted her lips, and the butler opened the door and announced them.