With Edged Tools.
by Henry Seton Merriman.
CHAPTER I. TWO GENERATIONS
Why all delights are vain, but that most vain Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain.
"My dear--Madam--what you call heart does not come into the question at all."
Sir John Meredith was sitting slightly behind Lady Cantourne, leaning towards her with a somewhat stiffened replica of his former grace. But he was not looking at her--and she knew it.
They were both watching a group at the other side of the great ballroom.
"Sir John Meredith on Heart," said the old lady, with a depth of significance in her voice.
"And why not?"
"Yes, indeed. Why not?"
Sir John smiled with that well-bred cynicism which a new school has not yet succeeded in imitating. They were of the old school, these two; and their worldliness, their cynicism, their conversational att.i.tude, belonged to a bygone period. It was a cleaner period in some ways--a period devoid of slums. Ours, on the contrary, is an age of slums wherein we all dabble to the detriment of our hands--mental, literary, and theological.
Sir John moved slightly in his chair, leaning one hand on one knee. His back was very flat, his clothes were perfect, his hair was not his own, nor yet his teeth. But his manners were entirely his own. His face was eighty years old, and yet he smiled his keen society smile with the best of them. There was not a young man in the room of whom he was afraid, conversationally.
"No, Lady Cantourne," he repeated. "Your charming niece is heartless.
She will get on."
Lady Cantourne smiled, and drew the glove further up her stout and motherly right arm.
"She will get on," she admitted. "As to the other, it is early to give an opinion."
"She has had the best of trainings--," he murmured. And Lady Cantourne turned on him with a twinkle amidst the wrinkles.
"For which?" she asked.
"Choisissez!" he answered, with a bow.
One sees a veteran swordsman take up the foil with a tentative turn of the wrist, lunging at thin air. His zest for the game has gone; but the skill lingers, and at times he is tempted to show the younger blades a pa.s.s or two. These were veteran fencers with a skill of their own, which they loved to display at times. The zest was that of remembrance; the sword-play of words was above the head of a younger generation given to slang and music-hall airs; and so these two had little bouts for their own edification, and enjoyed the glitter of it vastly.
Sir John"s face relaxed into the only repose he ever allowed it; for he had a habit of twitching and moving his lips such as some old men have.
And occasionally, in an access of further senility, he fumbled with his fingers at his mouth. He was clean shaven, and even in his old age he was handsome beyond other men--standing an upright six feet two.
The object of his attention was the belle of that ball, Miss Millicent Chyne, who was hemmed into a corner by a group of eager dancers anxious to insert their names in some corner of her card. She was the fashion at that time. And she probably did not know that at least half of the men crowded round because the other half were there. Nothing succeeds like the success that knows how to draw a crowd.
She received the ovation self-possessedly enough, but without that hauteur affected by belles of b.a.l.l.s--in books. She seemed to have a fresh smile for each new applicant--a smile which conveyed to each in turn the fact that she had been attempting all along to get her programme safely into his hands. A halting masculine pen will not be expected to explain how she compa.s.sed this, beyond a gentle intimation that masculine vanity had a good deal to do with her success.
"She is having an excellent time," said Sir John, weighing on the modern phrase with a subtle sarcasm. He was addicted to the use of modern phraseology, spiced with a cynicism of his own.
"Yes, I cannot help sympathising with her--a little," answered the lady.
"Nor I. It will not last."
"Well, she is only gathering the rosebuds."
"Wisely so, your ladyship. They at least LOOK as if they were going to last. The full-blown roses do not."
Lady Cantourne gave a little sigh. This was the difference between them.
She could not watch without an occasional thought for a time that was no more. The man seemed to be content that the past had been lived through and would never renew itself.
"After all," she said, "she is my sister"s child. The sympathy may only be a matter of blood. Perhaps I was like that myself once. Was I? You can tell me."
She looked slowly round the room and his face hardened. He knew that she was reflecting that there was no one else who could tell her; and he did not like it.
"No," he answered readily.
"And what was the difference?"
She looked straight in front of her with a strange old-fashioned demureness.
"Their name is legion, for they are many."
"Name a few. Was I as good-looking as that, for instance?"
He smiled--a wise, old, woman-searching smile.
"You were better-looking than that," he said, with a glance beneath his lashless lids. "Moreover, there was more of the grand lady about you.
You behaved better. There was less shaking hands with your partners, less nodding and becking, and none of that modern forwardness which is called, I believe, camaraderie."
"Thank you, Sir John," she answered, looking at him frankly with a pleasant smile. "But it is probable that we had the faults of our age."
He fumbled at his lips, having reasons of his own for disliking too close a scrutiny of his face.
"That is more than probable," he answered, rather indistinctly.
"Then," she said, tapping the back of his gloved hand with her fan, "we ought to be merciful to the faults of a succeeding generation. Tell me who is that young man with the long stride who is getting himself introduced now."
"That," answered Sir John, who prided himself upon knowing every one--knowing who they were and who they were not--"is young Oscard."
"Son of the eccentric Oscard?"
"Son of the eccentric Oscard."
"And where did he get that brown face?"
"He got that in Africa, where he has been shooting. He forms part of some one else"s bag at the present moment."
"What do you mean?"