The more he thought over his visit to Adela Sellingworth the more certain did Francis Braybrooke become that it had not gone off well. For once he had not played his cards to the best advantage. He felt sure that inadvertently he had irritated his hostess. Her final dismissal of the subject of young Craven’s possible happiness with Beryl Van Tuyn, if circumstances should ever bring them together, had been very abrupt. She had really almost kicked it out of the conversation.
But then, she had never been fond of discussing love affairs. Braybrooke had noticed that.
As he considered the matter he began to feel rather uneasy. Was it possible that Adela Sellingworth—his mind hesitated, then took the unpleasant leap—that Adela Sellingworth was beginning to like young Craven in an unsuitable way?
Craven certainly had behaved oddly when Adela Sellingworth had been discussed between them, and when Craven had been the subject of discussion with Adela Sellingworth she had behaved curiously. There was something behind it all. Of that Braybrooke was convinced. But his perplexity and doubt increased to something like agitation a few days later when he met a well-born woman of his acquaintance, who had “gone in for” painting and living her own life, and had become a bit of a Bohemian. She had happened to mention that she had seen his friend, “that wonderful-looking Lady Sellingworth,” dining at the Bella Napoli on a recent evening. Naturally Braybrooke supposed that the allusion was to the night of Lady Sellingworth’s dinner with Beryl Van Tuyn, and he spoke of the lovely girl as Lady Sellingworth’s companion. But his informant, looking rather surprised, told him that Lady Sellingworth had been with a very handsome young man, and, on discreet inquiry being made, gave an admirable description from the painter’s point of view, of Craven.
Braybrooke said nothing, but he was secretly almost distressed. He thought it such a mistake for his distinguished friend to go wandering about in Soho alone with a mere boy. It was undignified. It was not the thing. He could not understand it unless really she was losing her head. And then he remembered her past. Although he never spoke of it, and now seldom thought about it, Braybrooke knew very well what sort of woman Adela Sellingworth had been. But her dignified life of ten years had really almost wiped her former escapades out of his recollection. There seemed to be a gulf fixed between the professional beauty and the white-haired recluse of Berkeley Square. When he looked at her, sat with her now, if he ever gave a thought to her past it was accompanied, or immediately followed, by a mental question: “Was it she who did that?” or “Can she ever have been like that?”
But now Braybrooke uneasily began to remember Lady Sellingworth’s past reputation and to think of the “old guard.”
If she were to fall back into folly now, after what she had done ten years ago, the “old guard” would show her no mercy. Her character would be torn to pieces. He regretted very much his introduction of Craven into her life. But how could he have thought that she would fascinate a boy?
After much careful thought—for he took his social responsibilities and duties very seriously—he resolved to take action on the lines which had occurred to him when he first began to be anxious about Craven’s feeling towards Adela Sellingworth; he resolved to do his best to bring Beryl Van Tuyn and Craven together.
The first step he took was to call on Miss Cronin when Beryl Van Tuyn was out. He went to Claridge’s in inquire for Miss Van Tuyn. On ascertaining that she was not at home he sent up his name to Miss Cronin, who was practically always in the house. At any rate, Braybrooke, who had met her several times at Miss Van Tuyn’s apartment in Paris, had understood so from herself. If Miss Van Tuyn needed her as a chaperon she was, of course, to be counted upon to risk taking air and exercise. Otherwise, as she frankly said, she preferred to stay quietly at home. By nature she was sedentary. Her temperament inclined her to a sitting posture, which, however, she frequently varied by definitely lying down.
On this occasion Miss Cronin was as usual in the house, and begged that Mr. Braybrooke would come up. He found her in an arm-chair—she had just vacated a large sofa—with Bourget’s “Le Disciple” in her hand. Her eyebrows were rather dim, for she had caught a slight London cold which had led her to neglect them. But she was looking mildly cheerful, and was very glad to have a visitor. Though quite happy alone with Bourget she was always ready for a comfortable gossip; and she liked Francis Braybrooke.
After a few words about the cold, Bourget and Paris, Braybrooke turned the conversation to Miss Van Tuyn. He had understood that she meant only to make a short stay in London, and rather wondered about the change of plans which had brought Miss Cronin across the Channel. Miss Cronin, he soon discovered, was rather wondering too.
“Beryl seems to have been quite got hold of by London,” she observed with mild surprise.
After a pause she added:
“It may be—mind I don’t say it is, but it may be—the Wallace Collection.”
“The Wallace Collection?” said Braybrooke.
“I believe she goes there every day. It is in Manchester Square, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then I think it must be that. Because two or three times lately I have heard her mention Manchester Square as if it were very much on her mind. Once I remember her saying that Manchester Square was worth all the rest of London put together! And another time she said that Manchester square ought to be in Paris. That struck me as very strange, but after making inquiries I found that the Wallace Collection was situated there, or near there.”
“Hertford House is in the Square.”
“Then it is that. You know how wrapped up Beryl is in that kind of thing. And, of course, she knows all the Paris collections by heart. Is the Wallace Collection large? Does it contain much?”
“It contains innumerable priceless treasures,” returned Braybrooke.
“Innumerable! Dear me!” murmured Fanny Cronin, managing to lift the dimly painted eyebrows in a distinctively plaintive manner. “Then I dare say we shall be here for months.”
“You don’t think,” began Braybrooke with exquisite caution, “you don’t think that possibly she may have a more human reason for remaining in London?”
Fanny Cronin made a rabbit’s mouth and looked slightly bemused.
“Human!” she said. “You think Beryl could have a human reason?”
“Oh, surely, surely!”
“But she prefers bronzes to people. I assure you it is so. I have heard her say that you can never be disappointed by a really good bronze, but that men and women often distress you by their absurdities and follies.”
“That sort of thing is only the outcome of a passing mood of youthful cynicism.”
“Is it? I sometimes think that a born collector, like Beryl, sees more in bronze and marble than in flesh and blood. She is very sweet, but she has quite a passion for possessing.”
“Is not the greatest possession of all the possession of another’s human heart?” said Braybrooke impressively, and with sentiment.
“I dare say it is, but really I cannot speak from experience,” said Fanny Cronin, with remarkable simplicity.
“Has it never occurred to you,” continued Braybrooke, “that your lovely charge is not likely to remain always Beryl Van Tuyn?”
Miss Cronin looked startled, and slightly moved her ears, a curious habit which she sometimes indulged in under the influence of sudden emotion, and which was indicative of mental stress.
“But if Beryl ever marries,” she said, “I might have to give up living in Paris! I might have to go back to America!”
She leaned forward, with her small, plump, and conspicuously freckled hands grasping the arms of her chair.
“You don’t think, Mr. Braybrooke, that Beryl is not here for the Wallace Collection? You don’t think that she is in love with someone in London?”
Francis Braybrooke was decidedly taken aback by this abrupt emotional outburst. He had not meant to provoke it. Indeed, in his preoccupation with Craven’s affairs and Adela Sellingworth’s possible indiscretions—really he knew of no gentler word to apply to what he had in mind—he had entirely forgotten that Fanny Cronin’s charming profession of sitting in deep arm-chairs, reposing on luxurious sofas, and lying in perfect French beds, might, indeed would, be drastically interfered with by Miss Van Tuyn’s marriage. It was very careless of him. He was inclined to blame himself almost severely.
“My dear Miss Cronin,” he hastily exclaimed. “If you were ever to think of changing your—your”—he could not find the word; “condition” would not do; “state of life” suggested the Catechism; “profession” was preposterous, besides, he did not mean that—“your sofa”—he had got it—“your sofa in the Avenue Henri Martin for a sofa somewhere else, I know of at least a dozen charming houses in Paris which would gladly, I might say thankfully, open their doors to receive you.”
This was really a lie. At the moment Braybrooke did not know of one. But he hastily made up his mind to be “responsible” for Fanny Cronin if anything should occur through his amiable machinations.
“Thank you, Mr. Braybrooke. You are kindness itself. So, then, Beryl is going to marry! And she never hinted it to me, although we talked over marriage only yesterday, when I gave her Bourget’s views on it as expressed in his ‘Physiologie de l’amour moderne.’ She never said one word. She never—”
But at this point Braybrooke felt that an interruption, however rude, was obligatory.
“I have no reason whatever to suppose that Miss Van Tuyn is thinking of marriage at this moment,” he said, in an almost shrill voice.
“But surely you would not frighten me without a reason,” said Fanny Cronin with mild severity, sitting back again in her chair.
“Frighten you, dear Miss Cronin! I would not do that for the world. What have I said to frighten you?”
“You talked of my changing my sofa for a sofa somewhere else! If Beryl is not going to marry why should I think of changing?”
“But nothing lasts for ever. The whole world is in a state of flux.”
“Really, Mr. Braybrooke! I am quite sure I am not in a state of flux!” said Miss Cronin with unusual dignity. “We American women, you must understand, have our principles and know how to preserve them.”
“On my honour, I only meant that life inevitably brings with it changes. I am sure you will bear me out in that.”
“I don’t know about bearing you out,” said Miss Cronin, looking rather helplessly at Francis Braybrooke’s fairly tall and well-nourished figure. “But why should Beryl want to change? She is very happy as she is.”
“I know—I know. But surely such a lovely girl is certain to marry some day. And can we wish it otherwise? Some day a man will come who knows how to appreciate her as she deserves, who understands her nature, who is ready to devote his life to fulfilling her deepest needs.”
Miss Cronin suddenly looked intelligent and at the same time like a dragon. Never before had Braybrooke seen such an expression upon her face, such a stiffening of dignity to her ample figure. She sat straight up, looked him full in the face, and observed:
“I understand your meaning, Mr. Braybrooke. You wish to marry Beryl. Well, you must forgive me for saying that I think you are much too old for her.”
Braybrooke had not blushed for probably at least forty years, but he blushed scarlet now, and seized his beard with a hand that looked thoroughly unstrung.
“My dear Miss Cronin!” he said, in a voice which was almost hoarse with protest. “You absolutely misunderstood me. It is much too la—I mean that I have no intention whatever of changing my condition. No, no! Let us talk of something else. So you are reading ‘Le Disciple’” (he picked it up). “A very striking book! I always think it one of Bourget’s very best.”
He poured forth an energetic cataract of words in praise of Miss Cronin’s favourite author, and presently got away without any further quite definite misunderstanding. But when he was out in the corridor on his way to the lift he indulged himself in a very unwonted expression of acrimonious condemnation.
“Damn these red-headed old women!” he muttered in his beard. “There’s no doing anything with them! The idea of my going to her to propose for Miss Van Tuyn! What next, I wonder?”
When he was out in Brook Street he hesitated for a moment, then took out his watch and looked at it. Half-past three! He thought of the Wallace Collection. It seemed to draw him strangely just then. He put his watch back and walked towards Manchester Square.
He had gained the Square and was about to enter the enclosure before Hertford House by the gateway on the left, when he saw Miss Van Tuyn come out by the gateway on the right, and walk slowly towards Oxford Street in deep conversation with a small horsey-looking man, whose face he could not see, but whose back and legs, and whose dress and headgear, strongly suggested to him the ring at Newmarket and the Paddock at Ascot.
Braybrooke hesitated. The attraction of the Wallace Collection no longer drew him. Besides, it was getting late. On the other hand, he scarcely liked to interrupt an earnest tete-a-tete. If it had not been that he was exceptionally strung up at that moment he would probably have gone quietly off to one of his clubs. But who knew what that foolish old woman at Claridge’s might say to Miss Van Tuyn when she reached her hotel? It really was essential in the sacred interest of truth that he should forestall Fanny Cronin. The jockey—if it was a jockey—Miss Van Tuyn was with must put up with an interruption. But the interruption must be brought about naturally. It would not do to come up behind them. That would seem too intrusive. He must manage to skip round deftly when the occasion offered, and by a piece of masterly strategy to come upon them face to face.
Seized of this intention Braybrooke did a thing he had never done before; he “dogged” two human beings, walking with infinite precaution.
His quarry presently turned into the thronging crowds of Oxford Street and made towards the Marble Arch, keeping to the right-hand pavement. Braybrooke saw his opportunity. He dodged across the road to an island, waited there till a policeman, extending a woollen thumb, stopped the traffic, then gained the opposite pavement, hurried decorously on that side towards the Marble Arch, and after a sprint of perhaps a couple of hundred yards recrossed the street almost at the risk of his life, and walked warily back towards Oxford Circus, keeping his eyes wide open.
Before many minutes had passed he discerned the graceful and athletic figure of Miss Van Tuyn coming towards him; then, immediately afterwards, he caught a glimpse of a blue shaven face with an aquiline nose beside her, and realized that the man he had taken for a jockey was Dick Garstin, the famous painter.
As Braybrooke knew everyone, he, of course, knew Garstin, and he wondered now why he had not recognized his back at Manchester Square. Perhaps his mind had been too engrossed with Fanny Cronin and the outrage at Claridge’s. He only knew the painter slightly, just sufficiently to dislike him very much. Indeed, only the acknowledged eminence of the man induced Braybrooke to have anything to do with him. But one has to know publicly acclaimed geniuses or consent to be thoroughly out of it. So Braybrooke included Garstin in the enormous circle of his acquaintances, and went to his private views.
But now the recognition gave him pause, and he almost wished he had not taken so much trouble to meet Miss Van Tuyn and her companion. For he could say nothing he wanted to say while Garstin was there. And the man was so damnably unconventional, in fact, so downright rude, and so totally devoid of all delicacy, all insight in social matters, that even if he saw that Braybrooke wanted a quiet word with Miss Van Tuyn he would probably not let him have it. However, it was too late now to avoid the steadily advancing couple. Miss Van Tuyn had seen Braybrooke, and sent him a smile. In a moment he was face to face with them, and she stopped to greet him.
“I have been spending an hour at the Wallace Collection with Mr. Garstin,” she said. “And quarrelling with him all the time. His views on French art are impossible.”
“Ah! how are you?” said Braybrooke, addressing the painter with almost exaggerated cordiality.
Garstin nodded in his usual offhand way. He did not dislike Braybrooke. When Braybrooke was there he perceived him, having eyes, and having ears heard his voice. But hitherto Braybrooke had never succeeded in conveying any impression to the mind of Garstin. On one occasion when Braybrooke had been discussed in Garstin’s presence, and Garstin had said: “Who is he?” and had received a description of Braybrooke with the additional information: “But he comes to your private views! You have known him for years!” he had expressed his appreciation of Braybrooke’s personality and character by the exclamation: “Oh, to be sure! The beard with the gentleman!” Braybrooke did not know this, or he would certainly have disliked Garstin even more than he did already.
As Garstin’s nod was not followed by any other indication of humanity Braybrooke addressed Miss Van Tuyn, and told her of his call at Claridge’s.
“And as you were not to be found I paid a visit to Miss Cronin.”
“She must have bored you very much,” was the charming girl’s comment. “She has the most confused mind I know.”
What an opening for Braybrooke! But he could not take it because of Garstin, who stood by cruelly examining the stream of humanity which flowed past them hypnotized by the shops.
“May I—shall I be in the way if I turn back with you for a few steps?” he ventured, with the sort of side glance at Garstin that a male dog gives to another male dog while walking round and round on a first meeting. “It is such a pleasure to see you.”
Here he threw very definite admiration into the eyes which he fixed on Miss Van Tuyn.
She responded automatically and begged him to accompany them.
“Dick is leaving me at the Marble Arch,” she said. “The reason he gives is that he is going to take a Turkish Bath in the Harrow Road. But that is a lie that even an American girl brought up in Paris is unable to swallow. What are you really going to do, Dick?”
As she spoke she walked on, having Garstin on one side of her and Francis Braybrooke on the other.
“I’m going to have a good sweat in the Harrow Road.”
Braybrooke was disgusted. It was not that he really minded the word used to indicate the process which obtains in a Turkish Bath. No; it was Garstin’s blatant way of speaking it that offended his susceptibilities. The man was perpetually defying the decencies and delicacies which were as perfume in Braybrooke’s nostrils.
“The doctors say that it is an excellent thing to open the pores,” said Braybrooke discreetly.
Garstin cast a glance at him, as if he now saw him for the first time.
“Do you mean to tell us you believe in doctors?” he said.
“I do, in some doctors,” said Braybrooke. “There are charlatans in all professions unfortunately.”
“And some of them are R.A.‘s,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “By the way, Dick is going to paint me.”
“Really! How very splendid!” said Braybrooke, again with exaggerated cordiality. “With such a subject I’m sure—”
But here he was interrupted by Garstin, who said:
“She tells everyone I’m going to paint her because she hopes by reiteration to force me to do it. But she isn’t the type that interests me.”
“My dear Dick, I’ll gladly take to morphia or drink if it will help,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “I can easily get the Cafe Royal expression. One has only to sit with a glass of something the colour of absinthe in front of one and look sea-sick. I’m perfectly certain that with a week or two’s practice I could look quite as degraded as Cora.”
“Cora?” said Braybrooke, alertly, hearing a name he did not know.
“She’s a horror who goes to the Cafe Royal and whom Dick calls a free woman.”
“Free from all the virtues, I suppose!” said Braybrooke smartly.
“Good-bye both of you!” said Garstin at this juncture.
“But we haven’t got to the Marble Arch!”
“What’s that got to do with it? I’m off.”
He seemed to be going, then stopped, and directed the two pin-points of light at Miss Van Tuyn.
“I flatly refuse to make an Academy portrait of you, so don’t hope for it,” he said. “But if you come along to the studio to-morrow afternoon you may possibly find me at work on a blackmailer.”
“Dick!” said Miss Van Tuyn, in a voice which startled Braybrooke.
“I don’t promise,” said the painter. “I don’t believe in promises, unless you break ‘em. But it’s just on the cards.”
“You are painting a blackmailer!” said Braybrooke, with an air of earnest interest. “How very original!”
“Original! Why is it original to paint a blackmailer?”
“Oh—well, one doesn’t often run across them. They—they seem to keep so much to themselves.”
“I don’t agree with you. If they did some people would be a good deal better off than they are now.”
“Ah, to be sure! That’s very true. I had never looked at it in that light.”
“What time, Dick?” said Miss Van Tuyn, rather eagerly.
“You might look in about three.”
“I will. That’s a bargain.”
Garstin turned on his heel and tramped away towards Berkeley Street.
“You are going home by Park Lane?” said Braybrooke, feeling greatly relieved, but still rather upset.
“Yes. But why don’t you take me somewhere to tea?”
“Nothing I should like better. Where shall we go?”
“Let’s go to the Ritz. I had meant to walk, but let us take a taxi.”
There was suddenly a change in Miss Van Tuyn. Braybrooke noticed it at once. She seemed suddenly restless, almost excited, and as if she were in a hurry.
“There’s one!” she added, lifting her tightly furled umbrella.
The driver stopped, and in a moment they were on their way to the Ritz.
“You like Dick Garstin?” said Braybrooke, pulling up one of the windows and wondering what Miss Cronin would say if she could see him at this moment.
“I don’t like him,” returned Miss Van Tuyn. “No one could do that. But I admire him, and he interests me. He is almost the only man I know who is really indifferent to opinion. And he has occasional moments of good nature. But I don’t wish him to be soft. If he were he would be like everyone else.”
“I must confess I find it very difficult to get on with him.”
“He’s a wonderful painter.”
“No doubt—in his way.”
“I think it a great mistake for any creative artist to be wonderful in someone else’s way,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
“I only meant that his way is sometimes rather startling. And then his subjects! Drugged women! Dram drinking men! And now it seems even blackmailers.”
“A blackmailer might have a wonderful face.”
“Possibly. But it would be likely to have a disgusting expression.”
“It might. On the other hand, I could imagine a blackmailer looking like Chaliapine as Mephistopheles.”
“I don’t like distressing art,” said Braybrooke, rather firmly. “And I think there is too much of it nowadays.”
“Anything is better than the merely nice. And you have far too much of that in England. Men like Dick Garstin are a violent protest against that, and sometimes they go to extremes. He has caught the secret of evil, and when he has done with it he may quite possibly catch the secret of good.”
“And then,” said Braybrooke, “I am sure he will paint you.”
It was meant to be a very charmingly turned compliment. But Miss Van Tuyn received it rather doubtfully.
“I don’t know that I want to wait quite so long as that,” she murmured. “Besides—I think I rather come in between. At least, I hope so.”
At this point in the conversation the cab stopped before the Ritz.
To Francis Braybrooke’s intense astonishment—and it might almost be added confusion—the first person his eyes lit on as they walked towards the tea-tables was Fanny Cronin, comfortably seated in an immense arm-chair, devouring a muffin in the company of an old lady, whose determined face was completely covered with a criss-cross of wrinkles, and whose withered hands were flashing with magnificent rings. He was so taken aback that he was guilty of a definite start, and the exclamation, “Miss Cronin!” in a voice that suggested alarm.
“Oh, old Fanny with Mrs. Clem Hodson!” said Miss Van Tuyn. “She’s a school friend of Fanny’s from Philadelphia. Let us go to that table in the far corner. I’ll just speak to them while you order tea.”
“But I thought Miss Cronin never went out.”
“She never does, except with Mrs. Clem, unless I want her.”
“How singularly unfortunate I am to-day!” thought Braybrooke, as he bowed to Miss Cronin in a rather confused manner and went to do as he was told.
He ordered tea, then sat down anxiously to wait for Miss Van Tuyn. From his corner he watched her colloquy with the two school friends from Philadelphia, and it seemed to him that something very important was being told. For Fanny Cronin looked almost animated, and her manner approached the emphatic as she spoke to the standing girl. Mrs. Hodson seemed to take very little part in the conversation, but sat looking very determined and almost imperious as she listened. And presently Braybrooke saw her extremely observant dark eyes—small, protuberant and round as buttons—turn swiftly, with even, he thought, a darting movement, in his direction.
“I shall be driven, really driven, to make the matter quite clear,” he thought, almost with desperation. “Otherwise—”
But at this moment Miss Van Tuyn came away to him, and their tea was brought by a waiter.
He thought she cast a rather satirical look at him as she sat down, but she only said;
“Dear old things! They are very happy together. Mrs. Clem is extraordinarily proud of having ‘got Fanny out,’ as she calls it. A boy who had successfully drawn a badger couldn’t be more triumphant. Now let’s forget them!”
This was all very well, and Braybrooke asked for nothing better; but he was totally unable to forget the two cronies, whom he saw in the distance with their white and chestnut heads alarmingly close together, talking eagerly, and, he was quite sure, not about the dear old days in Philadelphia. What had they—or rather what had Miss Cronin said to Miss Van Tuyn? He longed to know. It really was essential that he should know. Yet he scarcely knew how to approach the subject. It was rather difficult to explain elaborately to a beautiful girl that you had not the least wish to marry her. He was certainly not at his best as he took his first cup of tea and sought about for an opening. Miss Van Tuyn talked with her usual assurance, but he fancied that her violet eyes were full of inquiry when they glanced at him; and he began to feel positive that the worst had happened, and that Fanny Cronin had informed her—no, misinformed her—of what had happened at Claridge’s. Now and then, as he met Miss Van Tuyn’s eyes, he thought they were searching his with an unusual consciousness, as if they expected something very special from him. Presently, too, she let the conversation languish, and at last allowed it to drop. In the silence that succeeded Braybrooke was seized by a terrible fear that perhaps she was waiting for him to propose. If he did propose she would refuse him of course. He had no doubt about that. But though to be accepted by her, or indeed by anyone, would have caused him acute distress, on the other hand no one likes to be refused.
He thought of Craven. Was it possible to make any use of Craven to get him out of his difficulty? Dare he hint at the real reason of his visit to Miss Cronin? He had intended delicately to “sound” the chaperon on the subject of matrimony, to find out if there was anything on the tapis in Paris, if Miss Van Tuyn had any special man friend there, in short to make sure of his ground before deciding to walk on it. But he could hardly explain that to Miss Van Tuyn. To do so would be almost brutal, and quite against all his traditions.
Again he caught her eye in the desperate silence. Her gaze seemed to say to him: “When are you going to begin?” He felt that he must say something, even though it were not what she was probably expecting.
“I was interested,” he hurriedly began, clasping his beard and looking away from his companion, “to hear the other day that a young friend of mine had met you, a very charming and promising young fellow, who has a great career before him, unless I am much mistaken.”
“Who?” she asked; he thought rather curtly.
“Alick Craven of the Foreign Office. He told me he was introduced to you at Adela Sellingworth’s.”
“Oh yes, he was,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
And she said no more.
“He was very enthusiastic about you,” ventured Braybrooke, wondering how to interpret her silence.
“Really!”
“Yes. We belong to the same club, the St. James’s. He entertained me for more than an hour with your praises.”
Miss Van Tuyn looked at him with rather acute inquiry, as if she could not make up her mind about something with which he was closely concerned.
“He would like to meet you again,” said Braybrooke, with soft firmness.
“But I have met him again two or three times. He called on me.”
“And I understand you were together in a restaurant in—Soho, I think it was.”
“Yes, we were.”
“What did you think of him?” asked Braybrooke.
As he put the question he was aware that he was being far from subtle. The vision in the distance—now eating plum cake, but still very observant—upset his nervous system and deprived him almost entirely of his usual savoir faire.
“He seems quite a nice sort of boy,” said Miss Van Tuyn, still looking rather coldly inquisitive, as if she were secretly puzzled but intended to emerge into complete understanding before she had done with Braybrooke. “His Foreign Office manner is rather against him. But perhaps some day he’ll grow out of that—unless it becomes accentuated.”
“If you knew him better I feel sure you would like him. He had no reservations about you—none at all. But, then, how could he have?”
“Well, at any rate I haven’t got the Foreign Office manner.”
“No, indeed!” said Braybrooke, managing a laugh that just indicated his appreciation of the remark as an excellent little joke. “But it really means nothing.”
“That’s a pity. One’s manner should always have a meaning of some kind. Otherwise it is an absolute drawback to one’s personality.”
“That is perhaps a fault of the Englishman. But we must remember that still waters run deep.”
“Do you think so? But if they don’t run at all?”
“How do you mean?”
“There is such a thing as the village pond.”
“How very trying she is this afternoon!” thought poor Braybrooke, endeavouring mentally to pull up his socks.
“I half promised Craven the other day,” he lied, resolutely ignoring her unkind comparison of his protege to the abomination which is too often veiled with duckweed, “to contrive another meeting between you and him. But I fear he has bored you. And in that case perhaps I ought not to hold to my promise. You meet so many brilliant Frenchmen that I dare say our slower, but really I sometimes think deeper, mentality scarcely appeals to you.”
(At this point he saw Fanny Cronin leaning impressively towards Mrs. Clem Hodson, as if about to impart some very secret information to that lady, who bent to receive it.)
“Again those deep waters!” said Miss Van Tuyn, this time with unmistakable satire. “But perhaps you are right. I remember a very brilliant American, who knew practically all the nations of Europe, telling me that in his opinion you English were the subtlest—I’m afraid he was rude enough to say the most artful—of the lot.”
As she spoke the word “artful” her fine eyes smiled straight into Braybrooke’s, and she pinched her red lips together very expressively.
“But I must confess,” she added, “that at the moment we were discussing diplomats.”
“Artful was rather unkind,” murmured Braybrooke. “I—I hope you don’t think my friend Craven is one of that type?”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of Mr. Craven.”
The implication was fairly obvious, and Braybrooke did not miss it, although he was not in possession of his full mental powers.
“Perhaps it is our own fault,” he said. “But I think we English are often misunderstood.”
As he spoke he shot a rather poignant glance in the direction of Fanny Cronin, who had now finished her tea, and was gathering her fur cloak about her as if in preparation for departure.
“In fact,” he added, “I am sure of it. This very day even—”
He paused, wondering how to put it, yet feeling that he really must at all costs make matters fairly clear to his companion.
“Yes?” said Miss Van Tuyn sweetly.
“To-day, this afternoon, I think that your dear Miss Cronin failed once or twice to grasp my full meaning when I was talking with her.”
“Oh, Fanny! But she’s an old fool! Of course she’s a dear, and I’m very fond of her, but she is essentially nebulous. And what was it that you think she misunderstood?”
Braybrooke hesitated. It really was very difficult to put what he wanted to say into words. Scarcely ever before had he felt himself so incapable of dealing adequately with a socially awkward situation. If only he knew what Miss Cronin had said to Miss Van Tuyn while he was ordering tea!
“I could scarcely say I know. I really could not put my finger upon it,” he said at last. “There was a general atmosphere of confusion, or so it seemed to me. We—we discussed marriage.”
“I hope the old dear didn’t think you were proposing to her?”
“Good heavens—oh, no! no! I don’t quite know what she thought.” (He lowered his eyes.) “But it wasn’t that.”
“That’s a mercy at any rate!”
Braybrooke still kept his eyes on the ground, but a dogged look came into his face, and he said, speaking more resolutely:
“I’m afraid I alarmed dear Miss Cronin.”
“How perfectly splendid!” said Miss Van Tuyn.
“She is very fond of you.”
“Much fonder of Bourget!”
“I don’t think so,” he said, with emphasis. “She is so devoted to you that quite inadvertently I alarmed her. After all, we were—we were”—nobly he decided to take the dreadful plunge—“we were two elderly people talking together as elderly people will, I thought quite freely and frankly, and I ventured—do forgive me—to hint that a great many men must wish to marry you; young men suited to you, promising men, men with big futures before them, anxious for a brilliant and beautiful wife.”
“That was very charming and solicitous of you,” said Miss Van Tuyn with a smile. “But I don’t know that they do!”
“Do what?” said Braybrooke, almost losing his head, as he saw the vision in the distance, now cloaked and gloved, rustling in an evident preparation for something, which might be departure or might on the other hand be approach.
She observed him with a definite surprise, which she seemed desirous of showing.
“I was alluding to the promising men,” she said.
“Which men?” asked Braybrooke, still hypnotized by the vision.
“The men with big futures before them who you were kind enough to tell Fanny were longing to marry me.”
“Oh, yes!” (With a great effort he pulled himself together.) “Those men to be sure!”
The vision was now standing up and apparently disputing the bill, for it was evidently talking at great length to a man in livery, who had a slip of paper in his hand, and who occasionally pointed to it in a resentful manner and said something, whereupon the vision made negative gestures and there was much tossing and shaking of heads. Resolutely Braybrooke looked away. It was nothing to do with him even if the Ritz was trying to make an overcharge for plum cake.
“I just hinted that there must be men who—but you understand?”
Miss Van Tuyn smiled unembarrassed assent.
“And then Miss Cronin”—he lowered his voice—“seemed thoroughly upset. I scarcely knew what she thought I meant, but whatever it was I had not meant it. That is certain. But the fact is she is so devoted to you that the mere fact of your some day doing what all lovely and charming women are asked to do and usually consent to do—but—but Miss Cronin seems to—I think she wants to say something to you.”
Miss Van Tuyn looked suddenly rather rebellious. She did not glance towards the Philadelphia school friends, but turned her shoulder towards them and said:
“Naturally my marriage would make a great difference to Fanny, but I have never known her to worry about it.”
“She is worrying now!” said poor Braybrooke, with earnest conviction. “But really she—I am sure she wishes to speak to you.”
The line showed itself in Miss Van Tuyn’s forehead.
“Will you be kind and just go and ask her what she wants? Please tell her that I am not coming back yet as I am going to call on Lady Sellingworth when I leave here.”
Braybrooke got up, trying to conceal his reluctance to obey. Miss Cronin, entrenched as it were behind her old school friend, and with dawnings of the dragon visible beneath her feathered hat, and even, strangely, mysteriously, underneath her long cloak of musquash, was endeavouring by signs and wonders to attract her Beryl’s attention, while Mrs. Clem Hodson stood looking imperious, and ready for any action that would prove her solidarity with her old schoolmate.
“What she wants—and you are going to call on Lady Sellingworth!” said Braybrooke.
“Yes; and to-night I’m dining out.”
“Dining out to-night—just so.”
There was no further excuse for delay, and he went towards the two old ladies, a grievous ambassador. It really had been the most unpleasant afternoon he remembered to have spent. He began to feel almost in fault, almost as if he had done—or at the least had contemplated doing—something outrageous, something for which he deserved the punishment which was now being meted out to him. As he slowly approached Miss Cronin he endeavoured resolutely to bear himself like a man who had not proposed that day for Miss Van Tuyn’s hand. But preposterously, Miss Cronin’s absurd misconception seemed to have power over his conscience, and that again over his appearance and gait. He was fully aware, as he went forward to convey Miss Van Tuyn’s message, that he made a very poor show of it. In fact, he was just then living up to Dick’s description of him as “the beard with the gentleman.”
“Oh, Mr. Braybrooke,” said Miss Cronin as he came up, “so you are here with Beryl!”
“Yes; so I am here with Miss Van Tuyn!”
Miss Cronin exchanged a glance with Mrs. Clem Hodson.
“You didn’t tell me when you called that you were taking her out to tea!”
“No, I didn’t!” said Braybrooke.
“This is my old schoolmate, Mrs. Clem Hodson. Suzanne, this is Mr. Braybrooke, a friend of Beryl’s.”
Mrs. Clem Hodson bowed from the waist, and looked at Braybrooke with the expression of one who knew a great deal more about him than his own mother knew.
“This hotel overcharges,” she said firmly.
“Really! I should have scarcely have thought—”
“There were two pieces of plum cake on the bill, and we only ate one.”
“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” said Miss Cronin, as if irradiated with sudden light.
“What, dear?”
“I did have two slices. One was before the muffin, while we were waiting for it, and the other was after. And I only remembered the second.”
“In that case, dear, we’ve done the waiter an injustice and libelled the hotel.”
“I will make it all right if you will allow me,” said Braybrooke almost obsequiously. “I’m well known here. I will explain to the manager, a most charming man.”
He turned definitely to face Fanny Cronin.
“Miss Van Tuyn asked me to tell you what she wants.”
“Indeed! Does she want something?”
“No. I mean she told me to ask you what you want.”
Miss Cronin looked at Mrs. Clem Hodson, hesitated, and then made a very definite rabbit’s mouth.
“I don’t know that I want anything, thank you, Mr. Braybrooke. But if Beryl is going—she is not going?”
“I really don’t know exactly.”
“She hasn’t finished her tea, perhaps?”
“I don’t know for certain. But she asked me to tell you she wasn’t coming back yet”—the two old ladies exchanged glances which Braybrooke longed to contradict—“as she is going to call on Lady Sellingworth presently.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Clem Hodson, gazing steadily at Fanny Cronin.
“In Berkeley Square!” added Braybrooke emphatically. “And to-night she is dining out.”
“Did she say where?” asked Miss Cronin, slightly moving her ears.
“No; she didn’t.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Cronin. “Good-bye, Mr. Braybrooke.”
She held out her hand like one making a large and difficult concession to her own Christianity. Mrs. Clem Hodson bowed again from the waist and also made a concession. She muttered, “Very glad to have met you!” and then cleared her throat, while the criss-cross of wrinkles moved all over her face.
“I will make it all right with the manager,” said Braybrooke, with over-anxious earnestness, and feeling now quite definitely that he must really have proposed to Miss Cronin for Miss Van Tuyn’s hand that afternoon, and that he must have just lied about the disposal of her time until she had to dress for dinner.
“The manager?” said Miss Cronin.
“What manager?” said Mrs. Clem Hodson.
“About the plum cake! Surely you remember?”
“Oh—the plum cake!” said Mrs. Hodson, looking steadily at Fanny Cronin. “Thank you very much indeed! Very good of you!”
“Thank you,” said Miss Cronin, with a sudden piteous look. “I did eat two slices. Come, Suzanne! Good-bye again, Mr. Braybrooke.”
They turned to go out. As Braybrooke watched the musquash slowly vanishing he knew in his bones that, when he did not become engaged to Miss Van Tuyn, Fanny Cronin, till the day of her death, would feel positive that he had proposed to her that afternoon and had been rejected. And he muttered in his beard:
“Damn these red-headed old women! I will not make it all right with the manager about the plum cake!”
It was a poor revenge, but the only one he could think of at the moment.
“Is anything the matter?” asked Miss Van Tuyn when he rejoined her. “Has old Fanny been tiresome?”
“Oh, no—no! But old Fan—I beg your pardon, I mean Miss Cronin—Miss Cronin has a peculiar—but she is very charming. I gave her your message, and she quite understood. We were talking about plum cake. That is why I was so long.”
“I see! A fascinating subject like that must be difficult to get away from.”
“Yes—very! What a delightful woman Mrs. Hodson is.”
“I think her extremely wearisome. Her nature is as wrinkled as her face. And now I must be on my way to Adela Sellingworth’s.”
“May I walk with you as far as her door?”
“Of course.”
When they were out in Piccadilly he said:
“And now what about my promise to Mr. Craven?”
“I shall be delighted to meet him again,” said Miss Van Tuyn in a careless voice. “And I would not have you break a promise on my account. Such a sacred thing!”
“But if he bores you—”
“He doesn’t bore me more than many young men do.”
“Then I will let you know. We might have a theatre party.”
“Anything you like. And why not ask Adela Sellingworth to make a fourth?”
This suggestion was not at all to Braybrooke’s liking, but he scarcely knew what to say in answer to it. Really, it seemed as if this afternoon was to end as it had begun—in a contretemps.
“I am so fond of her,” continued Miss Van Tuyn. “And I’m sure she would enjoy it.”
“But she so seldom goes out.”
“All the more reason to try to persuade her out of her shell. I believe she will come if you tell her I and Mr. Craven make up the rest of the party. We all got on so well together in Soho.”
“I will certainly ask her,” said Braybrooke.
What else could he say?
At the corner of Berkeley Square Miss Van Tuyn stopped and rather resolutely bade him good-bye.
When Braybrooke was alone he felt almost tired out. If he had been an Italian he would probably have believed that someone had looked on him that day with the evil eye. He feared that he had been almost maladroit. His social self-confidence was severely shaken. And yet he had only meant well; he had only been trying to do what he considered his duty. It had all begun with Miss Cronin’s preposterous mistake. That had thoroughly upset him, and from that moment he had not been in possession of his normal means. And now he was let in for a party combining Adela Sellingworth with Miss Van Tuyn and Craven. It was singularly unfortunate. But probably Lady Sellingworth would refuse the invitation he now had to send her. She really went out very seldom. He could only hope for a refusal. That, too, was tragic. He could not remember ever before having actively wished that an invitation of his should be declined.
He was so reduced in self-confidence and spirits that he turned into the St. James’s Club, sank down alone in a remote corner, and called for a dry Martini, although he knew quite well that it would set up fermentation.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg