The Parts Men Play Part 9

Lady Durwent's dinner-party had been an expedition into the artistic fakery of London, and he would have dismissed the whole affair as a stimulating and amusing diversion from the ultra-aristocratic rut if the personality of Elise Durwent had not remained with him like a haunting melody.

He looked at his watch. 'By Jove!' he muttered; 'it's nine o'clock;'

and hurriedly completing his ablutions, he dressed and descended to breakfast.

III.

Into the row of splendidly inert houses known as Chelmsford Gardens, Austin Selwyn turned his course. A couple of saddle-horses were standing outside No. 8, held by a groom of expressionless countenance.

From No. 3 a butler emerged, looked at the morning, and retired.

Elsewhere inaction reigned.

Ringing the bell, Selwyn was admitted into the music-room of the previous night's scene. The portrait of a famous Elizabethan beauty looked at him with plump and saucy arrogance. In place of the crackling fire a new one was laid, all orderly and proper, like a set of new resolutions. The genial disorder of the chairs, moved at the whim of the Olympians, had all been put straight, and the whole room possessed an air of studied correctness, as though it were anxious to forget the previous evening's laxity with the least possible delay.

'Good-morning.'

Elise Durwent swept into the room with an impression of boundless vitality. She was dressed in a black riding-habit with a divided skirt, from beneath which a pair of glistening riding-boots shone with a Cossack touch. Her copper hair, which was arranged to lie rather low at the back, was guarded by a sailor-hat that enhanced to the full the finely formed features and arched eyebrows. There was an extraordinary sense of youthfulness about her--not the youthfulness of immaturity, but the stimulating quality of the spirit.

'I came here this morning,' began Selwyn vaguely, 'expecting'----

'Expecting a frumpy, red-haired girl with a black derby hat down to her nose.'

He bowed solemnly. 'Instead of which, I find--a Russian princess.'

'You are a dear. You can't imagine how much thought I expended on this hat.'

'It was worth it. You look absolutely'----

'Just a minute, Mr. Selwyn. You are not going to tell me I look charming?'

'That was my intention.'

She sighed, with a pretty pretence at disappointment. 'That will cost me half-a-crown,' she said.

'I beg your'----

'Yes; I wagered myself two-and-six to a "bob" that you wouldn't use that word.'

'It is really your fault that I did,' he said seriously.

She curtsied daintily. 'I make money on Englishmen and lose it on Americans,' she said. 'I have a regular scale of bets. I give ten to one that an Englishman will say in the first ten minutes that I look "topping," five to one on "absolutely ripping" in the first thirty, and even money on "stunning" in the first hour.'

His face, which had been portraying an amusing mixture of perplexity and admiration, broke into a smile which encompa.s.sed all his features.

'Do all bets cease at the end of the first hour?' he asked.

'Yes, ra-_ther_. An Englishman never pays compliments then, because he is used to you. Isn't it awful seeing people getting used to you?'

'Do they ever?'

'Umph'm. The only chance of bagging one of the n.o.bility as a husband is to limit interviews to half-an-hour and never wear the same clothes twice. Startle him! Keep him startled! Save your most daring gown for the night you're going to make him propose, then wear white until the wedding. An Englishman will fall in love with a woman in scarlet, but he likes to think he's marrying one who wears white. Costume, my dear Americano--costume does it. Hence the close alliance between the n.o.bility and the chorus. But come along; we're snubbing the sunlight.'

With something like intoxication in his blood, he followed his imperious, high-spirited companion from the house. He hurried forward to help her to mount, but she had her foot in the stirrup and had swung herself into the saddle before he could reach her side. With less ease, but with creditable horse-management, Selwyn mounted the chestnut and drew alongside the bay, who was cavorting airily, as if to taunt the larger horse with the superior charm of the creature that bestrode him.

'We'll be back, Smith, at twelve-thirty,' she called; and with the tossing of the horses' heads, resentful of the restraining reins, and the clattering of hoofs that struck sparks from the roadway, they made for the Park.

IV.

London is a stage that is always set. The youthful d.i.c.kens watching the murky Thames found the setting for his moments of horror, just as surely as cheery coach-houses, many of them but little changed to this day, bespoke the entrance of Wellers senior and junior. London gave to Wilde's exotic genius the scenes wherein his brilliantly futile characters played their wordy dramas; then, turning on the author, London's own vileness called to his. Thackeray the satirist needed no further inspiration than the nicely drawn distinction between Belgravia and Mayfair. Generous London refused nothing to the seeking mind. Nor is it more sparing to-day than it was in the past; it yields its inspiration to the gloom of Galsworthy, the pedagogic utterances of Mr.

Wells, the brilliant restlessness of Arnold Bennett, and the ever-delightful humour of Punch.

On this morning in November London was in a gracious mood, and Hyde Park, coloured with autumn's pensive melancholy, sparkled in the sunlight. Snowy bits of cloud raced across the sky, like sails against the blue of the ocean. November leaves, lying thick upon the gra.s.s, stirred into life, and for an hour imagined the fickle wind to be a harbinger of spring. Children, with laughter that knew no other cause than the exhilaration of the morning, played and romped, weaving dreams into their lives and their lives into dreams. Invalids in chairs leaned back upon their pillows and smiled. Something in the laughter of the children or the spirit of the wind had recalled their own careless moments of full-lived youth.

Paris, despite your Bois de Boulogne; New York, for all the beauties of your Central Park and Riverside Drive--what have you to compare with London's parks on a sun-strewn morning in November?

Reaching the tan-bark surface of Rotten Row, Selwyn and the English girl eased the reins and let the horses into a canter. With the motion of the strong-limbed chestnut the American felt a wave of exultation, and chuckled from no better cause than sheer enjoyment in the morning's mood of emanc.i.p.ation. He glanced at Elise Durwent, and saw that her eyes were sparkling like diamonds, and that the self-conscious bay was shaking his head and cantering so lightly that he seemed to be borne on the wings of the wind. Selwyn wished that he were a sculptor that he might make her image in bronze: he would call it 'Recalcitrant Autumn.'

He even felt that he could burst into poetry. He wished----

But then he was in the glorious twenties; and, after all, what has the gorged millionaire, rolling along in his beflowered, bewarmed, becus.h.i.+oned limousine, that can give one-tenth the pleasure of the grip on the withers of a spirited horse?

Sometimes they walked their beasts, and chatted on such subjects as young people choose when spirits are high and care is on a vacation.

They were experiencing that keenest of pleasures--joy in the _present_.

They watched London Society equestrianising for the admiration of the less washed, who were gazing from chairs and benches, trying to tell from their appearance which was a duke and which merely 'mister'--and usually guessing quite wrongly. Ladies of t.i.tle, some of them riding so badly that their steeds were goaded into foam by the incessant pull of the curb bit, trotted past young ladies and gentlemen with note-books, who had been sent by an eager Press to record the activities of the truly great. Handsome women rode in the Row with their children mounted on wiry ponies (always a charming sight); and middle-aged, angular females, wearing the customary riding-hat which reduces beauty to plainness and plainness to caricature, rode melancholy quadrupeds, determined to do that which is done by those who are of consequence in the world.

But pleasures born of the pa.s.sing hour, unlike those of the past or of antic.i.p.ation, end with the striking of the clock. It seemed to Austin Selwyn that they had been riding only for the s.p.a.ce of minutes, when Elise asked him the time.

'It is twenty minutes to one,' he said. 'I had no idea time had pa.s.sed so quickly.'

'Nor I,' she answered. 'Just one more canter, and then we'll go.'

The eager horses chafed at their bits, and pleaded, after the manner of their kind, to be allowed one mad gallop with heaving flanks and snorting triumph at the end; but decorum forbade, and contenting themselves with the agreeable counterfeit, Selwyn and the girl reluctantly turned from the Park towards home.

The expressionless Smith was waiting for them, and looked at the two horses with that peculiar intolerance towards their riders which the very best groom in the world cannot refrain from showing.

'Won't you come in and take the chance of what there is for lunch?' she said as Selwyn helped her to dismount.

'N-no, thanks,' he said.

She pouted, or pretended to. 'Now, why?' she said as Smith mounted the chestnut, and touching his hat, walked the horses away.

'There is no reason,' he said, smiling, 'except---- Look here; will you come downtown and have dinner with me to-night?'

'You Americans are refres.h.i.+ng,' she said, burrowing the toe of her riding-boot with the point of the crop, 'As a matter of fact, I have to go to dinner to-night at Lady Chisworth's.'

'Then have a headache,' he persisted.

'Please,' as her lips proceeded to form a negative.