The Cup of Fury Part 25

Marie Louise was radiant in mood and queenly in attire. Davidge was startled by the magnificence of her jewelry. Some of it was of old workmans.h.i.+p, royal heirloomry. Her accent was decidedly English, yet her race was undoubtedly American. The many things about her that had puzzled him subconsciously began to clamor at least for the attention of curiosity. He watched her making the best of herself, as a skilful woman does when she is all dressed up in handsome scenery among toplofty people.

Polly was describing the guests as they came in:

"That's Colonel Harvey Forbes. His name has been sent to Congress for approval as a brigadier-general. I knew him in the midst of the wildest scandal--remind me to tell you. He was only a captain then.

He'll probably end as a king or something. This war is certainly good to some people."

Davidge watched Marie Louise studying the somber officer. He was a bit jealous, shamed by his own civilian clothes. Suddenly Marie Louise's smile at Polly's chatter stopped short, shriveled, then returned to her face with a look of effort. Her muscles seemed to be determined that her lips should not droop.

Davidge heard the butler announce:

"Lady Clifton-Wyatt and General Sir Hector Havendish."

Davidge wondered which of the two names could have so terrified Marie Louise. Naturally he supposed that it was the man's. He turned to study the officer in his British uniform. He saw a tall, loose-jointed, jovial man of horsy look and carriage, and no hint of mystery--one would say an intolerance of mystery.

Lady Clifton-Wyatt was equally amiable. She laughed and wrung the hands of Mrs. Prothero. They were like two school-girls met in another century.

Davidge noted that Marie Louise turned her back and listened with extraordinary interest to Major Widdicombe's old story about an Irishman who did or said something or other. Davidge heard Mrs.

Prothero say to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, with all the joy in the world:

"Who do you suppose is here but our Marie Louise?"

"Our Marie Louise?" Lady Clifton-Wyatt echoed, with a slight chill.

"Yes, Marie Louise Webling. It was at her house that I met you. Where has the child got to? There she is."

Without raising her voice she focused it between Marie Louise's shoulder-blades.

"Marie Louise, my dear!"

Marie Louise turned and came up like a wax image on casters pulled forward by an invisible window-dresser. Lady Clifton-Wyatt's limber att.i.tude grew erect, deadly, ominously hostile. She looked as if she would turn Marie Louise to stone with a Medusa glare, but she evidently felt that she had no right to commit petrifaction in Mrs.

Prothero's home; so she bowed and murmured:

"Ah, yis! How are you?"

To Davidge's amazement, Miss Webling, instead of meeting the rebuff in kind, wavered before it and bowed almost gratefully. Then, to Davidge's confusion, Lady Clifton-Wyatt marched on him with a gush of cordiality as if she had been looking for him around the Seven Seas.

She remembered him, called him by name and told him that she had seen his pickchah in one of the papahs, as one of the creatahs of the new fleet.

Mrs. Prothero was stunned for a moment by the scene, but she had pa.s.sed through so many women's wars that she had learned to ignore them even when--especially when--her drawing-room was the battleground.

Her mind was drawn from the incident by the materialization of the butler.

Lady Clifton-Wyatt, noting that the tide was setting toward the dining-room and that absent-minded Sir Hector was floating along the current at the elbow of the pretty young girl, said to Davidge:

"Are you taking me out or--"

It was a horrible moment, for all its unimportance, but he mumbled:

"I--I am sorry, but--er--Miss Webling--"

"Oh! Ah!" said Lady Clifton-Wyatt. It was a very short "Oh!" and a very long "Ah!" a sort of gliding, crus.h.i.+ng "Ah!" It went over him like a tank, leaving him flat.

Lady Clifton-Wyatt reached Sir Hector's arm in a few strides and unhooked him from the girl--also the girl from him. The girl was grateful. Sir Hector was used to disappointments.

Davidge went to Marie Louise, who stood lonely and distraught. He felt ashamed of his word "sorry" and hoped she hadn't heard it. Silently and crudely he angled his arm, and she took it and went along with him in a somnambulism.

Davidge, manlike, tried to cheer up his elbow-mate by a compliment. A man's first aid to a woman in distress is a compliment or a few pats of the hand. He said:

"This is the second big dinner you and I have attended. There were bushels of flowers between us before, but I'd rather see your face than a ton of roses."

The compliment fell out like a ton of coal. He did not like it at all.

She seemed not to have heard him, for she murmured:

"Yis, isn't it?"

Then, as the occultists say, he went into the silence. There is nothing busier than a silence at a dinner. The effort to think with no outlet in speech kept up such a roaring in his head that he could hardly grasp what the rest were saying.

Lady Clifton-Wyatt sat at Davidge's right and kept invading his quiet communion with Marie Louise by making remarks of the utmost graciousness somehow fermented--like wine turned vinegar.

"I wonder if you remember when we met in London, Mr. Davidge? It was just after the poor _Lusitania_ was sunk."

"So it was," said Davidge.

"It was at Sir Joseph Webling's. You knew he was dead, didn't you? Or did you?"

"Yes, Miss Webling told me."

"Oh, did she! I was curious to know."

She cast a look past him at Marie Louise and saw that the girl was about ready to make a scene. She smiled and deferred further torture.

Mrs. Prothero supervened. She had the beautiful theory that the way to make her guests happy was to get them to talking about themselves. She tried to draw Davidge out of his sh.e.l.l. But he talked about her husband instead, and of the great work he had done for the navy. He turned the tables of graciousness on her. Her nod recognized the chivalry; her lips smiled with pride in her husband's praise; her eyes glistened with an old regret made new. "He would have been useful now," she sighed.

"He was the man who laid the keel-blocks of our new navy," said Davidge. "The thing we haven't got and have got to get is a merchant marine."

He could talk of that, though he could not celebrate himself. He was still going strong when the dinner was finished.

Mrs. Prothero clung to the old custom. She took the women away with her to the drawing-room, leaving the men alone.

Davidge noted that Lady Clifton-Wyatt left the dining-room with a kind of eagerness, Marie Louise reluctantly. She cast him a look that seemed to cry "Help!" He wondered what the feud could be that threw Miss Webling into such apparent panic. He could not tolerate the thought that she had a yellow streak in her.

CHAPTER VI

Lady Clifton-Wyatt, like many another woman, was kept in order by the presence of men. She knew that the least charming of attributes in masculine eyes are the female feline, the gift and art of claws.