The Oyster Part 22

"Bertie"--she walked restlessly about the room--"I heard such a strange story the other day, a woman who did something hideously dreadful and--was afraid to tell."

"Deceit is the one thing I could never forgive," said Carteret, firmly.

"I'd put a woman away, even if it broke my heart, if I found out that she had done anything mean or had deceived me."

Esme grew white, for hers was a plot which no man could forgive. She had sold her son for a paltry allowance, for the right to amuse herself in peace.

"I wonder if old Uncle Hugh will do anything for us now," she said in a strained, bitter voice.

CHAPTER VIII

"This bazaar," said Dollie Gresham, cheerily, "is humming. I have not been asked about as much as I should like to be lately; people forget poor little n.o.bodies. The d.u.c.h.ess is giving her patronage, _entre nous_. Mavis Moover will dance for me--joy for her Grace of Boredom!

Oh, I've got heaps and heaps of people! We are secretaries, and cas.h.i.+ers, and so forth, and we shall all wear flower dresses. Our stall shall be forget-me-nots. The d.u.c.h.ess chose tulips; she said she had a black silk gown and she knew there was a tulip of that colour. We shall be audaciously beautiful in sky blue, rather short."

Esme had rushed into this new scheme.

"It won't cost much, will it?" she asked.

"Secretaries, workers, _cherie_," prattled Dollie, "have all expenses paid. All frocks, frills, etc.; they give their valuable time. Come with me to Claire's. She is at least original."

Dollie's maid brought in two cards. Mrs Gresham frowned over them.

"The tiresome secretary of the hospital," she said, "and Canon Bright, one of the founders. Look charitable, Esme."

Next moment, all smiles, she greeted a kindly-looking, middle-aged man and a grey-haired clergyman; a stern-faced, clear-eyed man, who made this hospital for little suffering children his hobby.

They overwhelmed Dollie with thanks.

"This debt"--Canon Bright took out some notes of figures--"was weighing us down. Now, with your help, it will be paid off, and we shall have something besides to go on with, to buy sorely-needed appliances."

"Oh, of course," said Dollie, vaguely.

"We were looking for some kind lady or society to take it up; fortunately you met Mr Lucy at luncheon."

"Yes; that put it into my head," said Dollie, brightly. "Bazaars are so paying; this is my friend and sister secretary, Mrs Carteret. I've got every big name in London, Canon, or half of them. Oh, it will be a great success. We've taken the hall. We're all going to be summer flowers. 'The Summer Flower Bazaar,' such a good name, isn't it?"

Mr Lucy nursed his hat. "You won't let the expenses mount, Mrs Gresham," he said, "will you? Once they begin to swell our cripples would lose. You'll let me help you with the accounts. It's my _metier_, you see, and I could help you."

Dollie chilled visibly. She preferred to do it all herself, she said.

"We really want to _work_," she went on, smiling again. "After all, it's quite simple. We have all our cheques paid in and we pay the exes and hand you the balance. We'll work it up like anything. You get all your people to come, Canon--all your charitable friends. The dear little cripples," cooed Dolly--"so nice to help them."

"Tiresome, muddling pair," she snapped when the two men had left. "Come to Claire's, Esme. I owe her two hundred, but these flower dresses will cool her rage, and she'll know we'll pay for this lot all right."

Claire received them dubiously, then thawed to the order for the bazaar. If Mrs Gresham could get her the carnation order also, Lady Louisa's stall, and the roses. Forget-me-nots, by the way, were spring flowers.

Oh, it didn't matter. Clouds of gauze, blue satin, wreaths of flowers stiffened with turquoises, shoes, stockings. Dollie ordered lavishly.

"That Estelle girl shall help," Esme said. "She is the kind of person who'll open boxes and get dusty and save us trouble. By the way, what shall we sell? Not tea. One has to run about. Sweets, I should think, and b.u.t.tonholes."

"We are not distinguished enough for b.u.t.tonholes," said Dollie, decidedly. "When Adolfus or Gargie buys a white pink for five s.h.i.+llings he likes to tell mamma and his lady friend that the Countess of 'Ighlife pinned it in with her own fingers, Vilet, her very own. Dolfus does not seem to realize that the use of other people's would be confusing. No, let it be sweets. Chocolates will show off our blue frocks."

Bertie Carteret found himself left more and more alone. Esme was always feverishly busy, always just going on somewhere, chasing pleasure, growing thinner in the pursuit, using just a little more rose bloom, a little extra powder to hide jaded lines and fading colour.

At the end of May Bertie paid his household bills again and knew that they were far too large. No extravagance seemed to have been curtailed; if they had not lunched or dined so often at home, he had paid for a score of meals at fas.h.i.+onable restaurants. Esme's careless demands for a few pounds for cabs were endless.

"I can't do it," he muttered, writing his cheques. "I can't get on."

A plea to Esme would only make her sullen, irritable, railing at her poverty, muttering against poor marriages.

"I--oh, you are alone. I've brought the book which Esme asked me for."

Estelle Reynolds came on Bertie as he sighed over his bills. "And the pearls she left to be mended."

She put down a new novel on the table, one barred by libraries. Esme would look at it, probably forget to finish it, unless she thought she found any of her friends were pilloried between the flaring green covers.

Estelle put down a receipt with the pearls, one for two pounds. Bertie looked at the amount.

"Has Esme paid you?" he asked.

"Oh, no, it does not matter--any time." Estelle blushed. "I can ask her."

"I wonder"--he turned--"how much she has let you pay, this careless wife of mine. For the future, Estelle, bring anything to me."

"You seem to have enough to pay for." Estelle pointed to a pile of books and cheques.

"Too much! More than I can manage. Estelle, is nothing of value unless it costs money? Must one always lunch and dine and sup with people whose daily income equals our half-yearly one? Can a woman ever look well in a frock which costs less than twenty pounds? Oh, one must go to so-and-so--everyone does. Is there nothing simple left in life?" said Bertie, drearily. "No pleasure in a corner of the country where a man could pay his way honestly, and eat strawberries in June and peaches in August?"

"Is it as bad as that?" Estelle came to the table, glanced at some of the books.

She was a slight girl, with nothing but her grey eyes redeeming her from mediocrity.

Bertie Carteret sat opposite a full-length portrait of his wife. It was tinted, showing her dazzling colouring, her rounded figure. It stared at him with Esme's careless, joyous smile. Never yet, when he had touched her, had the softness of her ivory neck, the warmth of her white skin, failed to wake pa.s.sion in him, make him wax to the heat of love, melting and desiring. So she had won his heart when he met her in the country, the beauty of a small military station, a doctor's daughter, well born, but dowerless, bringing beauty alone as her marriage portion. Her beauty, her joyous love of life, had won her a niche in London Society. Friends had given her introductions, and Esme had grown into the life as a graft grows to the parent stem.

What poet has written that each woman is a flower with its characteristics, its scent, or beauty?

Was not this wife of his a gorgeous sunflower, turning her head to the light and warmth of amus.e.m.e.nt, standing out among her fellows, dazzling as she caught the light, a thing to look at and admire, but not to bend one's face over drinking in a rare sweet perfume.

Now that he sat thinking he knew there had been none of the intimacy of married lovers; no scheming for their dual interests, no planning of some little trip to be taken together, none of the talks which wed man and woman more surely than the service ordained by law. Nothing but love and laughter. Together, with the world shut out, Bertie must not talk of ordinary things, but of Esme. She would lean against him, exquisite, perfect, silken draperies merely veiling her long, rounded limbs, and he must talk of her alone. Tell her again and again how beautiful she was; find new perfection in her golden hair, her bright cheeks, the curves of her beauty.

Then in the mornings, when there was an hour before they need get up, when Esme had put on a lace cap and got into some soft-hued wrapper, she would chatter gaily, but never of their future, of the home which Bertie, man-like, dreamt of; but of the day's doings, of luncheon and tea and dinner and theatre, of flying from place to place, from friend to friend.

"The Holbrooks are sending their small car for me to do my shopping in; aren't they kind, Bert? Lady Sue sent us a big basket of fruit yesterday for my little dinner. We've such heaps to do, Bertie, to-day--such heaps!"

She would stretch her warm limbs in the luxurious joy of being alive, the joy of youth and strength and happiness.

There were no kisses in the morning. Marie had already laved Madame's face in scented water, and rubbed in Madame's face cream to prepare her skin for its light dust of powder.