The Oyster Part 5

"To Thames Cottage? Oh, how I'd love to go," Sybil Chauntsey broke in.

"They have such fun there."

Her peach bloom deepened; the beauty of youth, which is as no other beauty, sparkled in her deep grey eyes.

The big dark man looked at her, his own eyes taking fire. These men delight in rosebuds, find an unflagging zest in seeing the tender petals unfold to their hot admiration.

"Easily managed," he said. "If Madame the mother permits."

Captain Knox, a mere no one, son of a hunting Irishman, flushed.

"It's not a nice house," he said. "I've heard of it. Don't go, Miss Chauntsey."

"Lila Navotsky will be there"--Jimmie turned to the girl, carelessly ignoring the man--"she'll dance. It will be rather a bright party.

Prince Fritz of Grosse Holbein is going, Lady Deverelle, and Loftus Laking, the actor. We'll have a moonlight dance, all costumes home made."

Fresh from the country, doing her first season, the great names dazzled the child. Mother's friends were so dull; the peach-bloom flush deepened, the sweet eyes flashed for Jimmie, who had watched so many flushes, seen so many bright eyes flash into his. Sybil was very pretty, soft and fresh as fruit just ripe; sun-kissed, unpowdered, roundly contoured.

With a smile Esme saw that the conqueror's glances were no longer for her. He was growing fascinated by Sybil. Even the best of women hate to lose an admirer; no one knew better than Gore Helmsley how they will suddenly put good resolves aside to keep the slipping fancy. How many are morally lost because they fear to lose.

Young Knox turned to talk to Esme, his handsome face troubled. A mere ordinary young fellow, capable of ordinary love, cleanly bred, cleanly minded, with nothing to offer the girl but the life of a marching soldier's wife, and some day a house on the sh.o.r.es of a lake far away in the west.

"It's--it's _very_ rowdy, isn't it?" he asked.

But Esme was not thinking of him.

"Oh, sometimes not," she said absently, eating a forced nectarine; "depends on the party there. Now they're moving."

Up to a drawing-room of oppressive luxury; the Staffords.h.i.+re groups, the Dresden shepherdesses seemed larger than other people's; the brocades gleamed in their richness, the flowers stood in Venetian gla.s.ses; the whole room seemed to shake its wealth in your face, and to glitter and s.h.i.+ne with colour. Coffee came in Dresden cups set in gold holders; sugar candy peeped from a gilt basin studded with dull stones.

The cigarettes had their name blazoned over them in diamonds.

Luke Holbrook came among his guests, big, kind, frankly vulgar, redeemed by his good-natured eyes. Openly proud of seeing a d.u.c.h.ess in his drawing-room, pointing out to her a pair of historical figures which stood on the mantel-shelf.

"Wonderful they tell me," he said. "I don't know, but I like size when I buy."

"Yes," said the d.u.c.h.ess, blandly, looking round the room. "Yes. If you must pay thousands better pay them for two feet of glaze and colour than for two inches, no doubt."

"That's it," he said gaily, "that's it. Of course, you've such heaps of the stuff at Blenkalle. But my boy's collection has to be gathered now."

Holbrook's pure wines gained many orders in his own house. He had stored away, kept for customers with palates, a few casks of port which was not branded and flavoured for the English taste, some good hock and claret. But the pure wines he made his millions off did not deserve their t.i.tle.

Esme, sipping Turkish coffee, saw Sybil Chauntsey come hurrying to her mother. The girl was fresh and sweet, heads turned as she pa.s.sed.

"Oh, Mumsie, Captain Gore Helmsley has telephoned. Oh, Mumsie, they've asked me to the Bellews for Sat.u.r.day to Monday. Oh, may I go?"

"But alone, Sybil," said her mother.

"Mrs Carteret will take me. I'll ask her. Oh, Mumsie. Prince Fritz of Grosse Holbein will be there, and Madame Navotsky, Lord Ralph Crellton, Lady Deverelle. Mumsie, I might be asked to Deverelle if I meet her."

Princes, countesses, dancers. Might not Sybil attract the attention of Lord Ralph, who would one day be a Marquis. "But, aren't there stories?" Mrs Chauntsey wavered.

Jimmie strolled across. "Mrs Bellew is so anxious for your daughter to go to her," he said. "It's rather an honour, they are generally full up, and there's a dance this time."

He omitted to remark that his reply down the telephone had been: "Who?

I don't know the brat. Oh, send her along; I'll invite. Suppose you'd sulk and wouldn't manage the cotillon if I refused. Can't you let girls alone, Jimmie? Yes, I've got the address--I'll invite--bother her!"

Mrs Chauntsey wavered, gave way, turned to a stout lady who was anxiously waiting for the brougham she still clung to, and told her.

"I wouldn't let my girls walk past the garden wall," said Lady Adderley, grimly. "Sybil's a child, too."

Mrs Chauntsey grew doubtful again. This stout and dowdy woman held the keys of the dullest and most exclusive houses. And Sybil had once been asked to luncheon there on Sunday; but a Prince, and a future Marquis--one must give a girl her chance.

Esme was going on to a tea-party. She sat down by the open window, looking out at the Park, a dull place now, its afternoon hour not yet upon it.

"Rather full here." Jimmie Gore Helmsley's dark face appeared close to her; he pulled up a chair and sat down. "Feel as if we're all Aunt Sallies being pelted with gold; the riches jump out and hit you in the face."

"He's kind," said Esme, remembering her hock.

"Kind? Oh, yes! he can be! Appreciate," he muttered, "what I've done coming here--to meet you, eh? I've talked to Lady Susan and Lady Hebe Ploddy for ten minutes, and I've only just escaped from the horns of Lady Hebe's jersey cattle. They have been going out for ten years,"

said Jimmie, "and Mamma, her grace, still calls them 'my baby girls.'

They are coming this way," he added, "with the pigs and cows in the leash of their minds. Are you off it--hipped?" he whispered softly, "you look pale."

Whispers had gained him many things in life; a sudden drop of voice, a change of tone, an intimacy as it were of sympathy. But Esme scarcely noticed it. She was too carelessly selfish to dream of the inconveniences of a lover, even if she had not been fond of Bertie.

"Coming Sat.u.r.day," he asked, "to the Bungalow?"

"Oh, I suppose so. I've promised that child. Where am I going to? To buy a toy which has taken my fancy. Yes, you may come with me."

Half an hour later one of the new crisp notes had gone for the emerald clasp, and the Ladies Susan and Hebe Ploddy, coming by chance into the shop, told all their friends that Captain Gore Helmsley had given it to that Mrs Carteret.

CHAPTER III

Esme Carteret had chosen her own picture in the _tableaux vivants_ at the Leigh-Dilneys. It was called Joy.

"I'm so happy," she had said merrily, "it will suit me."

The Leigh-Dilneys gave entertainments in the name of charity, and since charity is all-powerful, and the pheasants at Leigh Grange were as flies in summer, everyone who was anyone in London gasped for air in the big drawing-room.

Faint breaths of summer breeze eddying over scarlet geraniums and white marguerites were powerless to stir the heat generated by the crowd which packed itself in resignation on hired chairs and dreamt of getting away. Lady Delilah Leigh-Dilney looked as though she spent life trying to live down her name. A high-nosed, earnest woman, with an insatiable appet.i.te for organized entertainment. Her bridge winnings went to support missions in distant China; an invitation to tea was certain to plunge the accepter into the dusty uncertainty of a bran pie at five s.h.i.+llings a dip, proceeds for something; or the obligatory buying of tickets for a vase or cus.h.i.+on which was too ugly ever to be used.

Electric fans, Lady Delilah said, were noisy, useless and merely fas.h.i.+onable. Her guests sweltered on hard chairs as an overheated stage manager scrabbled the blue curtains of the miniature stage to and fro and wished he had never seen a tableaux.

And Esme was Joy. Merely herself, dressed in a cloud of rosy pink, her setting an ordinary room; her hands outstretched to, as it were, meet Life; her radiant face lighted by smiles; her burnished hair fluffed out softly.

"Yet not so much Joy as self-satisfaction," murmured a panting cynic as he finished applauding. "For true Joy is a simple thing--its smile of the eyes and not of the teeth."