Desolate splendour

LEAVE Grays to puzzle and leave guardian Charles to plot a marriage and to paint his house against its autumn festival. The former, fate had cast for the odd rôle of an unhappy influence despite themselves; the latter, for no rôle of match-maker. What of the girl round whom his scheming turned, whom the poor wooden-witted, wholesome Grays were to incline—in perfect innocence—so hectically?

She, lovely orphan, was tasting London, sipping delightedly at a flavourous life she had not earlier known. She was as unsuspecting of her host’s scrutiny as of her guardian’s play at providence. That she meant more to these strangers than would have meant any new inmate of their houses, she had no inkling. Indeed, her young mind was full of other, brighter thoughts. Shops and the money to spend in them; crowds and young friends to partner her in their midst; concerts and matinees and novels from the library; above all, new clothes—dresses and shoes and gloves and hats and fine, fine lingerie—these were the words of London’s welcome, and she had ears for nothing else.

James Plethern and his wife watched and discussed and watched again. Considering the subtlety of their task, they must be praised for the skill with which they manipulated their careful hospitality. They wished to keep Viola entertained, to show her the glamour of a late London season, to impress upon her their social competence and their social standing. They wished to encourage her friendliness with their son, but not, as yet, so far as to create a bond difficult of severance. Finally—and in this they improved on Charles’ blithe assumption of a ward’s dutiful obedience—they sought to beware of overforcing her talent and taste for freedom and distraction, knowing the sudden speed of a young girl’s maturing, fearing to see their victim spread her wings and fly beyond their reach, before they were sure whether they wished to cage her or to let her go.

Nightly they talked together.

“She’s normal enough,” said Rosalind. “Your mother must have dreamt that story about the library.”

“Certainly she does not seem that kind of girl,” admitted James.

“There’s no seeming about it, James. She isn’t that kind. Your mother’s wrong.”

“Yes,” he said judicially. “I am inclined to think she was mistaken.”

“Then you had better write and tell her so,” commented his wife crisply.

And James obeyed. His letter, in its close, ungenerous script, read thus:

So far, at any rate, they read their Viola aright. One phrase was singularly apt, for the girl was in fact not yet “awake.” Throughout her lonely youth she had lived drably from day to day. The harmless pleasure of a young girl’s existence had for the most part not been hers. Now, in her first belated hours of liberty and ease, she was experiencing joys that to one more fortunately placed would long ago have been encountered and forgotten. She was behind her age in knowledge of delight; she lived each day a year of thwarted happiness.

Wherefore, thus early, Corinne’s companionship suited her needs. Still at an age when parental restraint was neither ridiculed nor resented, Corinne’s distractions were of her mother’s ordering, and Viola shared those distractions, knowing no others. Soon, however, must she draw away from her young friend’s shrill heedlessness; and this her hosts—or one of them—well realized. While she was with them, she could be limited to amusements suitable to seventeen, but Rosalind Plethern had no foolish hope of debarring twenty-one from twenty-one’s true consciousness. All she could do was to keep watch and judge, if possible, the speed with which the girl approached young womanhood, knowing that Corinne would not long hold her, knowing that soon she must awake.

And when she awakened? What aspirants would seek her smile? What counter-influence to that of James and Rosalind would mould her loveliness? The mother of Chris Plethern weighed her son’s chances in the tournament, and found them slight enough. She knew how readily a girl, new-roused to sex-philandering, will turn from boys to older men, from ardent amateurs to those more skilled in pleasing. She knew the lure to maidenhood of man’s inscrutable experience and shrugged aside the pink-faced claims of her boy’s bullock heartiness.

James, almost angrily, blamed her for disloyalty. He saw in Chris the son of a rich man and another’s heir. How should the girl do better for herself? His wife discarded his indignant protests.

“You don’t understand, my good James. Please believe I know more of girls than you do.”

“It is not girl nature, but human nature, Rosalind. Of that I flatter myself I have some knowledge. Chris is a fine lad and his position——”

“Oh, my dear!” she cried impatiently. “If you think girls in their first blind fumbling for a mate care for position——!”

“After all, in marriage——” began James pompously.

But she cut him short.

“There you go again! Marriage! Who talked of marriage? She won’t think of marriage yet. She’ll want her suitors and her hangers-on to fetch and carry during her first years of power. My point is that by the time she gets to marriage, Chris will be out of it. She’ll be beyond him, beyond all of us.”

He pursed his obstinate lips and moved to leave her.

“We shall see,” he said a little primly. “We shall see.”

But Mrs. Plethern did not heed his disagreement. Her husband had great qualities, but in some matters he was a fool. This case of Viola was of their number. If he preferred to build air-castles for his son’s future, he was welcome; the greater duty fell on her, duty of waiting, duty of judging, duty of watching for the girl’s stir to wakefulness.

It was not far away, and, strangely, that which would cause it was still nearer. Maybe the mother was too confident in the persistent childishness of Corinne; maybe from very habit of seeing him about the house, she failed to reckon Daniel Grieve among the factors likely to disturb her guest’s last hours of sleep. Whatever the cause of her neglect, she passed him by, seemed unaware of his companionship with Viola, made no attempt to check the growing frequency of his appearance.

Daniel, for his part, made good use of her and James’ complacency. That very afternoon at Lord’s he had ensured the better acquaintance of Charles Plethern’s ward. He called; he took the girls to Hurlingham; he called again. Then he proposed a theatre party. “Just you two and Chris and I,” he said. “I’ll call for you.”

Corinne clapped hands and jumped. Her parents were of severe taste in entertainment. Always—and more than always for the young—they preferred the thoughtful to the aphrodisiac in stage-diversion. Wherefore their daughter clapped her hands and made no attempt to hide her satisfaction at the prospect of a brighter London.

“He’ll choose something really cheerful,” she told Viola. “You see if he doesn’t. I’m awfully fond of Shakespeare, of course, and all that, but—well, you know——”

Viola smiled, but said nothing. She was more interested in clothes than theatres, and welcomed Daniel’s invitation rather for the opportunity it gave of wearing one of her new evening dresses than for its promise of dramatic vim. After a moment’s thought she said:

“Where shall we dine?”

“The Karnak, I expect. Daniel always goes there when he wants to do anyone well. They know him now—managers bowing and a good corner table and special dinner! We shall be very much the thing!”

“Then I can wear that white one—if it comes in time.”

“It must come in time! We’ll send Ninon a note at once! I shall withdraw my patronage if she disappoints my friend, Miss Marvell!”

With comic dignity she stalked off to write her dreadful threat.

Ninon was cowed into obedience, and, at the door of the Karnak Palace, Viola (in her white), Corinne, Chris and Daniel Grieve were, the next evening, comfortably deposited.

They settled to their meal, each member of the party thinking characteristic thoughts, but, as was proper, talking of something entirely different.

Chris Plethern found the hock-cup excellent, but wished it were champagne. He wondered why Daniel seldom drank champagne. He enjoyed the entrée, and took more than his share of ice pudding. Such time as he could spare from pleasures of the table, he devoted to reflection. Slowly he shifted his turgid, untrained intelligence to the folk about him. From an appreciation of Daniel’s waistcoat, he passed to admiration of Viola. Natural untidiness of mind and the catholic optimism produced by a very subtle blend of hock-cup fogged his conception of his ‘cousin’s’ beauty, but he told himself she was a ‘stunning girl’ and that there ought to be the chance of a bit of fun with her at Morvane in the autumn. His actual conversation was unimportant. He related, with much laughter, the misfortunes of a Cambridge don who had been placed in a false position by some ingenious undergraduates and a complacent landlady. Realizing, however, that the anecdote was not greatly liked, he relapsed into uneasy solemnity. Corinne took pity on him—perhaps also she guessed that Daniel wanted to talk to Viola—and engaged him in family small talk, which he found a shade tedious but eminently safe.

Corinne, herself, had the simple but spectacular emotions of the young girl on the spree. She loved the great restaurant with its mirrors and marbles and gilding; she thrilled at the smart crowd about her, appraising gowns and head-dresses with the sweeping expertise of the unpractised enthusiast. She decided that Daniel was the most distinguished young man in the room and Viola the loveliest girl; she was uneasy at the length of the dinner, fearing to miss a whole act of the promised musical play but, on the other hand, enjoyment of the Karnak was so keen that she shrank from the idea of leaving earlier than she need. Her multifarious delights found expression in saucy and mirthful chatter, in exchange of ironic pleasantries with Daniel, in exhortations to Viola of the much italicized order beloved by the fledgeling woman. With the collapse of her brother’s conversational offensive, she devoted herself, as has been said, to the covering of his retreat, a gesture for which he should have been more grateful than he was.

Viola, in spirit less volatile and less flammable than Corinne, found in her present occupation at once opportunity for further adjustment of self to circumstance and cause for reflective satisfaction. She was pleased with her clothes, pleased with the way she had done her hair, pleased with her host, pleased with her dinner. She took to Daniel Grieve because he harmonized with her growing taste for the English manner. He spoke quietly on queer subjects. He asked sudden questions with an indolent impertinence that flattered as much as it disconcerted. Fleetingly he recalled Charles Plethern when, at rare moments in his eyes, she caught a glimpse of that appraising boldness that at her first meeting with her guardian had so startled her. At such moments, she had twinges of unease. They gave her a sudden consciousness of being woman, and the sensation disturbed and embarrassed her. But they were few and transient and their unpleasantness faded before Daniel’s easy nonchalance. He was gay or polite or supercilious and seemed content for others to be the same. She thought it a pity more men were not like him. Chris was a booby in comparison and thought it funny to tell horrid stories. She wished Chris would be quiet and then Daniel would perhaps talk to her properly.

This having been throughout dinner his sole ambition, when at last Corinne turned to confidential conversation with her brother, he seized his opportunity.

“Did you know you were coming to us for all August and longer?”

“Am I?”

“I hope so,” he said softly. “I’m sure you are.” Then, after a pause, “You’ll like Lavenham. It’s bright and jolly and hideous. Lots of chickens. Are you fond of chickens? Not very? What a pity! Cows any good? Dear, dear!” He shrugged resignedly. “Then I suppose you’ll be miserable and probably leave the next morning.”

“But really—and I didn’t know I was coming even!”

“You’ll come then? Splendid! But don’t tell”—in a whisper—“old man James. Not till the night before. Promise?”

“Why?”

“Never mind. Don’t. All is arranged. So much for August. And now for September. May I come to Morvane? Take you back there?”

“I think hardly that,” she replied.

“Well—ask me to come a little later.”

“It’s not my house. I’d love you to come, but I must ask Mr. Plethern.”

“‘Mr. Plethern!’ It sounds so formal. But how does one address guardians? I read a book the other day in which the young woman called him ‘Guardy.’ Is Mr. Plethern a ‘Guardy’?”

“Not a bit,” she laughed.

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Just as well,” he said. “The girl in the book marries him in the last chapter. Would you like to marry Charles Plethern?”

“Let’s wait till the last chapter,” she parried.

“But girls always read that first,” he answered.

“Maybe—but they keep it to themselves.”

He smiled and glanced at his other guests: they were busy with mutual schemes.

“I want to know about Canada. Will you tell me some time? All about where you lived and your father. It’s fearfully romantic, your dropping into the middle of us like this.”

“There’s very little to tell,” she said. “Father was a Professor at the University. We were poor and lived in a little flat way up town. I looked after him, you know.”

He nodded, but said nothing.

“We saw very few people. One or two of the University lot and some of the neighbours. But father was a shy man and—and had his sorrows. So I really never went about. The best times I had were on a farm—way up country—belonging to some cousins. I learnt riding there and to love horses. All this is wonderful to me——”

“And you to this....” he murmured.

She blushed and gave him a quick glance. His soft, brown eyes met hers. It seemed that behind their humour was a darkness and in the heart of that darkness a glow. She shivered uncomfortably, as in the dawn one shivers on the brink of waking. She felt a new sense stir within her. Again she shivered.

The moment for which Rosalind Plethern thought to watch had come and gone, and she not there to see it; for as beneath the faint caress of Daniel’s eyes Viola shivered, Viola awoke....

Then Corinne, who had seen suddenly a distant clock, burst out impetuously:

“Dan! It’s nine. Do let’s go!”

The host made a show of hurry and regret. The carriage was sent for, and cloaks and coats and hats.

“We’ll be awfully late!” said Corinne, reproachfully.

“Cheer up, Rinka. The good songs are all in the second act. And if they aren’t, I’ll take you again.”

As they filed from the restaurant, many wondered who was the tall girl with the tightly braided, golden hair, and the proud shoulders, and the lovely mouth with its hint of petulance in the upper lip.