December Love Part 24

"The fact is," she said, but in quite an impersonal voice, "that your mind is getting warped by living always among the sc.u.m of London, and by studying and painting only the sc.u.m. It really is a great pity. A painter ought to be a man of the world, not a man of the underworld."

"And the _a propos_ of all this?" asked Garstin

"You are beginning to see the morphia maniac, the drunkard, the cocaine fiend, the prost.i.tute, the--"

"Blackmailer?"

"Yes, the blackmailer, if you like, in everyone you meet. You live in a sort of bad dream, d.i.c.k. You paint in a bad dream. If you go on like this you will lose all sense of the true values."

"But I honestly do believe the man you want me to pick up and then introduce to you to be a successful blackmailer."

"Why? Do you know anything about him?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Then your supposition about him is absurd and rather disgusting."

"It isn't a supposition."

"What is it then?"

"Perhaps you don't realize, my girl, that I'm highly sensitive."

"You seldom seem so. But, of course, I realize that you couldn't paint as you do unless you were."

"Instead of using the word supposition in connexion with a fellow like myself your discrimination should have led you to choose the word instinct."

"Oh?"

"Let's cross over. Catch on!"

They crossed to the side of the road next to Hyde Park.

"My instinct tells me that the magnificently handsome man who stared at you to-night is of the tribe that lives by making those who are indiscreetly susceptible to beauty pay heavy tribute, in hard cash or its equivalent. He is probably a king in the underworld. Perhaps I really will paint him. No, I'm not coming in."

He left her on the doorstep of the hotel and tramped off towards Chelsea.

CHAPTER II

Craven went away from Berkeley Square that night still under the spell and with a mind unusually vivid and alive. As he had told Lady Sellingworth, he was now twenty-nine and no longer considered himself young. At the F.O. there are usually a good many old young men, just as in London society there are always a great many young old women. Craven was one of the former. He was clever, discreet and careful in his work.

He was also ambitious and intended to rise in the career he had chosen.

To succeed he knew that energy was necessary, and consequently he was secretly energetic. But his energy did not usually show above the surface. Tradition rather forbade that. He had a quiet, even a lazy manner as a rule, and he thought he often felt old, especially in London. There was something in the London atmosphere which he considered antagonistic to youth. He had felt decades younger in Italy, especially when his amba.s.sador had taken him to Naples in summer-time. But that was all over now. It might be a long time before he was again attached to an emba.s.sy.

When he reached his rooms, or, rather, his flat, which was just off Curzon Street, he went to look at his bookshelves, and ran his finger along them until he came to the poems of William Watson, which were next to Rupert Brooke's poems. After looking at the index he found the lyric he wanted, sat down, lit his pipe, and read it four times, thinking of Lady Sellingworth. Then he put away the book and meditated. Finally--it was after one o'clock--he went almost reluctantly to bed.

In the morning he, of course, felt different--one always feels different in the morning--but nevertheless he was aware that something definite had come into his life which had made a change in it. This something was his acquaintance with Lady Sellingworth. Already he found it difficult to believe that he had lived for twenty-eight years without knowing her.

He was one of those rather unusual young men who feel strongly the vulgarity of their own time, and who have in them something which seems at moments to throw back into the past. Not infrequently he felt that this mysterious something was lifting up the voice of the _laudator temporis acti_. But what did he, the human being who contained this voice and many other voices, know of those times now gone? They seemed to draw him in ignorance, and had for him something of the fascination which attaches to the unknown. And this fascination, or something akin to it, hung about Lady Sellingworth, and even about the house in which she dwelt, and drew him to both. He knew that he had never been in any house in London which he liked so much as he liked hers, that in no other London house had he ever felt so much at home, so almost curiously in place. The mere thought of the hall with its blazing fire, its beehive-chair, its staircase with the bal.u.s.trade of wrought ironwork and gold, filled him with a longing to return to it, to hang up his hat--and remain. And the lady of the house was ideally right in it. He wondered whether in the future he would often be there, whether Lady Sellingworth would allow him to be one of the few real intimates to whom her door was open. He hoped so; he believed so; but he was not quite certain about it. For there was something elusive about her, not insincere but just that--elusive. She might not care to see very much of him although he knew that she liked him. They had touched the fringe of intimacy on the preceding night.

After his work at the Foreign Office was over he walked to the club, and the first man he saw on entering it was Francis Braybrooke just back from Paris. Braybrooke was buying some stamps in the hall, and greeted Craven with his usual discreet cordiality.

"I'll come in a moment," he said. "If you're not busy we might have a talk. I shall like to hear how you fared with Adela Sellingworth."

Craven begged him to come, and in a few minutes they were settled in two deep arm-chairs in a quiet corner, and Craven was telling of his first visit to Berkeley Square.

"Wasn't I right?" said Braybrooke. "Could Adela Sellingworth ever be a back number? I think that was _your_ expression."

Craven slightly reddened.

"Was it?"

"I think so," said Braybrooke, gently but firmly.

"I was a--a young fool to use it."

"I fancy it's a newspaper phrase that has pushed its way somehow into the language."

"Vulgarity pushes its way in everywhere now. Braybrooke, I want to thank you very much for your introduction to Lady Sellingworth. You were right. She has a wonderful charm. It's a privilege for a young man, as I am I suppose, to know her. To be with her makes life seem more what it ought to be, what one wants it to be."

Braybrooke looked extremely pleased, almost touched.

"I am glad you appreciate her," he said. "It shows that real distinction has still a certain appeal. And so you met Beryl Van Tuyn there."

"Do you know her?"

Braybrooke raised his eyebrows.

"Know her? How should I not know her when I am constantly running over to Paris?"

"Then I suppose she's very much 'in it' there?"

"Yes. She is criticized, of course. She lives very unconventionally, although f.a.n.n.y Cronin is always officially with her."

"f.a.n.n.y Cronin?"

"Her _dame de compagnie_."

"Oh, the lady who reads Paul Bourget!"

"I believe she does. Anyhow, one seldom sees her about. Beryl Van Tuyn is very audacious. She does things that no other lovely girl in her position would ever dare to do, or could do without peril to her reputation. But somehow she brings them off. Mind, I haven't a word to say against her. She is exceedingly clever and has mastered the difficult art of making people accept from her what they wouldn't accept for a moment from any other unmarried girl in society. She may be said to have a position of her own. Do you like her?"

"Yes, I think I do. She is lovely and very good company."

"Frenchmen rave about her."

"And Frenchwomen?"