Scarlet and Hyssop Part 9

"To think that you should have guessed!" said the other; "but you always were so quick."

"It did not need much quickness after my prolonged conversation with him last night."

"So you had a good talk to him," said Mrs. Brereton. "I am so glad."

Maud raised her eyebrows.

"Surely you meant me to," she said. "Whenever I looked up, meaning to go, I always thought I saw you pinning me down again. Did you not?"

Mrs. Brereton was not quite sure that things were going comfortably.

"I don't know what you mean by pinning you down," she said; "but it is, of course, perfectly true that I wanted you to get better acquainted with him. I am sure, Maud, you are a very lucky girl."

The lucky girl put up her parasol; her face was absolutely immobile except for the least curl at the corner of her mouth, which might have expressed almost anything--fatigue, indifference, anything.

"Then he has made formal proposals?" she asked. "His mother wrote to me asking if I sanctioned his doing so."

"You said yes, I suppose?"

"Naturally I should not forbid it, considering, as I do, that it is an admirable match for you. The young man is amiable, quite without vices I should think (which, after all, is _most_ important, as so many marriages are wrecked that way). He is shrewd and clever, quite his father's son, and he is immensely wealthy."

"Those are all very good qualities," said Maud.

"My dear, of course they are. In bare justice to myself, I must say that, when I recommend a thing, I do so not on vague grounds, but on well-defined and cogent reasoning. Or perhaps you would prefer a husband who is a sot, a fool, and a pauper? You could easily find one of those without any great trouble."

Maud laughed; she was one of those people whom temper in others leaves perfectly undisturbed. Then she laid her hand on her mother's.

"Dearest mother," she said, "I really did not mean to be tiresome. Was I? You were saying that he was well-conducted, clever and wealthy."

"I should have thought that was a good deal to say for any one," said her mother, not yet quite calm. "There are heaps of perfectly well-conducted people in the world who are fools, heaps of very wealthy people who are vicious, and plenty, as I said, who have neither wits, morals, nor money. Which sort do you want? Or do you look forward to spinsterhood in a cottage with a canary? Almost all your father's fortune will go to Otho and Reginald. You will be quite poor."

"I don't love Anthony Maxwell," said Maud, with a deplorable relapse into directness.

"Oh, my dear, have you been reading some sentimental novel? You seem to think that every girl meets the man eternally pre-destined for her, with clear-cut features and a coiffure like a hair-dresser's. That sort of romantic stuff is extinct. It never existed in fact, and it is rapidly disappearing in fiction. If it were true, the world would have come to an end long ago, for we should all have caught such frightful colds by reading Dante and Shakespeare on violet-covered banks that we should have died without children."

Mrs. Brereton settled herself on the cushions of the carriage, feeling much more comfortable. If only Maud would continue to argue the question, she felt sure of her ground.

"You are not silly, I know, dear," she went on; "in fact, I think you are too much the other way. You like a.n.a.lyzing and picking things to bits, and saying, 'This seems to me faulty here, and that seems to me exaggerated there.' I a.s.sure you it is a mistake. And when you say you do not love him, you are using expressions of the meaning of which you have no idea. You don't know what love is--no girl can. You may feel attracted to a handsome face as you can be attracted by a landscape or a piece of jewellery, but no one with the slightest sense of refinement could marry a man because he was handsome. It is a grossly indelicate idea, and one I am sure which you never entertained."

"I was not proposing to marry any man because of his good looks," said Maud.

"No, dear, I am certain you were not; and I was only saying in the abstract that to do such a thing would be an inconceivable folly. If your husband was Adonis himself, you would forget he was even pa.s.sably good-looking in a fortnight. Dear me, yes! one gets used to nothing so quickly. And in the same way and with the same speed you get used to the absence of good looks. Anthony Maxwell, I allow, has but small claim to them; and I was only wondering whether, when you said that you did not love him, you did not have a half-conscious idea in your mind that if he was very handsome you might have. Dearest Maud, how wonderfully well you are looking! no wonder Anthony fell in love with you."

Again the corner of Maud's mouth twitched.

"I hope that was not the cause," she said, "for you have just told me what an absurd reason that is for wanting to marry anybody!"

For the moment Mrs. Brereton had a violent desire to box those eligible ears, but restrained it, and proceeded to propound her philosophy of matrimony with the most admirable lucidity.

"Ah, that is where men are different from us," she said. "It is part of the province of women, as dear Mr. Austin says, to be beautiful, but it is quite outside the province of men. Look at your father now, Maud; he has perhaps less pretentions to good looks than any one I ever saw. But what a happy, what a blessed"--and the word did not stick--"marriage ours has been! Looking back even now, I have never yet seen a man whom I would sooner have chosen. And long, long ago--a year ago at least--I thought that if only dear Anthony would be attracted by you, what a happy thing it would be. It is silly to expect high romance. High romance does not exist for ninety-nine hundredths of the world--luckily, I am sure. And I am sure you are not romantic."

Maud had listened with the closest attention to what her mother was saying, but she made no reply, and in silence they bowled swiftly along the Bath Road, which seemed to open like torn linen in front of them.

Mrs. Brereton also well knew that silence in season is as necessary an equipment to the dialectician as the most eloquent speech, and having said all that she really intended, she had no design of ruining the effect of her words by vain repet.i.tion. Once, indeed, she called attention to the loveliness of the cl.u.s.tered pyramids of bloom that covered the horse-chestnut-trees in the gardens round the houses of some small village half buried in blossom, but the tone of Maud's "Lovely!"

showed her quite unmistakably that general conversation was for the present a futility. At the same time her daughter's abstraction indicated that her own words were probably sinking in, a process with which Mrs. Brereton had no desire whatever to interfere. At last, as they approached their gates, the girl furled her parasol with a snap which might easily betoken a decision.

"I have made up my mind," she said--"at least, I have made up my mind not to make up my mind immediately. I suppose you don't expect me to decide at once?"

"No, dear, certainly not," said her mother; "though personally I cannot see why you should hesitate."

"You think it is ideal in every way?"

"Ideal, no! An ideal is realized about once every hundred years. There are disadvantages necessarily attaching to every step, however advantageous. But I consider it most eminently desirable."

The girl looked at her a moment.

"Did you never look out for what seemed to you ideal, mother?" she asked.

"Yes, dear, once. When I was exactly fifteen I fell pa.s.sionately in love with the Emperor of Germany, whom I had once seen at a distance. To marry him seemed to me ideal. But whether it would have been or not I was never privileged to know. He and I both married some one else. I was acutely miserable for at least a fortnight. But during that fortnight I learned something, which was that your time can be fully occupied in getting what you can get, without wasting your energy in longing for what you can't."

"Poor mother!" said Maud gravely; and in her voice Mrs. Brereton thought she could detect more of irony than simplicity.

They had no further conversation on the subject for the present, since during the next couple of hours Mrs. Brereton successfully settled a hundred details and arrangements that would have taken a less quick woman half a day to grapple with. The house stood some quarter of a mile from the river-bank, on the reach between Maidenhead and Bray, red-bricked and creeper-covered, but picturesque in a haphazard, bungalow manner, intolerably dank in the winter, when languid, foggy water covered the lower lawn, but ideally adapted for summer Sunday parties. It had long been left to moulder and mildew, but some ten years ago, while the Thames was still only a geographical expression, Mrs.

Brereton, in a hunt for some place of the kind near London, but sufficiently remote not to be overrun, had lighted on it, and with her quick eye had seen how admirably it would suit her wants. Inside there were not more than a dozen bedrooms and two or three adequate reception-rooms; but the garden was exquisite, and had now under her guiding hand fulfilled rare possibilities.

A steep slope of gra.s.s, negotiable by three flights of stone steps, led from the gravel path, which bordered the house, on to the lawn, which lay in terraces towards the river, framed with intersections of box hedges, cut into pyramidal and geometric shapes, and bordered by vivid beds of flowers. The entrance of each of these lawns was in line with the centre of the house, and they communicated one with another by broad steps of gra.s.s. One was levelled for croquet, another was a rose-garden with a pergola running round it, while that nearest the house was during the summer chiefly occupied by garden and basket chairs. The whole front of the house, again, was, with its gravel path, capable of being roofed in with an awning, carpeted with rugs, and furnished for eating, drinking, card-playing, and other diversions not less diverting.

Behind the framing of box hedge which encircled the lawn lay on each side a shrubbery of blossoming trees, lilacs and laburnums, and behind, again, tall elms and beeches shaded the paths that led to the meadow of untamed land below the lawn, and bordered the river itself, where weeping-willows trailed their slow-moving, slender fingers over the tarred roof of the boat-house. Here, also, Mrs. Brereton had caused to be erected a private bathing-place, dug out at great expense in the river. It was remarkable only for the fact that it had never been used, except once by Mr. Brereton by mistake.

Mildred had not been down here before during the spring, and as she was going to entertain next Sunday, and would not be able to get down again in the interval, it followed that a good deal of method and quickness were required to effect all that had to be done in a couple of hours.

Like a wise woman, she knew that in those cases in which, as here, she was quite aware what she wanted, and only required it to be done, the best servants are those who will not be intelligent and have ideas of their own, but simply obey. Consequently she had, as gardeners, a staff of Parsifals, simple blameless fools, who moved tubs of geraniums to such places as she wished and to no others, who planted carnations in beds where she wished carnations to be planted, and did not execute fantasies of their own. The greenhouses which lay on the other side of the house were full and ready with plants to be bedded out, and for the first half-hour she was occupied in choosing exactly what she wanted in each bed. After that there was the upholsterer with his choice of canvases for the awning that lay along the length of the house, and the carpenter who was to erect a small wooden shelter which should be convenient for Bridge-players. Then came the choice of rugs, hangings, and furniture for the marquee which stood on the first lawn, as well as for the awning-shelter close to the house. Persian carpets had to be unrolled, spread out, and examined, the choice of chairs and tables had to be made, palms to be sought for the corners, a piano to be tuned, the croquet to be inspected and set up.

After an hour, indeed, it seemed as if chaos had resumed its reign, or that some half-dozen London drawing-rooms had been sacked and the contents strewn on the lawn. Here stood a great Chinese vase forlornly alone in the middle of the gra.s.s, here two Chippendale tables huddled together for company, here roll upon roll of Persian rugs were gradually creeping like a tide of many-coloured waters over the green, here was a stack of chairs, and here half a hundred lanterns with which the tent was lit. And in the middle of it all, triumphantly ruling chaos, stood Mrs. Brereton, never confused herself and never confusing others, bidding, forbidding, changing, confirming, as she directed simultaneously the struggling gardeners and an army of housemaids, at her best, as she always was, when a great deal of practical business had to be managed in a very short time.

"No, the croquet must be shifted to the right; it gives more margin,"

she was saying. "Just show them, Maud. The piano opposite the French window from the drawing-room, but it's no use putting it in till you have the carpets down. The scarlet cushions belong to the other sofa; no, there's no answer"--this to a footman with a telegram. "Of course, if there are no nasturtiums out yet it can't be helped. Yes, seven lanterns at least; the electrician must look to the wires, one on each of the supports; we shall dine there as well as lunch next Sunday if it is warm. Bridge-tables? Yes, in the new shelter, two of them, and one in the corner of the long awning. What's that matting doing? It belongs to the conservatory; put it back there. I shall want thick common baize under the rugs; they will get damp otherwise. The big flower-holder in the corner; no, more in the corner than that. Wolland's will send down two palms, one to go behind the piano, the other indoors in the drawing-room."

But out of chaos by such processes of evolution emerged order, and it was still an hour before sunset when they left again. Mrs. Brereton had to a high degree that most useful gift of being able to banish any one subject completely from her mind when she was occupied with another, and it was not till she was seated with Maud again in the carriage that the question which had occupied them so exclusively driving down rea.s.serted itself. Even then she felt it was the better part of wisdom to let things be. Maud was clearly preoccupied, with what, it was impossible not to guess, and as she was, her mother knew, one who chose to make decisions for herself, she bridled her desire to know what was pa.s.sing in her daughter's mind. She always found that conversation with Maud was difficult; to-day it was particularly so. But just as they stopped at the Grosvenor Square house this desire mastered her.

"And what do you think you intend to do?" she asked.

"I think I intend to refuse him, but I am not sure."

And with such cold comfort her mother had to be content.

That evening Mrs. Brereton was dining at Lady Ardingly's, the woman whom she admired and respected more than any one in the world. She had been n.o.body quite knew who, but, anyhow, Russian and as poor as a church mouse; but she had got, and n.o.body quite knew how, a position which was in its way unique. She had married Lord Ardingly while quite a girl in the teeth of strenuous opposition, fighting her battle quite unaided, and, instead of his having to live her down, it had soon become quite clear that it would be his part to toil, faint yet pursuing, in her wake. All her life success had attended her, she always knew what she wanted and always got it, and whoever else rose and shone and pa.s.sed, Lady Ardingly continued to burn with unbated luminance. To-day, so Mildred Brereton thought, Marie Alston was the star, but she quite realized that this particular star, like those of the music-halls, might some day set; but Lady Ardingly remained swung high in the social heavens, a permanent centrepiece. Marie was the fashion, it is true, but Lady Ardingly was much more than the fashion; that word was far too superficial to describe her.

She had been, no doubt, once of great personal beauty, but clearly it was not that which gave her the power she possessed, for it had pa.s.sed years ago, and she was now something over sixty, with splashes of rouge dashed in an impressionist manner on to her face, not from any motive of vanity, but simply from long force of habit; a wig, no more to be mistaken for natural growth than a top-hat, was perched negligently on one side of her head, and to balance it, in the evening, a tiara perched on the other. Her neck was covered with jewels; her hands, which were somewhat lean and knuckly, were crammed with rings; and she dressed superbly. But all these things, like the rouge, were the result of habit; she had been accustomed to that sort of thing, and continued it, and certainly he would have been a bold man who tried to reason with her or alter her. Her husband, for instance, never attempted it. Finally, she was inordinately fond of gossip, card-playing, and other people's business, and was eminently good-natured provided that path did not cross her own. But she had so many private side-paths down which she was liable to wander, that one never knew for certain where she would come out next, or how she would act in any given set of circ.u.mstances. But as long as doing a kindness to another did not interfere with what she desired herself, she was always ready, even at the cost of trouble and personal exertion, to help her friends if they approached her in the proper spirit, which implied a good deal of abas.e.m.e.nt. She had been in her time a very considerable political intriguer, and, following her invariable rule of always getting whatever she wanted, she had built up her husband into the edifice of the Conservative Government. But the game--for it had never been more to her than that--had now ceased to amuse her, and she cared no longer how greatly her poor Ardingly floundered in the s.p.a.cious halls of the Admiralty. This he seldom failed to do. She was, finally, the very antipodes of those women who, because generals and statesmen tell them things not generally known, consider themselves, in that they are at the centre of things, as wielding some vague political influence, and fly about telling all their friends what everybody has said. Lady Ardingly never flew about; she sat quite still and gave orders. Why people did as she told them they never quite knew; it arose, perhaps, from her habit of always being right.