The Confounding of Camelia Part 8

"I won't be at home to-morrow," she said decidedly, "and if I were conscious of wounds I'd keep at a good distance from you, Camelia." Lady Paton looked from her daughter to Perior, an alarmed appeal, but he did not raise his eyes nor seem to notice Camelia's graceful promises.

"Mrs. Jedsley, _why_ are you always so unkind to me?" Camelia asked, laughing. "I a.s.sure you that you may trust my balms. Mrs. Jedsley, I will wager you--do you ever bet?--that by to-morrow night the whole county-side will be singing my praises. I like people to sing my praises--I like to feel affection and sympathy about me; now Mr. Perior has been telling me that there is a distinct absence of these elements in my atmosphere. I begin to feel the vacuum myself. Won't you help me to fill it--help my regeneration?--No, Mary, that is the wrong vase--how could I arrange flowers in that? On the stand, was it? The house-maid's stupidity, then; and I bought together the stand and the proper vase to go with it. No; don't take the _stand_ back with you, you goosie! put it here. Now, Mrs. Jedsley," she added, when Mary had once more departed, Perior having relieved her of the stand and carried it, not at all graciously, to Camelia, "tell me how I can best please every one most?

You know them all so well--their pet pursuits, their pet hobbies. Mrs.

Harley has orchids, of course; I shall immediately ask her to take me to the conservatory. And Mrs. Grier--that pensive little woman with the long, long nose--has she not a son at Oxford, a boy she dotes on? Isn't she very fond of music?"

Mrs. Jedsley was stirring her third cup of tea with an entirely recovered composure. "Yes, Mrs. Grier plays the violin, and has a son she dotes on; if you flatter her nicely enough, she will certainly join in the 'Hallelujah.'"

"Well, that is nice to know." Mary had now brought the correct j.a.panese vase, and Camelia neatly trimmed from her branch while she spoke a few superfluous leaves and twigs.

"Is not Mrs. Grier a dear friend of Lady Henge's?" Mrs. Fox-Darriel asked in an aside to Lady Paton--to the latter a very welcome aside, as in murmured acquiescence she found a momentary refuge from the bewildered sensations her daughter's projects gave her.

Yes, Lady Henge and Mrs. Grier were great friends, both musical, both deeply interested in charitable work. Mrs. Grier, a sweet woman,--"and you know," said Lady Paton, bending gently towards her guest, "her nose is not so long. That is only Camelia's droll way of putting things, you know."

"Oh, yes,"--Mrs. Fox-Darriel's smile was very rea.s.suring--"you and I understand Camelia, Lady Paton. It doesn't do to take her _au grand serieux_." Indeed, Mrs. Fox-Darriel smiled inwardly, feeling that all disquiet on Camelia's account was very unnecessary, and convinced that she knew her very thoroughly.

"You won't be at home to-morrow, then?" asked Camelia, looking around from her vase as Mrs. Jedsley rose to go.

"No, my dear; and I'm afraid you won't find me of use at any time. I haven't any particular foibles. You won't discover a handle about me by which to wind me up to the required musical pitch."

"You traduce yourself, Mrs. Jedsley; with your charitable heart, do you mean to tell me that, were I to wrap Clievesbury in red flannel, fill it with buns and broth, you wouldn't think me charming, and make sweet music in my ears?"

"I never denied that you were charming, balefully charming, you naughty girl," said Mrs. Jedsley with a good humor that implied no submission.

"Here is a rose for you. May it give you kind thoughts of me." Camelia fastened one of the rejected buds in the lady's portly bosom, and when she was gone, Lady Paton, leaving the room with her, she added, "Mary, is the piano tuned?"

Mary went to the Steinway. "Lady Henge is a composer, as you know." She turned a face sparkling with mischief to Perior, who maintained his silence beside the mantelpiece.

"You have heard her? Yes? Well, you shall hear her again. That's enough, Mary," she added, lightly; "we hear that the piano needs tuning."

Now Mary had a certain little pride in the neat execution of Beethoven's Sonatas, that many hours of faithful practice had seemed to justify, and while Camelia stood back to admire her flower arrangement, both Perior and Mrs. Fox-Darriel noticed the flush that swept over Mary's face.

CHAPTER VIII

By the time Sir Arthur and Lady Henge arrived, Camelia had fulfilled her prophecy and become a popular person. Under the blighting indifference of her first appearance Clievesbury had naturally retaliated with severity, but that the first impression had been erroneous the most severe owned--after Camelia had called on them. Camelia found the process of winning the whole neighborhood great fun, and its success gave her a delicious sense of efficiency. She cared nothing, absolutely nothing, for her neighbors, but once she determined to be cared for by them she found the facility of the task highly flattering to self-esteem.

She drove from place to place, sweet, modest, adaptable. She dispensed pretty compliments with a grace that disarmed the grimmest suspicion.

She showed a pretty interest in every one. Indeed why should they not like her? Camelia thought she really deserved liking; and though she laughed at herself a little for the complimentary conclusion, her kindness struck her as rather nice. It was motiveless, was it not?

almost motiveless, a game that it pleased her to play. Certainly she did not care to appear before Lady Henge on a background of unpopularity; the background must harmonize, become her; she would see to that. At the bottom of her heart Camelia cared very little for Lady Henge's approval or disapproval; Lady Henge was part of the game; but Camelia had determined that the game required Lady Henge, like everybody else, to find her charming; the game required Arthur Henge to propose--then she might accept him; but she must make quite secure the possibility of refusing him. So Camelia aimed steadily at one result, and was not at all sure of her own decision once the result was reached, and this indecision gave her a happy sense of freedom.

She must capture Sir Arthur; this visit was definite, the last test; but once captured, Camelia wondered if she would care to keep. Theoretically she owned to a hard common-sense ambition that would make rejection doubtful; but when the moment for decision finally arrived, Camelia felt that this trait in her character might fail her; she did not really believe in it, though she paraded it, flaunted it. Every one might think her a hard-headed, hard-hearted little worldling--as far as practice went they were right, no doubt, in all honesty she must own that she gave them no occasion to think anything else; but she reserved a warm corner of unrevealed ideals--ideals she never herself looked at, where a purring self-content sat cosily.

Lady Henge and her son arrived on a Monday. Lady Henge was nervous, though her ma.s.sive personality concealed the tremor, and unhappy--for she felt Arthur's fate to be a foregone conclusion. She was not a clever but an immensely conscientious woman. She lived up to all her principles, and she took only the highest view of everything. Her son's love for the pretty Miss Paton, who meddled frivolously with politics (Lady Henge meddled ponderously), and made collections of j.a.panese pictures, had thrown her into a dismal perturbation. She could not like Miss Paton; her cleverness was not disinterested; her sense of duty was less than dubious, she lived for pleasure, for admiration; she was no fit wife for a Henge.

The most imperative of the Henges' stately requirements was that solemn sense of duty which Lady Henge embodied so conclusively.

She felt the tremor quieted, the unhappiness soothed, however, on seeing Camelia in her home. Indeed, Camelia's background was masterly. By the end of the first day Lady Henge was owning to herself that the glare of London had perhaps been responsible for her former unfavorable impression. Camelia's manner was perfect; she was quiet and gentle; her wish to please was frank but very dignified. Lady Henge felt that in no way was her favor being courted, and she was quite clever enough to appreciate that. Lady Paton was left to take all the initiatives, and behind her mother Camelia smiled with an air of happy obscurity.

The following days emphasized the initial approval. The image of the excellent Lady Elizabeth faded by degrees from Lady Henge's mind, and the ache of disappointment with it. She wonderingly expanded into confidence under Camelia's gentle influence.

She was a shy woman; she had been afraid of Camelia; but with tender touches the shyness and the fear seemed to be pressed away. There was nothing to be afraid of. Was it possible? She doubted sometimes, when alone and deeply thoughtful; but with Camelia quiet satisfaction was irresistible.

Perior watched the little comedy, convinced of its artificiality. That doubt of her final choice which preserved for Camelia her sense of independent pride free from all tarnish of self-interested scheming, he could not have believed in. Her motives were, he thought, very clear to him--as they must be to everybody else. He could not credit her with love; a girl so dexterously managing her hand was held by no compulsory force of real feeling. She was going to marry Arthur Henge, because he was a good match, not because she loved him; any girl might have loved him certainly, but Camelia was capable of loving no one. He was very sore, very angry, very moody. Lady Henge's transparent bids to him for sympathy in irritating his scorn for Camelia irritated him, too, against her, against Arthur even. Why couldn't they let him alone? They should get neither yea or nay from him, for, after all, Perior was inconsistent; the scorn did not shake his rather negative loyalty to his pupil, and beneath that there lay another and a deeper feeling, the feeling that made it possible for Camelia to hurt him.

"I was talking to her--to Miss Paton--about Woman's Suffrage to-day," so Lady Henge would start a conversation, "she seems to have thought rather deeply on the subject of a widened life for women--the development of character by responsibility--the democratic ideal, is it not?" Lady Henge combined staunch conservatism with a devout belief in Humanity.

Perior answered "Yes, I suppose so," to the question.

"She has, I see, a great deal of influence down here in the country--more than I could have expected in such a gay young creature.

Mrs. Grier spoke to me of her good-heartedness, her generous help in charitable matters. Mrs. Grier, as you know, is deeply interested in the improvement of the condition of the laboring cla.s.ses. I shall count upon Miss Paton next year; her aid would be very effective; she could help me with some of my clubs--a pretty face, a witty tongue, popularize one; she has promised to address the Shirt Makers' Union. She takes so much interest in all these absorbing social problems,--interest so una.s.suming, so free from all self-reference."

They were in the drawing-room after dinner. Perior seemed, in watching Camelia fulfil herself, to find a searing fascination, for he was often at Enthorpe Lodge of late. The faint flavor of inquiry in Lady Henge's a.s.sertions only elicitated, "I'm sure she'd be popular." No; he would not be held responsible for Camelia; and again he determined that Lady Henge should on the subject of Camelia's full fitness get from him neither a yea or a nay.

Lady Henge's clear brown eyes had turned contemplatively upon her son and Camelia, who were sitting on an isolated sofa in a frank _tete-a-tete_.

Perior's glance followed hers, and while she read in Arthur's absorbed att.i.tude and expression the wisdom of submissive partisanship--the utter futility of further resistance, Perior studied the half grave, half playful smile with which Camelia received her lover's utterances. She seemed to feel Perior's scrutiny, for her eyes swerved suddenly and met his, and the smile hardened a little as she looked at him.

"She is very lovely," Lady Henge said with an irrepressible sigh. "It is a very unusual type of loveliness," at which Perior looked away from Camelia and back at his companion. "He is very fond of her," Lady Henge added--a little tearfully, Perior suspected.

"He has taken it seriously for quite a while, I believe."

"Oh yes, yes indeed," Lady Henge, conscious of having herself made the only barrier to an earlier declaration, spoke a little vaguely.

"Arthur's wife will have many responsibilities," she went on; "I think that--if she accepts Arthur--Miss Paton will prove equal to them." The "if she accepts Arthur" Perior thought rather n.o.ble, "and her gaiety will be good for him, he needs such sunshine. I must not be so selfish as to think that _I_ could give it him. And then--with all her gaiety,"

here a recrudescence of the vein of urgency crept once more into Lady Henge's voice, "she has depths, Mr. Perior--great depths, has she not?

Neither Arthur nor I take life lightly, you know," and Lady Henge held him with a waiting pause of silence.

"Yes, I know you don't," he said, and then found himself forced to add, "there are many possibilities in Camelia."

At all events, he might have said much more. Again he looked across at Camelia as he spoke, and again her eyes met his. She rose abruptly, and crossed the room.

"Lady Henge," she said, standing before her guest in an att.i.tude of delicate request, "won't you play for us? We all want to hear you--and not as mere interpreter, you know--one of your own compositions, please."

If there were a vulnerable spot in Lady Henge's indisputable array of virtues it was a touching egotism in regard to her musical capabilities.

She fancied herself the pioneer of a new school, and hoped for a rather shallow smattering of form and polyphony to more than atone by an immense amount of feeling. She smiled now, drawing off her gloves immediately, even while saying, with the diffidence of a master--

"I am afraid my _poemes symphoniques_ are not quite on the after-dinner level, my dear. You know I can't promise a comfortable accompaniment to conversation."

"Don't degrade us by the implication," smiled Camelia; "we are at least appreciative."

"My music is emotionally exhaustive," said Lady Henge, shaking her head and rising ma.s.sively. "In my humbler way I have tried to do for the abstract what Wagner did for the concrete. I do not depict the sea, but the psychological sensations the sea arouses in us." Lady Henge was moving towards the piano, her very back, with its serene, brocaded breadth, imposing by its air of large self-confidence a hush upon the babble of drawing-room flippancy.

"Oh, good gracious!" Gwendolen Holt e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in an alarmed whisper to her neighbor Mr. Merriman.

"Poor dear Lady Henge," murmured Lady Tramley, leaning back in her delicate thinness, and fixing sad eyes upon her musical friend.