The Halo Part 11

Lady Kingsmead watched her daughter in amazement. Tommy, as usual, was right; Brigit looked, and seemed, years younger than she had done a fortnight ago.

"Yes, my dear, I'll write to-night," she said with the graciousness she used at will, and that was so charming. Then she added, "I might ask him when the d.u.c.h.ess comes. He is sure to love d.u.c.h.esses; _those_ kind of people always do."

"Yes, and as to d.u.c.h.esses, _those_ kind of people frequently like good music for nothing."

But there was no bitterness in her tone, and mother and daughter smiled at each other.

CHAPTER TEN

The d.u.c.h.ess did like good music for nothing, and when, a week later, she was told on her arrival that Joyselle was to be of the party, she was much pleased. She was only an ancient dowager, full of aches and pains and sad and merry memories, but she was a great favourite nevertheless, for her aches and pains and sad memories were kept safely in the background, whereas her merry and sometimes somewhat shocking recollections made her the very best of good company.

"A great man, my dear," she told Lady Kingsmead, "one of the finest artistes I ever heard. I remember once in Petersburg, heaven only knows how many centuries ago, hearing him play before the Czar. He was extraordinarily handsome then, a tall young fellow--he can't be much over forty now--very broad and strong-looking, with beautiful wavy brown hair and gorgeous black eyes. The Grand d.u.c.h.ess Anastasia-Katherine was very much in love with him, and he with her. She gave him a rose before everybody--a red rose--and he kissed it quite boldly before he put it into his coat. A remarkably dashing young man!"

"You have heard, I suppose, that my girl is going to marry his son?"

"Bless me, no! Has the creature a son? Men of that type ought never to marry and have sons. What is he like, the boy?"

"A delightful person, d.u.c.h.ess, and we are all so pleased about it. I had hoped for some time that she would take him--anyone could see how things were going with _him_--but she was always so peculiar, and I rather feared at one time that she would say no," and so on, and so on. Lady Kingsmead did not know she was lying, and the d.u.c.h.ess, who was sleepy and had on a tight dress, did not care. When she had found out who the other guests were to be, and that dinner was at half-past eight, she waddled upstairs, looking remarkably like Guillaume le Conquerant in her grey dress, and went to sleep.

Lady Kingsmead had a cup of Bovril, which she had been told was excellent for the complexion (although as her complexion was always carefully concealed from the eye of man, also from the far more piercing one of woman, it may be asked why she considered it). Then she had her maid lock her dressing-room door, and give her an hour's facial ma.s.sage.

At seven Joyselle arrived, and she was told that he had arrived.

"Ask Mr. Joyselle to come to my boudoir, Burton."

"Very good, my lady."

When Joyselle was ushered in he found a beautiful person in a lacy white tea-gown reading Maeterlinck on a satin _chaise-longue_.

He kissed her hand.

"I am glad to have an opportunity of seeing you, Lady Kingsmead," he began abruptly, fixing his dark eyes on hers. "Our little private correspondence has, I trust, been as pleasing to you as it has to me?"

"I have greatly enjoyed it."

"I am delighted. And they, the _fiances_, know nothing of it?"

"Of course not, Monsieur Joyselle." Her ladyship bowed with some dignity as she spoke, for, besides being a very great artiste, this person with the quiet air of authority was also a peasant.

"As I said, I rather doubted the wisdom of writing to you, but Theo is a baby regarding money, and as you, of course, must consider the matter as not altogether advantageous in the point of birth--for we have no birth, my wife and I, we were just born,"--he smiled delightfully--"I thought it only just to rea.s.sure your"--he was on the point of saying "mother's heart," but thought better of it, and hastily subst.i.tuted the word "mind,"--"on this point of money. Theo, by the will of my dear friend, Lady Isabel Clough-Hardy, does not come of age until he is twenty-five, in something less than three years' time. But you now understand that I, as guardian, am prepared to do all I can for the two dear children."

He _was_ handsome, the d.u.c.h.ess was right. And he was beautifully dressed. And he would play for her guests after dinner.

Lady Kingsmead held out her jewelled hand.

"I am very glad that it happened," she said sweetly. "Theo's a dear boy, and seems to make my little girl very happy."

"Yes, they seem happy. Ah--is this Tommy?"

It was. A spick-and-span Tommy, with very wet hair and a nervous smile; a Tommy with cold hands and a curious twitching behind his knees. For he had come to Olympus to see a G.o.d.

Joyselle held out his big, strong hand and Tommy's disappeared in it.

Thus, sometimes, are friendships made.

"I say--you _can_ play," stammered the boy. "I--it is glorious."

"You love music, Brigitte says."

"Don't I just! She says you'll play for me some time."

Tommy's small, greenish eyes were wet with irrepressible tears of adoration.

Joyselle rose. "Come with me to my room now, Tommy, and I will play for you. _Vous permettez, madame?_"

Lady Kingsmead bowed graciously, but when the door closed, frowned with disgust, and putting Maeterlinck on the table, drew Claudine from under an embroidered pillow and began to read.

Tommy, treading on air, accompanied Joyselle to his room, and sitting on the floor as the easiest place in which to contain almost unbearable rapture, listened.

Joyselle as he played recalled another little boy who, years before, had listened in much the same way to another man playing the violin, and the comparison is not so far-fetched as it seems, for although the blind fiddler of the sunny day in Normandy had been only a third-rate sc.r.a.per of the bow, and Joyselle one of the world's very greatest artists, yet in one thing they joined issue. Each of them gave to the listening child before him his very best.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dinner that night was a very grand affair. Fledge inspired awe by his majestic mien--Fledge liked d.u.c.h.esses--and Burton and William, the recently promoted, with their heads striped with grease and powder, looked to the enraptured eyes of the female servants their very best.

There were crimson roses in beautiful silver vases on the table, and in the centre stood a particularly hideous but very valuable silver ship--"given," as Tommy once gravely explained to a guest, "by somebody or other--a king, or an admiral, I think--to one of my ancestors, in the seventeenth century, who did something or other rather well."

Lady Kingsmead, under the d.u.c.h.ess' influence, was suffering from one of her attacks of thinking Tommy "quaint," so, by the old lady's suggestion, the boy was allowed to sit at the foot of his own table, pretending, as he had told his sister he should find it necessary to do, to be as young as his mother's guests.

The d.u.c.h.ess, greatly diverted by his demeanour, and reinforced on her other side by an amusing, sad dog of thirty, who wrote wicked novels, thoroughly enjoyed her dinner. There are so many reasons for enjoying one's dinner; some people do because they like to meet their fellow-creatures; some because they like being seen at certain houses; some because they have beauty to display or stories to tell; and some because they enjoy eating and drinking simply as eating and drinking.

The d.u.c.h.ess, in that she enjoyed dining for all the reasons above cited, except that of bothering her ancient head about whose house she was seen at, was extremely pleased with her entertainment. She wagged her old head--white now, quite frankly, after many years of essays in difficult tints--whispered to her novelist, and made love to Tommy quite shamelessly.

"You look like an Eastern potentate, you are so silent and serious," she told him once. "Do I bore you so horribly, or is it Miss Letchworth?"

"I am not bored at all, d.u.c.h.ess," answered the boy simply; "I am thinking."

"And what are you thinking about?"

Tommy hesitated. Under her frivolous manner he knew the d.u.c.h.ess had a heart, and very human sympathies.

"I want to be a violinist," he said slowly, after a pause during which the d.u.c.h.ess, with a little shriek, rescued her salad, which William had pounced upon.