The Limit Part 10

"You're not really dining out, are you?"

"No, dearest, I managed to get out of it, but alas! I've got to go to the Reception--you know--that horrid Royal Inst.i.tution of Water Colours--afterwards. It isn't worth while to change again. Oh, how weary one does get of the continual round! And then to-morrow!" She sighed.

"What is it to-morrow?"

"To-morrow! Don't talk of it! There's Mrs. Morris's At Home in Maida Hill, and then right at the other end of London the Hyslop-Dunn's in Victoria Grove. Oh, dear! And yet one feels one must be _seen_ at all these places, darling, or else it's remarked at once."

"You live too much for the world," replied her mother, tidying up some half-finished watercress sandwiches with a sharp knife. She wondered if, thus repaired, they would do for next Thursday.

"You know, Mummy dear, that's the worst of our terrible profession. We must keep before the public, or else we drop out and are forgotten. What a sweet creature Valentia Wyburn is! I thought she was quite, quite dear. And the husband and the cousin are darlings too. Of course they wouldn't come; I couldn't get them to an afternoon."

She got up and looked in the gla.s.s.

"What a crowd there was to-day! Three people came up to the front door at the same time. I think they enjoyed themselves, don't you? Though I feel I can't pay every one proper attention when there's such a crush, but I do my little best.... Mr. Simpson came up to me and told me I looked quite wonderful. But he's a silly thing." She pouted and put her head on one side. "Did I look too hideous, darling?"

"Beautiful, of course. The only thing is ..."

Miss Lus...o...b.. clapped her hands and laughed.

"Did its little girlie really look as nice as all that? Oh, Mummy, Mummy!"

"Charming, dear, I only wish that ..."

"It's too proud of its little daughter, that's what it is," said Miss Lus...o...b.., sitting on the arm of her mother's chair. "It's a silly, vain, conceited mother, that it is. It can't see any fault in its pet."

She tried to pat her mother's cheek. Mrs. Lus...o...b.. moved aside with justifiable irritation.

"Don't do that, Flora! Yes, dear, of course, I think you're wonderful, and looked sweet to-day; but I do wish ..."

"No, no, it doesn't want anything," said Flora.

"I should be so pleased--if you'd put on just a little less lip-salve and not quite so much of that bluish powder."

Having succeeded in completing her sentence, her mother got up and faded quickly out of the room and shut the door, leaving Flora looking quite surprised and rather upset with being found fault with.

Indeed, she did not quite recover her equanimity until she had looked over the cards in the hall and put on a great deal more powder and lip-salve, after which she told her mother perhaps she was right, and in any case she, Flora, would always do what she asked, and would always follow her dear, dear Mummy's advice.

She was so charming and amiable that Mrs. Lus...o...b.. pretended to believe her, and said it was _sweet_ of her to take it all off and go out that evening without any advent.i.tious aids to beauty; and this she said in spite of the obvious fact that Flora had evidently put on considerably more than usual.

CHAPTER X

MISCHIEF

The elder Mrs. Wyburn was seated at the gloomy window of her sulky-looking house in Curzon Street one bright day in the season, looking out with some anxiety.

"Of course she's late; but if that woman doesn't come I'll never forgive her. She's a silly fool, but at least she does hear what's going on,"

she reflected.

At this moment an old-fashioned-looking victoria drove up, drawn by two large grey horses. In it sat a rather fat and important-looking lady, with greyish red hair, a straight decided mouth, and several firm chins.

Her most marked characteristic was her intense decision on trivialities.

She was always curiously definite on the vaguest of subjects, and extraordinarily firm and sensible about nothing in particular.

Miss Westbury was a rich unmarried woman, with a peculiarly matronly appearance, a good-natured love of giving advice, and with views that obviously dated--one did not know exactly from when. If she had some of the Victorian severities of the sixties, she had also many of the sentimental vagaries of the eighties. The serious business of her life was gossip. In her lighter moments she collected autographs. But her gossip differed from that of the nervous, impatient Mrs. Wyburn in that it was far more pompous and moral, and not nearly so spiteful and accurate.

Miss Westbury sailed in--I need hardly say she was dressed in heliotrope--and sat down rather seriously in a large--and the only comfortable--armchair.

"My dear Millie, how extremely good of you to come!" exclaimed Mrs.

Wyburn.

Miss Westbury had been christened Maria, but Millie was the name which she had chosen to be called by her friends.

"I am very pleased to come, dear Isabella. To call on you on one of your Wednesdays is, I know, quite hopeless if one has anything to say. To call on any one on a day at home, except as a mere matter of form, I do not consider sensible."

"Quite so. Will you have some tea?"

Mrs. Wyburn rang the bell rather fretfully. She did not care for Millie's made conversation, and hated her way of gaining time.

"I will have what I always have, dear Mrs. Wyburn, at five o'clock, if I may--hot water with one teaspoonful of milk, and a saccharine tablet which I bring with me. I am not a faddist, and I think all those sort of fancies about what is and what is not good for one are exceedingly foolish; but when I go in for a regime, dear, I give it a fair chance.

Otherwise there is no sense in it!"

She settled herself still more sensibly and decidedly in her chair.

"I wonder," said Mrs. Wyburn nervously--one could see she was not listening, and thought Miss Westbury was merely drivelling on--"whether you will come to the point at once? It would be a great comfort if you would. I have been feeling quite anxious about your visit. I rather foolishly took some coffee after lunch, and it kept me awake the whole afternoon--either that, or my anxiety."

"If you take coffee after lunch," replied Miss Westbury, "you should take it made as I do. Two teaspoonfuls of coffee in a large breakfast-cup full of hot water, a saccharine tablet, and a teaspoonful of condensed----"

"What was it you really heard, Millie dear, about my daughter-in-law?"

interrupted Mrs. Wyburn sharply.

Here the footman brought in the tea. Miss Westbury frowned, and ostentatiously changed the subject.

"Have you been to the Grafton? I was persuaded to go. I think, myself, there's a great deal too much fuss made about pictures nowadays. When one thinks of the money that's wasted on them, when it might be sent to a hospital, it makes one's blood boil! And some of those that are made the most fuss about--both the Old Masters and the very new ones--these post-men, or whatever they're called--seem to me perfect nonsense. A daub and a splash--no real trouble taken--and then you're expected to rave about it. There's one man--some one wants me to buy a picture of his--he paints all his pictures in tiny squares of different colours; when you're close you can't see anything, but it seems that if you walk five feet away it forms into a kind of pattern. It seems it's the tessellated school, and they tell me that in a few years nothing else will count. And what I thought was a mountain in a mist turns out to be 'A Nun with cows grazing.' Silly nonsense I call it!"

"Was the nun grazing, or the cows?" asked Mrs. Wyburn.

"Goodness knows, dear. Then there was that other one called Waning Day, or something. Two people in a boat sailing on dry land! Then that picture of a purple man with a green beard! Oh, my dear! The people who took me there told me it was full of--something French--_essayage_, or _mouvement_, I think. The man who tried to make me buy it said it was symbolical. But of course I refused. You know I never have anything to do with nonsense. Well now, my dear----" Taking pity on Mrs. Wyburn's extreme impatience, Miss Westbury came a little nearer. "What I heard was simply this. My cousin, Jane Totness, took her little boy, who is in London for the holidays, to the British Museum. She always likes to improve his mind as much as possible; besides, he had been promised a treat after having a tooth out; the first week of the holidays he always has a tooth out and a treat after. Jane is like that; she's a sensible woman, and I must say I think she brings her boys up very well. I myself might have been more inclined to take him to Madame Tussaud's, or even to a matinee, or to have an ice at Buzzard's; but I dare say I'm old-fashioned enough in some ways, and Jane knows her own business best."

"No doubt she does," said Mrs. Wyburn, quivering with impatience, tapping her foot on the floor, and trying to restrain herself. "And so she took the little boy--Charlie, isn't it?--to the British Museum? Go on, dear!"

"Not Charlie, Mrs. Wyburn. It was little Laurence--little Laurence. He was called Laurence after his grandfather, Lord Dorking. It's the rule in the Totness family; the second son is always called after the grandfather, the eldest son after his father, and the third son--I mean, of course, if there is one--after the mother's father. Don't you think it's a very sensible plan, dear?"

Mrs. Wyburn gave her friend first a sympathetic smile, and then a murderous glance.

"Yes. Well?"