The Limit Part 5

He was not a prompt man, but he went at once to the telephone and gave orders to a shop in Bond Street that would result in a collection of fur-lined cloaks being sent for her choice that evening. This would please her; she would smile and try them on. Besides, it would prevent her catching cold.

CHAPTER VI

HARRY'S ENTERTAINMENT

Van Buren, who was a business man, was an idealist; while Harry de Freyne, the artist--was, emphatically, not.

Van Buren had been brought up on Thackeray and d.i.c.kens, above all on old pictures from _Punch_; Du Maurier's drawings enjoyed at an early age had made him romantic about everything connected with London. As soon as he was able to leave his bank in New York--in fact, the moment he had retired from business--he had realised his dream and come to live in London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry, who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a sn.o.bbish Anglomaniac, at least his sn.o.bbishness was not of the common quality nor about the obvious things; he was a little ashamed of his money, but he did not worship rank and t.i.tles; it was Intellect--but Intellect that had the stamp of fashion--that held a glamour for him. So did everything that he supposed to be modern, previous, and up-to-date. No one could ever, whether in New York or in London, have been in life less modern than poor Van Buren, though he was eminently contemporary and perhaps even in advance in matters connected with business. For business he had genius, and yet, curiously, no pa.s.sion; he was unconsciously brilliant on the subject; it was hereditary. But in his innermost heart he believed that it was vulgar to be an American millionaire! And he had a childish horror of vulgarity, and an innocent belief that an Englishman who had been to Eton and Oxford and who was _dans le mouvement_, smart and good-looking, and had deserted diplomacy for art, must of necessity be refined, superior, cultured, everything that Van Buren wanted to be.

Of course he soon found out that Harry was frightfully hard up, and in the most delicate manner imaginable--a delicacy rather wasted on his friend--implored, as a special favour, to be allowed to be his banker.

But Harry had refused, having vague ideas of much more important extent than a mere loan with regard to making Van Buren useful. He had thus gone up in his friend's estimation, at the same time placing him under a great and deeply felt obligation by gratifying his fancy for knowing clever people and celebrities.

At last the friendship had culminated in Harry's suggestion of a marriage between his young cousin, Daphne, and Van Buren. Harry felt that if he could compa.s.s this arrangement he would at one stroke give fortune to Daphne, freedom to himself--the child was very much in his way in Valentia's house--and make Van Buren eternally grateful.

Harry really liked Van Buren and respected him; he regarded him as touching, but also, at times, as a menace. A shadow sometimes came over their friendship, the alarming shadow of the future bore. What was now to his cynical mind screamingly funny about the American--his sensitive delicate feelings, his high standard of morals with regard to what he called the ladies, and illusions that one would rarely find in London in a girl of seventeen, might some day develop into priggishness and tediousness, and--especially--would take up too much time. For since Harry had been intimate with Van Buren he had discovered that the tradition of American hustling was, like most traditions, a fiction.

Americans always have time; Englishmen never. The leisurely way in which Van Buren talked was an example of this--it was the way he thought; his brain worked slowly. Harry and his like have no time to drawl; they have to keep appointments.

On the evening of the Ritz dinner-party Harry was not in a particularly good temper, and thought to himself he was rather like a Barnum as he introduced his guests one by one to the modest millionaire, who said to them all, "Pleased to meet you", and fixed his admiring glance with a sentimental respect on Daphne, an undisguised admiration on Valentia, and an almost morbid curiosity on Miss Lus...o...b.., the first actress he had ever met.

Miss Lus...o...b.. was a conventional, rather untidy-looking creature, very handsome, with loose hair parted and waved over her ears, and with apparently no design or general idea either in her dress or manner. She varied from minute to minute from being what she thought theatrical to appearing what she supposed to be social. She evidently hadn't settled on her pose, always a disastrous moment for a natural woman who wishes to be artificial. Practically she always wore evening dress except in the evening, so while at her own flat in the afternoon she was photographed in a _decolletee_ tea-gown, this evening she was dressed as if for Ascot, except for the hat, with an emaciated feather boa and a tired embroidered _crepe de Chine_ scarf thrown over her shoulders, also a fan, long gloves, and a rose in her hair by way of hedging. To these ornaments she added a cold, of which she complained as soon as she saw the other guests. But no one listened. No one ever listened to Miss Lus...o...b.., no one ever could, and yet in a way she was popular--a kind of pet among a rather large circle of people. Women never disliked her because she created no jealousy and always unconsciously put herself at a disadvantage; men did not mind her prattle and coquettish airs, being well aware that nothing was expected of them. For Miss Lus...o...b.., though vain, was a pessimist, and quite good-natured. She was also a standing joke.

The other guests besides Valentia in yellow and Daphne in pink--both looking as fresh as daisies and as civilised as orchids--consisted of Lady Walmer, a smart, good-looking, commonplace woman, rather fatter than she wished to be, but very straight-fronted, straightforward, and sporting, with dark red hair and splendid jewels; a faded yet powerful beauty who had been admired in the eighties, but had only had real success since she turned forty-six.

With her was her daughter, a girl who at the first glance looked eight feet high, but who really was not very much above the average length.

She was a splendid athlete, and her talk was princ.i.p.ally of hockey. She wore a very smart white dress and had a dark brown neck, pretty fair hair, and an entirely unaffected bonhomie that quite carried off the harshness of her want of style or charm--in fact it had a charm of its own. Besides, it was well known that her grandmother had left her an estate in the country and 7000 a year, and that Lady Walmer was anxious to get her married. Hence Miss Walmer never wanted for partners at b.a.l.l.s nor for attention anywhere, but--it was always for _le bon motif_. As Valentia said, she was the sort of girl (poor girl!) that one could only marry.

Hereford Vaughan, who was an object of considerable curiosity to several of the guests on account of his phenomenal success in having eleven plays at the same time being performed in London, New York, Berlin, Paris, and every other European city, was, to those who did not know him before, an agreeable surprise. Heaven knows what exactly people expected of him; perhaps the men feared 'side' and the women that he would be overpowering after so many triumphs, but he was merely a rather pale, dark, and rather handsome young man. He behaved like anybody else, except that perhaps his manner was a little quieter than the average.

Unless one was very observant (which one isn't), or unless one listened to what he said, he did not at first appear too alarmingly clever. He had one or two characteristics which must have at times led to misunderstandings. One was that whatever or whoever he looked at, his dark opaque eyes were so full of vivid expression that women often mistook for admiration what was often merely observation. For instance, when he glanced at Lady Walmer she at once became quite confused, and intensely flattered, nearly blushed and asked him to dinner. While, if she had but known, behind that dark glance was merely the thought, "So that's the woman that Royalty ... What extraordinary taste!"

Hereford Vaughan, who was himself thirty-four, did not share in the modern taste for the battered as a charm in itself, though he could forgive it--or, indeed, anything else--if he were amused.

Knowing that Miss Lus...o...b.., hoping for a part, would be painfully nice to Vaughan, Harry had good-naturedly placed them as far apart as possible. Nevertheless she leaned across the table and said--

"How _do_ you think of all these clever things, Mr. Vaughan? I can't think how you do it!"

"Yes, indeed, we'd all like to know that," said Captain Foster, the baby Guardsman, as Valentia called him. He spoke enviously. He was a perfectly beautiful blond, delightfully stupid, and had been longing for enough money to marry somebody ever since he was seventeen.

"I'm sure I'd jolly soon write a play if I only knew how."

"It's perfectly easy, really," said Vaughan; "it's just a knack."

"Is it though?"

"That's all."

"How do you get the things taken?"

"Oh, that's a mere fluke--a bit of luck," said Vaughan.

Every one who heard this sighed with relief to think that was how he regarded it.

Vaughan always used this exaggerated modesty as an armour against envy, for envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition--only to his getting it.

"Now what do you think of Miss Lus...o...b..?" Valentia asked the dramatist.

"I don't think of her. I never regard people on the stage as real people," Vaughan answered.

"Don't you, really? Well, you ought to know. You have made a sort of corner in 'leading ladies'. What curious clothes she wears!"

"Doesn't she? On the stage she dresses like an actress, and off the stage she doesn't dress like a lady. She's so extraordinarily vague," he said.

"Yes; and yet I've heard that, though she's so dreamy and romantic, she's quite wonderfully practical, really. She never accepts an engagement unless she gets a large salary--and all that sort of thing."

"I see. She lives in the clouds, but she insists on their having a silver lining," said Vaughan. "Who's the pink young man she's confiding in now?"

"It's Mr. Rathbone. He likes theatres--at least he collects programmes and posters, I think. Besides, he's tattooed."

"Oh, yes. That must be a great help in listening to Miss Lus...o...b... He's been trained to suffer."

Miss Lus...o...b.. was talking rather loudly and most confidentially to Rathbone, who had an expression of willing--but agonised--martyrdom on his fair pink, clean-shaven features.

"I _told_ dear George Alexander that I would have been only _too_ pleased to understudy Irene in the new piece--in fact, it would have just suited me, Mr. Rathbone, and left me plenty of time for my social engagements too. Besides, if I once got a chance of a part like that I feel I should have made a hit. Oh, it was a cruel disappointment! After being too charming to me--or, at any rate, I was charming to him at the Cashmores' reception, you know--I remember he was standing in the refreshment-room with Mrs. Cashmore, and I went _straight_ up to him and said, 'Don't you remember me, Mr. Alexander?'--and after all this he only promised me--and that conditionally--a horrid, silly little part in the curtain-raiser in No. 2 B Company on tour. On tour! Of course I refused that--one must keep up one's prestige, Mr. Rathbone. There's a great deal of injustice in the profession. Talent counts for nothing--it's all influence. But I've always had a great ambition ever since I was a little girl." Miss Lus...o...b.. put her head on one side and talked as she had to the interviewer of _The Perfect Lady_. "It was always my dream--do you know?--to marry a great actor--or, at any rate, to be his great friend--like Irving and Ellen Terry--that sort of thing--a great, lifelong friendship! And as a child I was madly in love with the elder George Grossmith, but I don't think he ever knew it. Too bad!"

She pouted childishly, gave her arch musical laugh with its three soprano notes and upward inflection, and then accepted a quail with a heavy sigh.

"When I was a boy," said Rathbone in a low concentrated voice of reminiscence--he spoke rather quickly, for he had been trying in vain during the whole of dinner to get a word in edgeways and feared to lose his chance now--"when I was a boy I was in love, too, with some one on the stage. Between ourselves--you won't mention it, will you, Miss Lus...o...b..?----"

"You can trust me," she said earnestly, with a look of Julia Neilson.

"Good! Well, I was in love, and I've got her initials--C. L.--tattooed on me now!"

"Impossible! How exciting! Who is C. L.?"

He looked round the table and murmured in a low voice, "Cissie Loftus.

Isn't it odd? I wrote and told her about it, but I never received an answer to my letter."

"Poor, poor boy! I call that really touching! Will you show me the initials some day?"

"Oh no. Impossible." He was stern, adamantine. She hastily went on. "So you're very keen--interested in the stage, Mr. Rathbone?"

"Well, in the stage door. I collect programmes, and I haven't missed a first night since I was twenty!"

"Fancy! Then I ought to remember your face, at all the theatres!"

"I mean at the Gaiety," he said, "only the Gaiety."