The Oyster Part 14

"Ah, yes--shortly." But Madame was pressed. "Milady Blakeney had been in ordering a dozen frocks, but of a beauty," gushed Madame, "one all of real lace and silver crepe. Ah, yes."

Denise again before her, dwarfing her, Esme's, orders. The coat seemed heavier now. She bought hats almost languidly; pa.s.sed a jeweller's window, saw a necklace, a thing of diamonds and emeralds exquisite in its fine work, with one great diamond swinging from the fret of green and white.

"How much?" Esme shrugged her shoulders. "It would have gone so well with her new gown." She bought a tiny brooch of enamel and went out.

It was dull at lunch at the Cafe de la Paix. She did not go back for it. It was stupid to eat alone; the omelette tasted leathery; the little fillets tough; the place was overheated; she would have taken off her coat, but the dress underneath was last year's, therefore a thing to be hidden.

Men stared at the beautiful English woman in her daring green hat and gorgeous furs.

Sipping her liqueur, Esme tried to lose her irritation in dreams of the future. Bertie would be home; they would take up their old happy life; but even more happily. She would be so well off now. Able to buy her own frocks, to help in many ways. When she got back she would go off to hunt somewhere. Esme looked at her hands; they were so much thinner.

Would she be strong enough to hunt? She had lost her rounded contours; she knew that there were new lines on her fair skin, that she had lost some of her youth.

These things age one. And yet--"L'addition," she said sharply. Yet she thought of a little soft thing lying in the big upstairs room at the Bristol, and something hurt her sharply again.

She was tired of shopping, she would go back there now. It was lonely in Paris.

Mrs Stanson, writing letters to engage a variety of nursemaids--she considered a person of her position must be thoroughly waited on--was surprised by a visit from Esme.

The baby was splendid after all his trials and his journey. Mrs Stanson did not hold with infants travelling; she dreaded the cold journey back to England.

"Nor do I hold with the heat of these here rooms," said the English nurse, "and with the cold a-rushing in like a mad dog with its mouth open if one stirs a window. Give me air for a child, Mrs Carteret, air and warmth; but above all, air."

An autocrat of the nursery, this Mrs Stanson, who had nursed heirs of great houses and loved her charges. A death now, the pa.s.sing of pretty delicate Lady de Powers and her infant son, had set the woman free.

"You'll love him, Mrs Stanson--be good to him?" Esme flung out the words in sudden impulse; she took the smiling baby up.

"I declare, Mrs Carteret, he might be yours instead of her ladyship's,"

laughed the nurse. "She came in for five minutes, and asked if I wanted anything, and to order what I wanted. I made it two nursery-maids to-day. Like many young mothers, she's careless. It's the ladies without that would give their eyes for one," said Mrs Stanson, softly.

"Without." A slur on her, Esme, whose child was in her arms. Something hurt in her throat; she turned red and then white. She sat for an hour in the big bright room, listening to all the ills which lurk in wait for infant life, related with gus...o...b.. the nurse. A little chill, a spoon of soured food, and poof! out goes the life; then later, chicken-pox, measles, whooping-cough; wet feet. It seemed wonderful to think that there were any children left alive. Little Cyril, dribbling thoughtfully, had no idea of what was before him.

But at the end, comfort. "And yet they lives," said Mrs Stanson, "lives on, on beer and dripping, which I am informed is used as baby food by the very poor."

Denise came in for tea, fresh, radiant, wrapped in a great stole of fox. Big Sir Cyril pulling little boxes innumerable from his pockets.

They had a sitting-room. Denise called Esme in to her, spread purchases on the table.

"See, Esme--this pendant, isn't it sweet? And this enamel clasp--and this brooch--and that diamond heart." The table glittered with the things. "Oh, Cyril could not buy enough for me. He is so good."

Almost sullenly Esme looked down at the stone of green, white and red; the pendant and necklace was the one which she had coveted. Denise might offer to give her some of these; she might ask her if there was nothing she wanted.

"And I got you something, Es--just as remembrance. Cyril wished me to.

Summers! bring in the parcels. Yes, there it is."

Esme knew the label--that of a huge shop close to the Place de l'Opera; good, but bourgeois, cheap.

"See! I hate that musquash thing you wear. It's too dark for you."

Denise pulled out a stole of brown fox--a huge thing, covered with tails, but meretricious, showy; the satin of the lining crackled as she touched it. This for all she had done for her friend.

"Thank you, Denise." Esme took up the fur. "How pretty. It was nice of you to think of me, now that I am of no further use."

Denise looked up, startled by momentary fear. Surely Esme was more than content with her share of the bargain. Was glad to be rid of her unwanted brat; to have ample allowance and be free. For a minute she saw what it might be if Esme failed her.

But Denise was shallowly optimistic; she laughed the fears away; she kissed Esme affectionately.

"It was a great thought, and it's splendidly over," she whispered--"over for us both."

"And you? You really begin to feel that he is yours?" whispered Esme back, almost fiercely.

"I believe I do. I shall have forgotten it completely in ten years'

time," laughed Lady Blakeney.

"And--shall I?" said Esme to herself.

CHAPTER VI

"Some people," said Mousie Cavendish, "appear to have come into a fortune."

She touched Esme Carteret's sable coat, stroking the soft fur, her small greenish eyes looking up wickedly.

"Friends ... are nice things," said Mousie, softly. "Hey, my pretty Esme."

Esme flushed. Five minutes before she had grumbled at her poverty, now she came down in her splendid wrap waiting for the motor.

Money had never seemed to go so fast. The half-year's allowance from Denise had been spent in a day. More new frocks, new habits had seemed necessary. A restlessness haunted Esme; she was not satisfied with anything, she was nervous, lacked appet.i.te, had grown thin.

She was doing the last of the hunting season at Coombe Regis now, an old Elizabethan house taken by the Holbrooks.

Their only difficulty, as Mousie said sweetly, is "that they cannot remake the bricks with gold dust, it's so ordinary to have one's house made of clay and straw and water, otherwise bricks."

There were horses in the stables, sleek, shining hunters, belonging to friends who came to stay. Esme hired from a local stable. She rode hard and straight, but came in tired after her day; her old perfect health had deserted her.

"There," said Mousie, looking out onto the chill March day, "is Luke, our host, seeking for something he may spend money on. He wants to be a peer next birthday, and his hopes are high."

The flowers in the old-fashioned flower-garden were a blaze of magnificence. Mr Holbrook was looking at them, greatly interested in one patch of pure white daffodils because he had paid ten pounds a piece for the bulbs. The Cabinet minister who was coming to stay was a florist. A gift of some of these might please him greatly.

The Holbrooks had made Coombe Regis into a pa.s.sable imitation of a Hotel de Luxe. The old hall was now a palm court, heated by hot air, its great open fireplace offended by a new grate which held coals; the drawing-room was magnificent in dull blue and gold; stiffly hideous, with great mirrors shining everywhere.

The dining-room was a ma.s.s of mechanical devices, of lifts and electric heaters and telephones to everywhere, the small tables were all polished wood spread with slips of real lace. One dined scratchily off luke-warm silver, one's breakfast cup was Crown Derby set in filigree.

"So annoying of the hens not to learn to lay golden eggs," remarked Mrs Cavendish one morning when she had examined half a dozen things smoking over the electric heaters. "What's the use of this pure gold Orpington here sitting on a silver nest when she only hatches things which can be purchased at a penny and twopence each. No, I refuse to eat truffles and cream and salmon for breakfast, nor do I require ham and champagne sauce."

A big party had a.s.sembled for the ball of Regis Hunt races. Dull people and smart people, who ate their meals together with regret, and drifted apart directly afterwards. The dull people ate the ornamented dishes and sighed inwardly for roast mutton, the smart people picked at them and wanted the French cookery their greedy souls adored.