The Oyster Part 36

"Pauvre, madame; after the bath too. I always carry this."

Marie dabbed swiftly until the streaked complexion was made cunningly perfect. Marie was out of a place--had left her last mistress, a plebeian n.o.body.

"With no dresses to come to me but those in violet silks or of the colour called tomato!" cried Marie. "Oh, Madame! And with no life, no gaiety, nothing but five-o'clock parties, and long luncheons, and, madame--oh, but raging when she lost at the bridge. Mon Dieu! So I left Madame. It is true one night I did put on the false plait--oh, but not carefully, for a dinner, but after a great scolding my fingers did tremble. Madame's great guest was an Eveque, what you call down Church, and strict. James the footman told me, and it was dreadful; it was to his lap the loose plait fell. I left. Madame is ravishing, and I would I were again in the service of my dear Madame."

It was easily arranged. Esme forgot that Marie might know a little and guess more. She sent the irate Scott away immediately, and directed Marie to the house they were lodging in.

A glance at the gla.s.s had made Marie seem indispensable; a brilliantly handsome face was reflected there now, pink-cheeked, white-skinned, smooth.

"Esme! What have you been doing? We are hopelessly late, and we are driving you."

"All my powder was washed off"--Esme was frank, up to a certain point--"I'm sorry, Denise."

"And Cyril will bring the children; they are gone in the small car."

Denise was irritated, impatient.

Sir Cyril drove; a big, pearl-grey Mercedes hummed away, nosing through traffic, sensitive as a child, eager as a hunter.

The picnic was on the cliffs, miles away. They lunched in a dazzling sun, since it is ever in the mind of man that he enjoys himself more away from his own cool dining-room, seated on hard ground in the heat.

The Blakeneys' cook knew that which was indigestible and therefore indispensable. Lobster mayonnaise, cold salmon, devilled shrimps, galantines, pastry, whipped cream.

The appet.i.te of picnickers is a great thing, and one which towards tea-time wonders what possessed it. But girls laughed merrily, planning strolls by the shimmering sea; they had brought shrimp nets. Girls with pretty, unspoiled feet would take off shoes and stockings and paddle into pools, treacherous places where one slipped and wanted help to steady one.

Other girls would sit quiet in shady nooks. Youth loves its picnics where it may wander in couples; and mamma loves them, knowing how sunshine and fresh air and the folly of shrimp-hunting all lead to the hour when the young man feels he cannot do without the merry, pretty, foolish thing who cries "A crab!" and clings to him.

Denise had asked young people; she had no London friends down here. She watched them pair off as she sat down in the shade--listened to shrill laughs and merry voices.

Esme, yawning, bored again, strolled away alone; there was no one she wanted to talk to. The sea had slipped far out; opal-tinted pools gleamed on the sands and shingle; brown seaweed clung to the rocks.

The children, busy with pails, were gathering sh.e.l.ls and stones, looking with delight at the gay colours of the pebbles as they picked them up, wet and glistening, to fade into dull-hued things of red and brown and grey.

Esme waited with them; helped Cyril to find yellow sh.e.l.ls and brilliant bits of polished brick and pebble.

He looked pale, wistful. It was in her mind to shriek out her secret aloud--to pick the child up and cry out that he was hers and she would keep him.

How she had dreaded his coming; how gladly she had arranged the plot with Denise. And now she knew that her heart was no harder than other women's; that nature was stronger than her love of indolence and pleasure. If she had been honest and patient Bertie would be heir now to several thousands a year, and this child, her son, to a t.i.tle. He was hers and she had cheated him, given him to a loveless life, sent him into unhappiness. Who would have dreamt of Denise having a child, of the bitter jealousy of this false son.

"And we dare not," whispered Esme to the pebbles, "we dare not tell."

Cyril was settling his pebbles in rings and loops, making quaint patterns of them, on a strip of dry sand.

"Funny thing." Bertie Carteret strolled across to his wife. "I was always at that when I was a kiddie. Let me help, Cyril. I used to love making patterns."

"Did you?" said Cyril, solemnly. "I does."

Esme saw the faces together. There was a likeness, faint, but yet plainly visible. The same level eyebrows, finely-cut nose, and eyes with their power to suffer.

"Playing?" Sir Cyril joined them, the children's faces lighting up, for they loved the big man. "We'll all play. Let's dig a castle.

Cyrrie"--his arm closed round the elder boy--"mummie says you were naughty to-day--pushed Cecil."

"Mummie made a miftook," said Cyril equably.

"Mummies never make miftooks," Sir Cyril answered gravely. "Never.

Cyril must be a better boy and not bully the baby. I don't want to punish you, Cyril."

"It doesn't last long, dad--if she'd like you to." The boy's eyes, with an old look in them, met Sir Cyril's. "I don't mind, dad--it's soon over."

Esme's fingers closed on a handful of pebbles, so closely that when she let the wet stones fall her hands were marked and bruised.

The boy was telling them calmly that he was used to punishment. Her boy!

Sir Cyril grunted to himself. His wife adored delicate Cecil; had never cared for the elder boy. It puzzled the big man, vexed him, so that he made a pet of Cyril, loving him as the child whose coming had made such a change in his own life; the strong, big boy who was a credit to the name.

Foolish young people hunted for shrimps until they were weary; then, looking at the advancing sea, they whispered how dreadful it would be to drown, and listened, flushing, as proud young manhood a.s.sured them that to swim to sh.o.r.e with such a burden would be a joy. The crawling baby waves, inch deep in their advancing ripples, heard and laughed. To prove devotion young manhood would have welcomed white-crested rollers, swift currents running fiercely between them and the land.

Bertie had wandered far out, Estelle Reynolds with him.

They talked of books and plays, but always ending with the same subject, the lives of two human beings called Albert and Estelle.

"If one only could live down at Cliff End," he said. "I wanted to go there now, but Esme would come here. Oh, how tired I am of asphalte and 'buses, and the comforts of clubs. I hunted five days last winter, Estelle."

"But you shot a lot," she said.

"At huge house-parties, with a two-hours' luncheon to be eaten in the middle of the day, and bridge to be played when one is dead sleepy after dinner. I have an old-fashioned liking for scrambling over rough ground with a setter and a spaniel, and bringing home a few snipe and a pheasant or a couple of duck. They give me more joy than my pile of half-tame pheasants, reared for slaughter, or my partridge or grouse.

My friends wouldn't come to my shoots, Estelle. And--Esme's friends"--he shrugged his shoulders--"they are too smart for me. She's straight herself as Euclid's line, but--one hears and sees--Dollie Gresham, for instance."

"Well?" said Estelle.

"She is a very clever bridge player," he said drily. "Oh, I say nothing, but I've watched the people she picks out to play with.

Aspiring idiots who think high stakes give them a reputation as fine players. There's Gore Helmsley, too--the black-eyed Adonis. I meet him everywhere, and my desire to kick him flourishes unappeased. There are queer stories afloat about the man. There was Sybil Knox; she won't speak to him now, almost cut him at the Holbrooks last Christmas. He's running after Lady Gracie de Lyle now, a little, dolly-faced baby who goggles into his black eyes and thinks him magnificent."

"Oh, Bertie! Goggles!" said Estelle.

"Well, she does. She's got china-blue eyes, just like saucers; and she's barely eighteen. I spoke to her mother, and she said it would make the girl less school-girly to be taken up for a month or two by a smart man--that is a word," grunted Bertie, "which I'd like to bury.

'Smart'--it's a cloak for folly, extravagance, display and gambling--for worse. Never be smart, Estelle."

Estelle looked at her brown hands and remarked drily that she did not think she ever would be.

"They know no rest, these people," he said. "They wake to remember all they absolutely must do, and how many meals they must eat with their friends. Madame breakfasts in bed. Monsieur picks at devilled kidneys in the dining-room. He has his gla.s.s of port at twelve at the club. She has hers before she goes shopping. Then luncheon, bridge, drives, parties, tea; more bridge-parties, c.o.c.ktails, dinner. Theatre, and bridge, a ball; supper; bridge again; devilled bones and chloral; they are too tired to sleep naturally. And since all this must pall, they must have some zest of novelty, and so go through the oldest round on earth--that of stolen meetings and hidden letters, and the finding out if a new lover has really anything new to say to them. If they lived in the country and looked after their houses and their gardens, and just had a yearly outing to amuse them, they wouldn't all go wrong from sheer nerves. The Town is swallowing home life, Estelle; the smell of the asphalte gets into their nostrils, the glitter and noise of restaurants become necessity. We cannot be bothered with a cook, so the restaurant for the flat can send us in what it chooses, called by any name it pleases. We get our breakfasts in now in the new flat. And anything else we want. Esme only keeps two maids. Everything is exceedingly cold by the time I get it, and if we have people to dine it means crowds of things from Harrod's, but it all saves trouble. And to save trouble is the spirit of the age. To eat glucosey jams, and drink cider which never heard of apples, and so forth. I believe, in the future, that every square and street will have its monster kitchens with lifts running to each house. No one will cook."

"And one day," said Estelle, laughing, "will come the swing of the pendulum, and we shall go back to an England which bakes and preserves and brews, and finds out how healthy it makes its children."

"No." Bertie shook his head. "We are going too fast for that. So fast that one day, with its motors and aeroplanes, old England will find it has fallen over a cliff, and lies buried in the sand of Time, forgotten. The brakes will not always act, and exceeding the speed limit generally ends in disaster. We are a mighty nation, but always, always the sea-road for our supplies. We should starve here in a month if that was stopped. Some day it will be--by some strategy. Tea is ready--let us forget lobster and eat again."

Hot-faced footmen had built a big fire on the sh.o.r.e. The couples came flocking back to eat and drink again. Some shyly radiant, their afternoon a golden memory; others laughing too loudly for happiness; others visibly bored.

"The most absolute dullard," Rose whispered to her cousin, Hilda Hamilton. "He only made two remarks the whole afternoon, and one was 'that shrimpin' was shockin'ly wet.' And the other that 'he did hope it wouldn't wain to spoil the bathin'.'"