The Rubicon Part 20

"I didn't know I was ever wise," he said. "It's really a delightful discovery. Thank you, mummy. Gerty, you'll have to respect me for ever, now you know I'm wise. I shall invest in a sense of dignity."

"I never said you were wise," remarked Gertrude, "and I refuse to be responsible for any opinions but my own."

"Oh, I'll be responsible," murmured Mrs. Davenport.

Reggie looked from one to the other with the air of an intelligent dog.

"I daresay it's all right," he said, "but I don't know what it's all about."

"Oh! Reggie, you do understand," said Gertrude; "don't be ridiculous."

Reggie looked at her with the most genuine frankness.

"I don't understand a word, but I should like you to explain it very much."

Gertrude frowned and turned away to greet Jim Armine, who was dining with them. The vague pain which she had felt before was with her now.

Somehow, she and Reggie seemed to have got on to different levels. It was his moral, not his intellectual, understanding which appeared to her every now and then as almost entirely wanting. What puzzled her was that she had been entirely unconscious of any such defect till a few months ago, and her present knowledge of it struck her somehow as not being the natural outcome of increased intimacy, but rather as if her own moral understanding, by which she judged Reggie, had been developed and showed the want of it in him. But here again the vague instinctiveness of the feeling in her mind precluded a.n.a.lysis. All she knew was that she viewed things rather differently from him, and that this difference had not always been there. But pity is akin to love, and love, when joined with pity, is not less love, but love joined to the most human protective instinct, which, if anything, adds tenderness to pa.s.sion.

Jim Armine had been lunching with the Hayes, and brought a minatory message for Reggie. Why had he said he would come to lunch and bring Miss Carston, and then never turned up.

Reggie behaved in the most unchivalrous manner.

"It was all Gerty's fault," he said. "She made me go to hear music."

"But you wrote to say so, didn't you, Reggie?"

Reggie began to wish he had taken the blame on himself.

"Yes, I _wrote_," he said.

"And forgot to send it," interpolated Mrs. Davenport. "Reggie, you are simply abominable. You must go to call, and explain."

"Oh, you can write a note to say how sorry you are," said Gertrude, suddenly.

The remark was insignificant enough, but to Gertrude it was the outcome of a feeling not at all insignificant. She felt as if she had inadvertently said something she did not mean to say, without reflecting that, to the others, the words were capable of a much less momentous interpretation. She looked up quickly at Mrs. Davenport, fearing for a moment that her self-betrayal was patent. Mrs. Davenport also remembered at the moment a certain conversation which she and Gertrude had had one night some months ago, and their eyes met. That look puzzled the elder woman; she had not fathomed Gertrude's feeling on the subject of Lady Hayes, when she spoke to her about her, and the mystery remained still unsolved. The idea that Gertrude was in any way the prey of a jealous fear was too ridiculous to be entertained.

The Dowager Lady Hayes, who was staying with them, entered somewhat opportunely at this moment, followed by Mr. Davenport, and they all went in to dinner. That veteran lady appeared to be in a state of mind which, when it occurs in children, is called fractiousness.

She always took a h.o.m.oeopathic dose in globular form before dinner, which was placed in a little wooden box by her place, but to-night the dose had not been set out, and she disconcerted everybody horribly by saying, during the first moment of silence, inevitable, when English people meet to dine together, and in a voice of stentorian power,--

"My dinner pills."

A hurried consultation took place among the flunkies, and, after a few moments' search, the box was found, and handed to her on a salver. Old Lady Hayes held them up a moment and rattled them.

"Pepsine," she announced; "obtained from the gastric juices of pigs. An ostrich couldn't eat the food we eat, and at these hours, without suffering from indigestion. I would sooner eat a box of tin tacks than an ordinary English dinner at half-past eight, without my pepsine."

Mrs. Davenport cast a responsible eye over the _menu_, which, to the ordinary mind, appeared sufficiently innocent. She was always divided between the inclination to laugh and to be polite when dealing with Lady Hayes, which produced an inability to say anything.

Eva, as we have seen, adopted a different method; she neither laughed nor was she polite, but she was respectfully insolent, which is a very different matter. The utter indifference of her manner produced a sort of chemical affinity in those widely-sundered qualities, just as electricity produces a chemical affinity between oxygen and hydrogen, which turns them into pure water, though both gases seem sufficiently remote, to the unchemical mind, from their product.

"_Souffle_," continued the dowager, glancing down the _menu_, "when composed of meat--that is, of nitrogenous substance--is utterly unsuitable to human food. It produces a distention--"

But Mrs. Davenport broke in,--

"Dear Lady Hayes, let me send for the wing of a chicken. I know you like chicken wing."

A sigh resembling relief went round the table. Mrs. Davenport had broken the charmed circle, who were waiting, like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, for the unaccountable brimstone to descend on them. Reggie began to talk very rapidly about the Ascot cup; Jim Armine engaged Mrs.

Davenport on the Irish question; and Mr. Davenport, by way of transition, asked Lady Hayes whether gas was not very unhealthy.

But the subject of gas did not appear to interest the old lady. She wished to talk about something else, and when she wished to do anything, she did it.

"My daughter-in-law--" she began.

Reggie was still discussing, or rather enunciating, truths or untruths on the chances of Orme, and Lady Hayes's words did not reach him. But Lady Hayes was accustomed to demand a universal deference and attention for her remarks. So she glared at Reggie, who soon caught her eye--it was impossible not to catch her eye very soon when it meant business--and subsided.

"My daughter-in-law," repeated the dowager--"whom I saw this afternoon, driving a dogcart in the Park--it was quite unheard of for a young woman to drive a dogcart alone when I was young--asked me to tell you all to keep Monday week open. She is sending out cards for a dance on that day--or rather she has sent them out, and she forgot to send them to you. Therefore I am a penny postman. She would be glad to see you all.

Personally, I think the dances that are given now are simply disgusting.

They are very unhealthy, because everyone sits up at the time when the ordinary evening fever sets in; that is, from twelve to two. But I promised to give her message. I am responsible no further. And the cotillion is indecent."

Mr. Davenport made a bad matter worse.

"I am sure there will be none of that romping which you so rightly--ah!--dislike," he said. "I always think--"

But what Mr. Davenport always thought will never be known, for her ladyship interrupted him.

"It is based on immorality," she announced; "it is an exhibition that would disgrace any Christian country, and more especially England."

"Why especially England?" asked Jim, who was conscious of a challenge in her words.

"Because English people seem to pretend to a high morality more than any other nation."

"And are you cruel enough to include your daughter-in-law in that category?" asked Jim.

"Eva Hayes is very English," said the old lady.

"I am sure she never made any pretence of an exceptional morality,"

remarked Jim, eating his nitrogenous food, and getting angry.

"No one would accuse her of being exceptionally moral."

"I said she didn't make a pretence of it," said Jim.

Mrs. Davenport threw herself into the breach, and asked the dowager how digitalis was made.

Gertrude was sitting next Jim Armine, and wished to know more. Old Lady Hayes was well embarked on the structure of foxglove seeds, and she turned to Jim.

"You know Lady Hayes very well, don't you?" she asked.