Part 49 (1/2)

”You have,” said Miss Van Tuyn. ”One often sees it in your eyes. Isn't it true?”

She turned to Craven; but he did not choose to agree with her.

”I'm a sentimentalist,” he said firmly. ”And I never look about for irony. Perhaps that's why I have not found it in Lady Sellingworth.”

Miss Van Tuyn sent him a glance which said plainly, but prettily, ”You humbug!” But he did not mind. Once he had discussed Lady Sellingworth with Miss Van Tuyn. They had wondered about her together. They had even talked about her mystery. But that seemed to Craven a long time ago. Now he would far rather discuss Miss Van Tuyn with Lady Sellingworth than discuss Lady Sellingworth with Miss Van Tuyn. So he would not even acknowledge that he had noticed the mocking look in Lady Sellingworth's eyes. Already he had the feeling of a friend who does not care to dissect the mentality and character of his friend with another.

Something in him even had an instinct to protect Lady Sellingworth from Miss Van Tuyn. That was surely absurd; unless, indeed, age always needs protection from the cruelty of youth.

Francis Braybrooke began to speak about Paris, and again Miss Van Tuyn said that she would never rest till she had persuaded Lady Sellingworth to renew her acquaintance with that intense and apparently light-hearted city, which contains so many secret terrors.

”You will come some day,” she said, with a sort of almost ruthless obstinacy.

”Why not?” said Lady Sellingworth. ”I have been very happy in Paris.”

”And yet you have deserted it for years and years! You are an enigma.

Isn't she, Mr. Braybrooke?”

Before Braybrooke had time to reply to this direct question an interruption occurred. Two ladies, coming in to dinner accompanied by two young men, paused by Braybrooke's table, and someone said in a clear, hard voice:

”What a d.i.n.ky little party! And where are you all going afterwards?”

Craven and Braybrooke got up to greet two famous members of the ”old guard,” Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde. Lady Sellingworth and Miss Van Tuyn turned in their chairs, and for a moment there was a little disjointed conversation, in the course of which it came out that this quartet, too, was bound for the Shaftesbury Theatre.

”You are coming out of your sh.e.l.l, Adela! Better late than never!”

said Lady Wrackley to Lady Sellingworth, while Miss Van Tuyn quietly collected the two young men, both of whom she knew, with her violet eyes. ”I hear of you all over the place.”

She glanced penetratingly at Craven with her carefully made-up eyes, which were the eyes of a handsome and wary bird. Her perfectly arranged hair was glossy brown, with glints in it like the colour of a horse-chestnut. She showed her wonderful teeth in the smile which came like a sudden gleam of electric light, and went as if a hand had turned back the switch.

”I'm becoming dissipated,” said Lady Sellingworth. ”Three evenings out in one month! If I have one foot in the grave, I shall have the other in the Shaftesbury Theatre to-night.”

One of the young men, a fair, horsey-looking boy, with a yellow moustache, a turned-up nose, and an almost abnormally impudent and larky expression, laughed in a very male and soldierly way; the other, who was dark, with a tall figure and severe grey eyes, looked impenetrably grave and absent minded.

”Well, I shall die if I don't have a good dinner at once,” said Mrs.

Ackroyde. ”Is that a Doucet frock, Beryl?”

”No. Count Kalinsky designed it.”

”Oh--Igor Kalinsky! Adela, we are in Box B. We must have a powwow between the acts.”

She looked from Lady Sellingworth to Craven and back again. Short, very handsome, always in perfect health, with brows and eyes which somehow suggested a wild creature, she had an honest and quite unaffected face.

Her manner was bold and direct. There was something lasting--some said everlasting--in her atmosphere.

”I cannot conceive of London without Dindie Ackroyde,” said Braybrooke, as Mrs. Ackroyde led the way to the next table and sat down opposite to Craven.

And they began to talk about people. Craven said very little. Since the arrival of the other quartet he had begun to feel sensitively uncomfortable. He realized that already his new friends.h.i.+p for Lady Sellingworth had ”got about,” though how he could not imagine. He was certain that the ”old guard” were already beginning to talk of Addie Sellingworth's ”new man.” He had seen awareness, that strange feminine interest which is more than half hostile, in the eyes of both Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde. Was it impossible, then, in this horrible whispering gallery of London, to have any privacy of the soul? (He thought that his friends.h.i.+p really had something of the soul in it.) He felt stripped by the eyes of those two women at the neighbouring table, and he glanced at Lady Sellingworth almost furtively, wondering what she was feeling. But she looked exactly as usual, and was talking with animation, and he realized that her long habit of the world enabled her to wear a mask at will. Or was she less sensitive in such matters than he was?

”How preoccupied you are!” said Miss Van Tuyn's voice in his ear. ”You see I was right. Golf ruins the social qualities in a man.”

Then Craven resolutely set himself to be sociable. He even acted a part, still acutely conscious of the eyes of the ”old guard,” and almost made love to Miss Van Tuyn, as a man may make love at a dinner table. He was sure Lady Sellingworth would not misunderstand him. Whether Miss Van Tuyn misunderstood him or not did not matter to him at that moment. He saw her beauty clearly; he was able to note all the fluid fascination of her delicious youthfulness; the charm of it went to him; and yet he felt no inclination to waver in his allegiance to Lady Sellingworth. It was as if a personality enveloped him, held his senses as well as his mind in a soft and powerful grasp. Not that his senses were irritated to alertness, or played upon to exasperation. They were merely inhibited from any activity in connexion with another, however beautiful and desirable. Lady Sellingworth roused no physical desire in Craven, although she fascinated him. What she did was just this: she deprived him of physical desire. Miss Van Tuyn's arrows were shot all in vain that night. But Craven now acted well, for women's keen eyes were upon him.