Part 7 (1/2)
The question came from George St. Michael, who had strayed over from a neighbouring table, attracted by the fragments of small-talk that had reached his ears.
St. Michael was one of those dapper bird-like illusorily-active men, who seem to have been in a certain stage of middle-age for as long as human memory can recall them. A close-cut peaked beard lent a certain dignity to his appearance-a loan which the rest of his features and mannerisms were continually and successfully repudiating. His profession, if he had one, was submerged in his hobby, which consisted of being an advance-agent for small happenings or possible happenings that were or seemed imminent in the social world around him; he found a perpetual and unflagging satisfaction in acquiring and retailing any stray items of gossip or information, particularly of a matrimonial nature, that chanced to come his way. Given the bare outline of an officially announced engagement he would immediately fill it in with all manner of details, true or, at any rate, probable, drawn from his own imagination or from some equally exclusive source. The _Morning Post_ might content itself with the mere statement of the arrangement which would shortly take place, but it was St. Michael's breathless little voice that proclaimed how the contracting parties had originally met over a salmon-fis.h.i.+ng incident, why the Guards' Chapel would not be used, why her Aunt Mary had at first opposed the match, how the question of the children's religious upbringing had been compromised, etc., etc., to all whom it might interest and to many whom it might not. Beyond his industriously-earned pre-eminence in this special branch of intelligence, he was chiefly noteworthy for having a wife reputed to be the tallest and thinnest woman in the Home Counties. The two were sometimes seen together in Society, where they pa.s.sed under the collective name of St. Michael and All Angles.
”We are trying to find a rich wife for Courtenay Youghal,” said Serena, in answer to St. Michael's question.
”Ah, there I'm afraid you're a little late,” he observed, glowing with the importance of pending revelation; ”I'm afraid you're a little late,”
he repeated, watching the effect of his words as a gardener might watch the development of a bed of carefully tended asparagus. ”I think the young gentleman has been before you and already found himself a rich mate in prospect.”
He lowered his voice as he spoke, not with a view to imparting impressive mystery to his statement, but because there were other table groups within hearing to whom he hoped presently to have the privilege of re-disclosing his revelation.
”Do you mean-?” began Serena.
”Miss de Frey,” broke in St. Michael, hurriedly, fearful lest his revelation should be forestalled, even in guesswork; ”quite an ideal choice, the very wife for a man who means to make his mark in politics.
Twenty-four thousand a year, with prospects of more to come, and a charming place of her own not too far from town. Quite the type of girl, too, who will make a good political hostess, brains without being brainy, you know. Just the right thing. Of course, it would be premature to make any definite announcement at present-”
”It would hardly be premature for my partner to announce what she means to make trumps,” interrupted Lady Caroline, in a voice of such sinister gentleness that St. Michael fled headlong back to his own table.
”Oh, is it me? I beg your pardon. I leave it,” said Serena.
”Thank you. No trumps,” declared Lady Caroline. The hand was successful, and the rubber ultimately fell to her with a comfortable margin of honours. The same partners cut together again, and this time the cards went distinctly against Francesca and Ada Spelvexit, and a heavily piled-up score confronted them at the close of the rubber.
Francesca was conscious that a certain amount of rather erratic play on her part had at least contributed to the result. St. Michael's incursion into the conversation had proved rather a powerful distraction to her ordinarily sound bridge-craft.
Ada Spelvexit emptied her purse of several gold pieces and infused a corresponding degree of superiority into her manner.
”I must be going now,” she announced; ”I'm dining early. I have to give an address to some charwomen afterwards.”
”Why?” asked Lady Caroline, with a disconcerting directness that was one of her most formidable characteristics.
”Oh, well, I have some things to say to them that I daresay they will like to hear,” said Ada, with a thin laugh.
Her statement was received with a silence that betokened profound unbelief in any such probability.
”I go about a good deal among working-cla.s.s women,” she added.
”No one has ever said it,” observed Lady Caroline, ”but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.”
Ada Spelvexit hastened her departure; the marred impressiveness of her retreat came as a culminating discomfiture on the top of her ill-fortune at the card-table. Possibly, however, the multiplication of her own annoyances enabled her to survey charwomen's troubles with increased cheerfulness. None of them, at any rate, had spent an afternoon with Lady Caroline.
Francesca cut in at another table and with better fortune attending on her, succeeded in winning back most of her losses. A sense of satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess.
St. Michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. At first she had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation went on without any of those a.s.sured little minor details which St. Michael so loved to supply, she had come to the conclusion that it was merely a piece of intelligent guesswork. And if Lady Caroline had really believed in the story of Elaine de Frey's virtual engagement to Courtenay Youghal she would have taken a malicious pleasure in encouraging St. Michael in his confidences, and in watching Francesca's discomfiture under the recital. The irritated manner in which she had cut short the discussion betrayed the fact, that, as far as the old woman's information went, it was Comus and not Courtenay Youghal who held the field. And in this particular case Lady Caroline's information was likely to be nearer the truth than St. Michael's confident gossip.
Francesca always gave a penny to the first crossing-sweeper or match-seller she chanced across after a successful sitting at bridge.
This afternoon she had come out of the fray some fifteen s.h.i.+llings to the bad, but she gave two pennies to a crossing-sweeper at the north-west corner of Berkeley Square as a sort of thank-offering to the G.o.ds.
CHAPTER VIII
IT was a fresh rain-repentant afternoon, following a morning that had been sultry and torrentially wet by turns; the sort of afternoon that impels people to talk graciously of the rain as having done a lot of good, its chief merit in their eyes probably having been its recognition of the art of moderation. Also it was an afternoon that invited bodily activity after the convalescent languor of the earlier part of the day.