Part 58 (1/2)

Being engaged in shopping at certain ”stores” which she frequented, she had gone into the tea-room to refresh her jaded energies, and had found herself at the next table to Isobel. Friendly greetings had pa.s.sed; the two had drunk their tea together--with other company, as presently appeared.

”What made you think that?” There was no need to inquire what it was that Sally thought when she spoke of ”another of them;” she did not refer to ideally successful unions.

Sally wrinkled her brow. ”She said they'd had a delightful winter, travelling and so on, and that she was having a very gay time in London, going everywhere and making a heap of friends. She said they liked their flat, but were looking out for a house. She said Harry was very well and jolly.”

”Well, that sounds all right. What's the matter, Sally? Not that I pretend to be particularly anxious for her unruffled happiness. I don't want anything really bad, of course, but--”

”Set your mind at ease; she won't be too happy to please you--and she knows it.” Miss Dutton considered. ”At least she's a fool if she doesn't know it. Who do you think came in while we were at tea?”

”Harry?” suggested the Nun, in an obviously insincere shot at the answer.

”Harry at Harrod's! Mrs. Freere! You remember Mrs. Freere?--Mrs. Freere, and a woman Mrs. Freere called 'Dear Lady Lucy.'” Sally's sarcastic emphasis on the latter lady's t.i.tle--surely a harmless social distinction?--was absolutely savage.

”Did they join you?” asked the Nun, by now much interested.

”Join us? They swallowed us! Of course they didn't take much notice of me. They'd never heard of 'Miss Dutton,' and I didn't suppose I should make a much better impression if I told them that I lived with you.”

”No, of course not, Sally,” said the Nun, and drew up on the edge of an ill-timed gurgle. ”Mrs. Freere's an old story. Who's Lady Lucy? One of the heap of friends Mrs. Harry is making?”

”Lady Lucy's young--younger than Isobel. Mrs. Freere isn't young--not so young as Isobel. Mrs. Freere's the old friend, Lady Lucy's the new one.”

”Did you gather whether Lady Lucy was a married woman?”

”Oh yes. She referred to 'our money troubles,' and 'my motor-car.' She's married all right! But n.o.body bothered to tell me her name. Well, as I say, Mrs. Freere's the old friend, and she's the new friend. They're fighting which of them shall run the Belfields--I don't know what else they may be fighting about! But they unite in sitting on Isobel. Harry's given her away, I gathered--told them what she was before he married her. So, of course, she hasn't got a chance! The only good thing is that they obviously hate one another like poison. In fact I don't think I ever sat at a table with three women who hated one another more--though I've had some experience in that line.”

”She hates them both, you think? Well, I shouldn't have thought she was the kind of woman to like being sat upon by anybody.”

”Oh, she's fighting; she's putting up a good fight for him.”

”Well, we know she can do that!” observed the Nun with a rather acid demureness.

”I'm not asking you to sympathise. I'm just telling you how it is.

'Harry likes this,' says Mrs. Freere. 'He always did.' 'Did he, dear? He tells me he likes the other now,' says Lady Lucy. 'I don't think he's really fond of either of them,' says Isobel. 'Oh yes, my dear. Besides, you must, if you want to do the right thing,' say both of them. I suppose that, when they once get her out of the way, they'll fight it out between themselves.”

”Will they get her out of the way? It's rather soon to talk about that.”

”They'll probably both of them be bowled over by some newcomer in a few months, and Isobel go with them--if she hasn't gone already.”

”Your views are always uncompromising, Sally.”

”I only wish you'd heard those two women this afternoon. And, in the end, off they all three went together in the motor-car. Going to pick up Harry somewhere!”

”Rather too much of a good thing for most men. And it might have been Vivien!”

”It's a woman, and one of G.o.d's creatures, anyhow,” said Sally with some temper.

”Yes,” the Nun agreed serenely. ”And Mrs. Freere's a woman--and so, I presume from your description, is Lady Lucy. And I gather that they have husbands? G.o.d's creatures too, we may suppose!”

Sally declined the implied challenge to weigh, in the scales of an impartial judgment, the iniquities of the two s.e.xes. Her sympathies, born on the night when she had given shelter to Isobel at the Lion, were with the woman who was fighting for her husband, who had a plain right to him now, though she had used questionable means to get him. If Doris asked her to discern a Nemesis in Isobel's plight--as Belfield had in the fall of his too well admired son--to see Vivien avenged by Mrs.

Freere and Lady Lucy, Sally retorted on the philosophic counsel by declaring that Doris, a partisan of Vivien's, lacked human pity for Vivien's successful rival, whose real success seemed now so dubious.