_ After the momentous lunch at the Corridor Restaurant Elaine had
returned to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of
her numerous aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of
competing emotions. In the first place she was conscious of a
dominant feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not wholly
uninfluenced by pique, she had settled the problem which hours of
hard thinking and serious heart-searching had brought no nearer to
solution, and, although she felt just a little inclined to be
scared at the headlong manner of her final decision, she had now
very little doubt in her own mind that the decision had been the
right one. In fact the wonder seemed rather that she should have
been so long in doubt as to which of her wooers really enjoyed her
honest approval. She had been in love, these many weeks past with
an imaginary Comus, but now that she had definitely walked out of
her dreamland she saw that nearly all the qualities that had
appealed to her on his behalf had been absent from, or only
fitfully present in, the character of the real Comus. And now that
she had installed Youghal in the first place of her affections he
had rapidly acquired in her eyes some of the qualities which ranked
highest in her estimation. Like the proverbial buyer she had the
happy feminine tendency of magnifying the worth of her possession
as soon as she had acquired it. And Courtenay Youghal gave Elaine
some justification for her sense of having chosen wisely. Above
all other things, selfish and cynical though he might appear at
times, he was unfailingly courteous and considerate towards her.
That was a circumstance which would always have carried weight with
her in judging any man; in this case its value was enormously
heightened by contrast with the behaviour of her other wooer. And
Youghal had in her eyes the advantage which the glamour of combat,
even the combat of words and wire-pulling, throws over the fighter.
He stood well in the forefront of a battle which however carefully
stage-managed, however honeycombed with personal insincerities and
overlaid with calculated mock-heroics, really meant something,
really counted for good or wrong in the nation's development and
the world's history. Shrewd parliamentary observers might have
warned her that Youghal would never stand much higher in the
political world than he did at present, as a brilliant Opposition
freelance, leading lively and rather meaningless forays against the
dull and rather purposeless foreign policy of a Government that was
scarcely either to be blamed for or congratulated on its handling
of foreign affairs. The young politician had not the strength of
character or convictions that keeps a man naturally in the
forefront of affairs and gives his counsels a sterling value, and
on the other hand his insincerity was not deep enough to allow him
to pose artificially and successfully as a leader of men and shaper
of movements. For the moment, however, his place in public life
was sufficiently marked out to give him a secure footing in that
world where people are counted individually and not in herds. The
woman whom he would make his wife would have the chance, too, if
she had the will and the skill, to become an individual who
counted.
There was balm to Elaine in this reflection, yet it did not wholly
suffice to drive out the feeling of pique which Comus had called
into being by his slighting view of her as a convenient cash supply
in moments of emergency. She found a certain satisfaction in
scrupulously observing her promise, made earlier on that eventful
day, and sent off a messenger with the stipulated loan. Then a
reaction of compunction set in, and she reminded herself that in
fairness she ought to write and tell her news in as friendly a
fashion as possible to her dismissed suitor before it burst upon
him from some other quarter. They had parted on more or less
quarrelling terms it was true, but neither of them had foreseen the
finality of the parting nor the permanence of the breach between
them; Comus might even now be thinking himself half-forgiven, and
the awakening would be rather cruel. The letter, however, did not
prove an easy one to write; not only did it present difficulties of
its own but it suffered from the competing urgency of a desire to
be doing something far pleasanter than writing explanatory and
valedictory phrases. Elaine was possessed with an unusual but
quite overmastering hankering to visit her cousin Suzette Brankley.
They met but rarely at each other's houses and very seldom anywhere
else, and Elaine for her part was never conscious of feeling that
their opportunities for intercourse lacked anything in the way of
adequacy. Suzette accorded her just that touch of patronage which
a moderately well-off and immoderately dull girl will usually try
to mete out to an acquaintance who is known to be wealthy and
suspected of possessing brains. In return Elaine armed herself
with that particular brand of mock humility which can be so
terribly disconcerting if properly wielded. No quarrel of any
description stood between them and one could not legitimately have
described them as enemies, but they never disarmed in one another's
presence. A misfortune of any magnitude falling on one of them
would have been sincerely regretted by the other, but any minor
discomfiture would have produced a feeling very much akin to
satisfaction. Human nature knows millions of these inconsequent
little feuds, springing up and flourishing apart from any basis of
racial, political, religious or economic causes, as a hint perhaps
to crass unseeing altruists that enmity has its place and purpose
in the world as well as benevolence.
Elaine had not personally congratulated Suzette since the formal
announcement of her engagement to the young man with the
dissentient tailoring effects. The impulse to go and do so now,
overmastered her sense of what was due to Comus in the way of
explanation. The letter was still in its blank unwritten stage, an
unmarshalled sequence of sentences forming in her brain, when she
ordered her car and made a hurried but well-thought-out change into
her most sumptuously sober afternoon toilette. Suzette, she felt
tolerably sure, would still be in the costume that she had worn in
the Park that morning, a costume that aimed at elaboration of
detail, and was damned with overmuch success.
Suzette's mother welcomed her unexpected visitor with obvious
satisfaction. Her daughter's engagement, she explained, was not so
brilliant from the social point of view as a girl of Suzette's
attractions and advantages might have legitimately aspired to, but
Egbert was a thoroughly commendable and dependable young man, who
would very probably win his way before long to membership of the
County Council.
"From there, of course, the road would be open to him to higher
things."
"Yes," said Elaine, "he might become an alderman."
"Have you seen their photographs, taken together?" asked Mrs.
Brankley, abandoning the subject of Egbert's prospective career.
"No, do show me," said Elaine, with a flattering show of interest;
"I've never seen that sort of thing before. It used to be the
fashion once for engaged couples to be photographed together,
didn't it?"
"It's VERY much the fashion now," said Mrs. Brankley assertively,
but some of the complacency had filtered out of her voice. Suzette
came into the room, wearing the dress that she had worn in the Park
that morning.
"Of course, you've been hearing all about THE engagement from
mother," she cried, and then set to work conscientiously to cover
the same ground.
"We met at Grindelwald, you know. He always calls me his Ice
Maiden because we first got to know each other on the skating rink.
Quite romantic, wasn't it? Then we asked him to tea one day, and
we got to be quite friendly. Then he proposed."
"He wasn't the only one who was smitten with Suzette," Mrs.
Brankley hastened to put in, fearful lest Elaine might suppose that
Egbert had had things all his own way. "There was an American
millionaire who was quite taken with her, and a Polish count of a
very old family. I assure you I felt quite nervous at some of our
tea-parties."
Mrs. Brankley had given Grindelwald a sinister but rather alluring
reputation among a large circle of untravelled friends as a place
where the insolence of birth and wealth was held in precarious
check from breaking forth into scenes of savage violence.
"My marriage with Egbert will, of course, enlarge the sphere of my
life enormously," pursued Suzette.
"Yes," said Elaine; her eyes were rather remorselessly taking in
the details of her cousin's toilette. It is said that nothing is
sadder than victory except defeat. Suzette began to feel that the
tragedy of both was concentrated in the creation which had given
her such unalloyed gratification, till Elaine had come on the
scene.
"A woman can be so immensely helpful in the social way to a man who
is making a career for himself. And I'm so glad to find that we've
a great many ideas in common. We each made out a list of our idea
of the hundred best books, and quite a number of them were the
same."
"He looks bookish," said Elaine, with a critical glance at the
photograph.
"Oh, he's not at all a bookworm," said Suzette quickly, "though
he's tremendously well-read. He's quite the man of action."
"Does he hunt?" asked Elaine.
"No, he doesn't get much time or opportunity for riding."
"What a pity," commented Elaine; "I don't think I could marry a man
who wasn't fond of riding."
"Of course that's a matter of taste," said Suzette, stiffly;
"horsey men are not usually gifted with overmuch brains, are they?"
"There is as much difference between a horseman and a horsey man as
there is between a well-dressed man and a dressy one," said Elaine,
judicially; "and you may have noticed how seldom a dressy woman
really knows how to dress. As an old lady of my acquaintance
observed the other day, some people are born with a sense of how to
clothe themselves, others acquire it, others look as if their
clothes had been thrust upon them."
She gave Lady Caroline her due quotation marks, but the sudden
tactfulness with which she looked away from her cousin's frock was
entirely her own idea.
A young man entering the room at this moment caused a diversion
that was rather welcome to Suzette.
"Here comes Egbert," she announced, with an air of subdued triumph;
it was at least a satisfaction to be able to produce the captive of
her charms, alive and in good condition, on the scene. Elaine
might be as critical as she pleased, but a live lover outweighed
any number of well-dressed straight-riding cavaliers who existed
only as a distant vision of the delectable husband.
Egbert was one of those men who have no small talk, but possess an
inexhaustible supply of the larger variety. In whatever society he
happened to be, and particularly in the immediate neighbourhood of
an afternoon-tea table, with a limited audience of womenfolk, he
gave the impression of someone who was addressing a public meeting,
and would be happy to answer questions afterwards. A suggestion of
gas-lit mission-halls, wet umbrellas, and discreet applause seemed
to accompany him everywhere. He was an exponent, among other
things, of what he called New Thought, which seemed to lend itself
conveniently to the employment of a good deal of rather stale
phraseology. Probably in the course of some thirty odd years of
existence he had never been of any notable use to man, woman, child
or animal, but it was his firmly-announced intention to leave the
world a better, happier, purer place than he had found it; against
the danger of any relapse to earlier conditions after his
disappearance from the scene, he was, of course, powerless to
guard. 'Tis not in mortals to insure succession, and Egbert was
admittedly mortal.
Elaine found him immensely entertaining, and would certainly have
exerted herself to draw him out if such a proceeding had been at
all necessary. She listened to his conversation with the
complacent appreciation that one bestows on a stage tragedy, from
whose calamities one can escape at any moment by the simple process
of leaving one's seat. When at last he checked the flow of his
opinions by a hurried reference to his watch, and declared that he
must be moving on elsewhere, Elaine almost expected a vote of
thanks to be accorded him, or to be asked to signify herself in
favour of some resolution by holding up her hand.
When the young man had bidden the company a rapid business-like
farewell, tempered in Suzette's case by the exact degree of tender
intimacy that it would have been considered improper to omit or
overstep, Elaine turned to her expectant cousin with an air of
cordial congratulation.
"He is exactly the husband I should have chosen for you, Suzette."
For the second time that afternoon Suzette felt a sense of waning
enthusiasm for one of her possessions.
Mrs. Brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in her
visitor's verdict.
"I suppose she means he's not her idea of a husband, but, he's good
enough for Suzette," she observed to herself, with a snort that
expressed itself somewhere in the nostrils of the brain. Then with
a smiling air of heavy patronage she delivered herself of her one
idea of a damaging counter-stroke.
"And when are we to hear of your engagement, my dear?"
"Now," said Elaine quietly, but with electrical effect; "I came to
announce it to you but I wanted to hear all about Suzette first.
It will be formally announced in the papers in a day or two."
"But who is it? Is it the young man who was with you in the Park
this morning?" asked Suzette.
"Let me see, who was I with in the Park this morning? A very good-
looking dark boy? Oh no, not Comus Bassington. Someone you know
by name, anyway, and I expect you've seen his portrait in the
papers."
"A flying-man?" asked Mrs. Brankley.
"Courtenay Youghal," said Elaine.
Mrs. Brankley and Suzette had often rehearsed in the privacy of
their minds the occasion when Elaine should come to pay her
personal congratulations to her engaged cousin. It had never been
in the least like this.
On her return from her enjoyable afternoon visit Elaine found an
express messenger letter waiting for her. It was from Comus,
thanking her for her loan--and returning it.
"I suppose I ought never to have asked you for it," he wrote, "but
you are always so deliciously solemn about money matters that I
couldn't resist. Just heard the news of your engagement to
Courtenay. Congrats. to you both. I'm far too stoney broke to buy
you a wedding present so I'm going to give you back the bread-and-
butter dish. Luckily it still has your crest on it. I shall love
to think of you and Courtenay eating bread-and-butter out of it for
the rest of your lives."
That was all he had to say on the matter about which Elaine had
been preparing to write a long and kindly-expressed letter, closing
a rather momentous chapter in her life and his. There was not a
trace of regret or upbraiding in his note; he had walked out of
their mutual fairyland as abruptly as she had, and to all
appearances far more unconcernedly. Reading the letter again and
again Elaine could come to no decision as to whether this was
merely a courageous gibe at defeat, or whether it represented the
real value that Comus set on the thing that he had lost.
And she would never know. If Comus possessed one useless gift to
perfection it was the gift of laughing at Fate even when it had
struck him hardest. One day, perhaps, the laughter and mockery
would be silent on his lips, and Fate would have the advantage of
laughing last. _