I
ON a spring afternoon, Mary at ease, novel in lap, let her mind flow over the years in their passing. Four had gone by since she had defied her family, in order to embrace a career, which in their view was full of peril. But in spite of that, so far she had escaped disaster. And fortune had been amazingly kind in the meantime.
On the table near Mary’s elbow were five cups on a tray, and opposite, also at ease, with her hands behind her shrewd head, was Milly Wren. Mary had just begun to share a very comfortable flat with Milly and Milly’s mother.
Milly herself, in Mary’s opinion, was more than worthy of her surroundings. Loyal, sympathetic, full of courage, she had served a far longer apprenticeship to success than Mary had. She had “made good” in the face of heavy odds.
Milly had not a great talent. Force of character and singleness of aim had brought her to the top, and only these, as she well knew, would keep her there. But with Mary it was a different story. All sorts of fairies had attended her birth. She had every gift for the career she had chosen, moreover, she had them in abundance. Milly, who had gone up the ladder a step at a time, would have been more than human had she not envied her friend the qualities she wore with the indifference of a regular royal queen.
The clock on the chimney-piece struck four.
“I’m feeling quite excited,” Milly suddenly remarked.
From the depths of the opposite chair came the note which for six months now had cast a spell upon London.
“He mustn’t know that,” laughed Mary. “Dignity, my child, touched with hauteur, is the prescription for a marquis. At least that’s according to the book of the words.” And she gayly waved the novel she had neglected for nearly an hour.
“Oh, Sonny,” said Milly Wren, “I wasn’t thinking of him. I was thinking of the friend he is bringing, who is simply dying to know you.”
Mary knew this was quite true, for that was Milly’s way.
“Oh, is he!” If the tone was disdain, its sting was masked by gentle irony and humor. These airs and graces didn’t make enemies, they so frankly belonged to the wonderful Mary Lawrence—her name in the theater. That which might have been mere petulance in a nature thinner of texture, became with her a half-royal impatience for the more trivial aspects of the human comedy.
“But I want to see him,” persisted Milly. “Sonny thinks no end of him.”
“Then I’m sure he’s nice.”
“Why do you think so?” Milly was a little intrigued by the warmth of the words.
“Because Lord Wrexham is charming.”
Milly laughed. The naïve admiration was unexpected, the slightly too respectful air was puzzling. Milly herself was so blasé in regard to the peerage that such an attitude of mind seemed almost provincial. Yet she would have been the first to own that it was the only thing about her enigmatic friend which suggested anything of the kind.
“Sonny says he raves about you.”
“It’s his funeral.” The laugh was honestly gay. “He’ll be very disappointed, poor lad.”
“Don’t fish.”
“I never fish in shallow waters, Miss Wren.”
“You are the most shameless angler I know. But you do it so beautifully that people don’t realize what you are at.”
“Unconsciously—say unconsciously,” came a flash from the opposite chair.
“So I used to think. Before I really knew you I thought everything you said and did just happened so. But now I am not quite sure that you have not thought everything out beforehand.”
“Don’t make me out a horror.”
“Anyway you are much the cleverest creature I have ever met. You are so deep that there is no fathoming you. Somehow you are not the least ordinary in anything.”
Mary abruptly brought the conversation back to Sonny and his friend. The latter, it seemed, had first gazed on the famous Miss Lawrence in New York, at the Pumpernickel Theater, the previous year.
“An American?”
“No,” said Milly. “But he’s seen a lot of life out West.”
Before other questions could rise to Mary’s lips, Mrs. Wren came in. Milly’s mother was an elderly lady who had been on the stage. In the first flight of her profession, life had given her many a shrewd knock, but in the process she had picked up a considerable knowledge of the world and its ways. She lived for Milly, in whom her every thought was centered, for in the daughter the mother lived again. Intensely ambitious for her, Mrs. Wren was a little inclined to resent the intrusion within the nest of a bird of such dazzling plumage as Mary Lawrence. At the same time that honest woman well knew that her daughter had more to gain than she had to lose by sharing a roof with such a supremely attractive stable companion.
Mrs. Wren found it very difficult to place Mary Lawrence. In ideas and outlook, in the face she showed to the world, she was far from being a typical member of her calling as the good lady knew it. As Mrs. Wren reckoned success, this girl had won it on two continents almost too abundantly, but she seemed to hold it very cheap. Perhaps it had been gained too easily. Milly’s mother, rather jealous, rather ambitious as she was, could hardly find it in her heart to say it was undeserved, but Mary Lawrence took the high gifts of fortune so much for granted, almost as if they were a birthright, that the mother of her friend, remembering the long years of her own thornily-crowned servitude, and Milly’s hard struggle “to arrive,” could not help a feeling of secret envy.
“His lordship coming to tea?” said Mrs. Wren, with a demure glance at the five cups on the tray.
None knew so well as she that his lordship was coming to tea. She had made elaborate preparations in toilette and confectionery in order to receive him. But the phrase rose so histrionically to her lips that she simply couldn’t resist it. Somehow it made such a perfect entrance, for Milly’s mother carried a sense of the theater into private life.
It would have been heartless of Milly, who belonged to another generation, to have uttered the words on her tongue. And those words were, “You know perfectly well that Sonny is coming.”
“He said he was,” Milly’s reply was given with a patient smile that concealed an infinity of boredom. Her mother, fussy, trite, rather exasperating, had never quite learned amid all her jousts with the world, to acquire the golden mean. There were times when she sorely tried her clever and ambitious daughter, whose patience was little short of angelic.
“What’s the name of the friend he is bringing?”
“Mr. Dinneford.”
“Not another lord?” The tone of Mrs. Wren had a tiny note of disappointment.
“A rich commoner,” said Milly with a laugh. “At least Sonny says he will be one of the richest men in England when his uncle dies. His uncle, I believe, is a great swell.”
“I don’t doubt it, dear,” said Mrs. Wren.
II
An electric bell was heard to buzz.
“They are here,” said Mrs. Wren in a tone with a thrill in it.
A neat parlor maid announced “Lord Wrexham, Mr. Dinneford,” and two stalwart young men entered cheerily. They were hearty upstanding fellows, curiously alike in manner, appearance, dress, yet in the thousand and one subtleties of character immutably different. But this was not a moment for the fine shades. They came into the room unaffectedly, without shyness, and warmly took the hands of welcome that were offered them.
Wrexham, a subaltern of the Pinks of three years’ standing, was an attractive but rather irresolute young man. He knew that he was perilously near forbidden ground. If not exactly in the toils of an infatuation, the charms of Milly were growing day by day upon an impressionable mind. Fully content as yet to live in the moment, a wiser young man might have begun to pay the future some little attention.
As for the lively, headstrong, unconventional Jack Dinneford, at present at a loose end in London, to whom Wrexham himself had been appointed as a sort of unofficial bear-leader by the express desire of Bridport House, that warrior was on a voyage of discovery. In common with half the males of his age in the metropolis he was already in the thrall of the wonderful Princess Bedalia. In the opinion of connoisseurs she was the only one of her kind; for the past two hundred nights she had played “to capacity” at the Frivolity Theater, and even Jack Dinneford, who in one way or another had seen a goodish bit of the Old World and the New, could not repress an exquisite little thrill as her highness rose with rare politeness to receive him.
“She’s even more stunning than I guessed,” was the thought in Jack’s mind at the moment of presentation. He could almost feel the magnetism in her finger tips. She was so alive in every nerve that it would have called for no great power of imagination to detect vibration all round her.
“I feel greatly honored in meeting you,” said the young man with transparent honesty. He was no subscriber evidently to the maxim, “Language was given us to conceal our thoughts.” Somehow she couldn’t help liking him for it.
“The honor is mine.” The response was so ready, the humor behind it so genuine, that they both laughed whole-heartedly and became friends on the spot. There was no nonsense about Princess Bedalia, and the same applied to the brown-faced clear-eyed owner of the fanciful scarf pin.
The neat parlor maid brought tea. Wrexham, after a little amiable chaffing of Mrs. Wren, whom he had met on at least six occasions, provided Milly with tea and a macaroon, took the like for himself, and sat beside her without a care in the wide world. She was forbidden fruit; thus to frail humanity in its present phase she conveyed an idea of Paradise. Such a view was quite absurd, allowing even for the fact that Milly was an engaging creature, with a good heart, a ready tongue, a rather special kind of prettiness, and a particularly shrewd head.
Jack Dinneford on the opposite sofa had stronger warrant for his emotions. This girl whom he had first seen in New York before the news of a great inheritance had come to him, whom he had since viewed ten times from the stalls of the Frivolity Theater, was a personality. There was no doubt about that. And as he discovered at once their minds marched together. They saw men and events at the same angle. A phrase of either would draw forth an instant counterpart; in five minutes they had turned the whole universe into mockery, but without letting go of the fact that they were complete strangers colloguing for the first time.
Mrs. Wren withdrew presently on the pretext that she had letters to write. A very pleasant hour quickly sped. Each of these four people was in the mood to enjoy. Life in spite of its hazards, was no bad thing at the moment. Wrexham, a thorough gentleman, was an immensely likeable young man. And while he basked in present happiness a certain resolution began to take shape in his mind.
As for Jack Dinneford at the other side of the room, his thoughts followed a humbler course. But he was an elemental, a very dangerous fellow if once he began to play with ideas. At present he suffered from the drawback of being no more than the nephew of his uncle; therefore his sensations were not exactly those of Wrexham, who was a natural caster of the handkerchief. But in this fatal hour Jack was heavily smitten.
He had met few girls in his twenty-four years of existence. In his naïf way he confessed as much to Miss Lawrence. She was amused by the confession and led him to make others. This was easy because he liked talking about himself, that is to say, with such a girl as Mary Lawrence inciting him humorously to reveal the piquant details of a life not without its adventures, he would have had to be much less primitive than he was to have resisted the lure of the charmer.
She was unaffectedly interested. She differed from Mr. Dinneford inasmuch as she had met many young men. Therefore, her heart was not worn on her sleeve for daws to peck at. But he was a new type, and she confessed gayly to Milly as soon as he had gone, she found him very amusing.
III
So much happened in the crowded month that followed, that at London Bridge the Thames might be said to be in spate. The two young men were often at the theater, and now and again Mary and Milly, chaperoned by Mrs. Wren, would accept an invitation to supper at a restaurant. Then there were the happy hours these four people were able to snatch from their various duties, which they spent under the trees in the Park. These were golden days indeed, but—the shadow of the policeman could already be seen creeping up. The senior subaltern had been constrained one fine morning to take Wrexham so far into his confidence as to inform him with brutal precision, that if a man in the Household Cavalry marries an actress, he leaves the regiment.
The young man was intensely annoyed. Wisdom was not his long suit, and although an excellent fellow according to his lights, right at the back was the arrogance of old marquisate. His answer to the senior subaltern was to arrange a most agreeable up-river excursion for the following Sunday. On returning late in the evening to the flat, Milly was in rather a flutter.
Mary, who had been one of the merry party, was troubled. She had certain instincts which went very deep, and these warned her of breakers ahead. She had a great regard for Milly, and the more she knew of Wrexham the better she liked him. But she saw quite clearly that difficulties must arise if the thing went on, and that very powerful opposition would have to be faced in several quarters.
Moreover, she had now her own problem to meet; Jack had begun to force the pace. And Mary, who had a sort of sixth sense in these matters, had already felt this to be an inconvenience. From the first she had found him delightful. Day by day this feeling had grown. An original, with a strong will and a keen sense of humor, he differed from his friend Wrexham inasmuch that he knew his own mind. He returned from the river fully determined to marry Mary Lawrence.
Perhaps this heroic resolve may have been forced upon him by the knowledge of other Richmonds in the field. Mary was famous and admired. It savored of presumption for such a one as himself, in receipt of a modest two thousand a year from his kinsman, the Duke, to butt in where men far richer were content to walk delicately. But he was “next in” at Bridport House, he was heir to a great name, therefore, at the lowest estimate, he was a quite considerable parti. This fact must stand his excuse, although he was far too astute to make it one in the difficult game he was about to play.
Jack was not afflicted with subtlety in any form, he was not even a close observer, but he understood well enough that it was going to be a man’s work to persuade Mary Lawrence to marry him. She had an immense independence, to which, of course, she was fully entitled, a wide field of choice, and under the delightfully amusing give-and-take which endeared her to Bohemia was a fastidious reserve which somehow hinted at other standards. Even allowing for a lover’s partiality this girl was to cut to a pattern far more imposing than Milly Wren. Her qualities were positive, whereas Milly had prettiness merely, a warm heart, a factitious charm. However, as soon as this sportsman had made up his mind to tackle the stiffest fence that a Nimrod has to face, he decided at once that the hour had come to harden his heart and go at the post and rails in style.
The next evening, as he strolled with Mary under the trees, he may have been thinking in metaphor, when he let his eyes dwell on the riders in the Row.
“How jolly they look!” he said. And then at the instance of a concrete thought—“By Jove, an idea! Tomorrow morning, if I job a couple of gees, will you come for a ride?”
The response was a ready one. “I should love to, if you are not afraid to be seen with an absolute duffer.”
“That’s a bargain. But they may be screws, as there doesn’t seem enough decent ones to go round at this time of the year.”
“I know nothing about horses,” was the laughing reply, “except just enough not to look a hired horse in the knees. And the worse my mount the better for me, at least it reduces my chance of biting the tan.”
“I expect you are a good deal better than you admit.”
She was woman enough to ask why he should think so.
“You have the look of a goer,” he said, as his eye sought involuntarily the long slender line of a frame all suppleness, delicacy, and power.
“Wait till tomorrow. In the meantime I warn you that you’re almost certain to be disgraced in the sight of the town.”
“Let’s risk it anyway,” said the young man delightedly.
In a very few minutes, however, Mary seriously regretted a rash promise. They had only gone a few yards farther, Jack still inclined to exult at the pact into which he had lured her, when both were brought up short by a sudden clear “Hello!” from the other side of the rails.
Jack had been hailed by a couple of long, lean young women with mouse-colored hair, on a couple of long, lean mouse-colored horses. They were followed at a respectful distance by a very smart groom on a good-looking chestnut. The set of the close-fitting black habits and the absolute ease of the wearers denoted the expert horse-woman.
“Hello, Madge—hello, Blanche!” The casual greeting was punctuated by a wave, equally casual, of the young man’s hand.
As the two riders went slowly by they let their eyes rest upon Mary. The look she received did not amount to a stare, but it had a cool impertinence which somehow roused her fighting instinct. Unconsciously she gave it back. On both sides was a frank curiosity discreetly veiled, but the honors, if honors there were in the matter, were with the occupants of the saddle. Somehow that seemed so clearly to have been the place for generations of these lean young women with their rigidity of line, their large noses, their cool appraising air of which they were wholly unconscious.
Who are they? was their reaction upon Mary Lawrence.
Who is she? was her reaction upon these horsewomen.
“A couple of my cousins.” The young man carelessly answered a question that Mary was too proud to ask.
IV
Mary’s riding had been confined to a few lessons shared with Milly at the Brompton School of Equitation, and Milly was urged to make a third on the morrow. Mrs. Wren felt it to be the due of the proprieties that she should do so, but Milly herself, apart from the fact that she was shy of appearing in the Row, was quite convinced that it would not be the act of “a sport” to overlook the ancient maxim, “Two are company, three a crowd.” Therefore the invitation was declined. And this discreet action on the part of Milly gave Fate the opportunity for which it had seemed to be looking for some little time past.
It was about twenty minutes to eleven in the forenoon of a perfect first of June that Jack Dinneford rode up gayly to the flat in Broad Place, leading a horse very likely-looking, but warranted quiet. It was a fair presumption that the guarantee covered the fact of its disposition, since it had made the perilous journey from the jobmaster’s, three doors out of Park Lane, and across the No Man’s Land yclept Hyde Park Corner, that terrible and trappy maze, without a suspicion of mental stress.
Jack’s best hunting voice ascended to an open window of the second story. The complete horsewoman, in every detail immaculate, came on to the little balcony of Number 16, Victoria Mansions.
“What a gorgeous day!”
“A ripper!”
If excitement there was on the side of either, self-mastery concealed it. Yet an inconvenient pressure of emotion was shared by both just then. In spite of a liberal share of self-confidence and a will under strong control Mary could hardly refrain from the hope that she was not going to make a perfect fool of herself. As soon as she beheld the upstanding chestnut below with its slender legs and thin tail, she winged an involuntary prayer to Allah that there were no tricks in its repertory unbecoming a horse and a gentleman. As for Jack, the presence of all the horses in the world would not have excited him. It was not in him to be excited by things of that kind, that is to say, it was part of his religion not to be excited by them; all the same there was a genuine, nay, almost terrible thrill in his heart this morning.
In the course of a rather wakeful night he had made up his mind “to come to the ’osses” in sober verity. To the best of his present information the gods, in the absence of the unforeseen, would discuss the matter privately about twelve o’clock.
“Blanche and Marjorie will have something to look at,” was the proud thought in the mind of the young man as the complete Diana, fit to greet Aurora and her courses, emerged from the Otis elevator and took the front of Broad Place with beauty.
“I wish these clothes were a little less smart, and not quite so new,” was the first thought in the mind of Diana. “I am sure they are both of them ‘Cats,’” was the thought which followed close upon its heels. Until that hour it had never been her lot to harbor such vain companions. This gay spirit to whom the fairies had been kind had always seemed to breathe a larger, a diviner air. Such self-consciousness shamed her; but after all those two with their old habits and their odd perfection were more to blame than she.
Truth to tell, in the last seventeen hours a subtle, rather horrid change had taken place in her. Up till six o’clock the previous evening she had always been nobly sure of herself, regally self-secure. Always when she had measured herself against others of her age and sex she had had a feeling of having been born to the purple. Somewhere, deep down, she had seemed to have illimitable reserves to draw upon when the creatures of her own orbit had forced her to a reluctant comparison. In all her dealings with her peers, she had felt that she had a great deal in hand. But Marjorie and Blanche, whoever Marjorie and Blanche might be, had seemed to alter all that with a glance of their ironical eyes.
Jack fixed her in the saddle of the tall horse and lengthened her stirrup with quite a professional air, while Milly and her mother watched the proceedings in a rather thrilled silence from the balcony of Number Sixteen. Their minds were dominated by a single thought, which, however, bore one aspect in the mind of Mrs. Wren, another in the mind of the faithful Milly.
“She is set on marrying him?”—Mrs. Wren.
“He is so nice, I hope he won’t disappoint her?”—Milly the faithful.
The cavalcade started. As if no such people as Marjorie and Blanche existed in the world, Mary waved the yellow-gloved hand of an excited schoolgirl to the balcony of Victoria Mansions. Jack accompanied it with an upward glance and a gravely-lifted hat.
In the maelstrom of promiscuous vehicles which makes Knightsbridge a thoroughfare inimical to man, Jack took charge of the good-looking hireling. With solemn care he piloted the upstanding one and his rather anxious rider into the calm of Albert Gate.
“I hope you are comfortable,” he found time to say; moreover, he found time to say it so nicely and sincerely, almost as if his only hope of happiness, here and hereafter, depended upon the answer, that the answer came promptly in the form of a gay “Yes,” although had she been quite honest she would have said she had never felt less comfortable in her life. Her horse was such a mountain of a fellow, that she might have been perched on the top of a very old-fashioned velocipede. Then the saddle was very different from the one at the riding school. It had much less room and fewer points d’appui to offer. As soon as her knee tried to grip the pommel she knew that she must not hope to get friends with it. She had embarked on a very rash adventure. And if she didn’t make a sorry exhibition of herself in the eyes of All London, including those two, she would have cause to thank her private stars, who, to give them their due, had certainly looked after her very well so far.
“It’s very sporting of her,” said Expert Knowledge to Jack Dinneford.
“I hope the gee won’t play the fool,” said Jack Dinneford to Expert Knowledge.
V
Hardly had they entered the Row, when Providence, of malice prepense, as it seemed, threw them right across the path of the enemy. Cousin Marjorie and Cousin Blanche, walking their horses slowly along by the rails, were within a very few yards. Moreover, they were coming towards them. Mary, aided by the sixth sense given to woman, was aware of a subtle intensity of gaze upon her, even before she could trace the source of its origin. She could feel it upon her—upon her and everything that was hers, from the crown of her rather too modish hat to the tip of her tall friend’s fetlock.
“Good morning, Jack,” said a clear, strong voice.
“Hello,” the tone of Jack was amazingly casual—“here you are again.”
There was a moment’s maneuvering, in the course of which three pairs of feminine eyes met in challenge, and then Cousin Blanche and Cousin Marjorie, smart groom and all, passed on without offering a chance of coming to closer quarters. Their tactics had been calculated so nicely that it was impossible to say whether discourtesy was or was not intended. But there was a subtle air about these ironically self-confident young women which prevented Mary from giving them the benefit of the doubt.
For a moment she felt inclined to rage within. And then she bit her lip and laughed. A moment later a sudden peck of the tall horse told her that it would be wise for the present to give him an undivided mind. Soon, however, Cousin Marjorie and Cousin Blanche were forgotten in the delights and the perils of the discreet canter into which she found herself launched. It was a perfect morning for the Row. The play of the sun on the bright leaves, the power of its rays softened by a breeze from the east, the sense of rapid motion, the kaleidoscope of swiftly changing figures through which they passed, filled her with a zest of life, a feeling of high romance which left no room for smaller and meaner affairs. And the stride of the tall horse, as soon as she got used to it, was such a thing of delight in itself, that she even forgot the strange saddle and her general fears.
They rode for an enchanted hour. And somehow, in the course of it, the life forces became more insurgent. Somehow they deepened, expanded, grew more imperious. Jack was a real out-of-doors man, who believed that hunting, shooting, field sports, and fresh air were the highest good. His look of lordly health, mingled with a charmingly delicate protectiveness, appealed to her in a very special way. For some weeks she had known that she was beginning to like him perilously much. But it was not until she had returned rather tired and rather hot to Victoria Mansions, had had a delicious bath, and a very good luncheon indeed that she began at last to realize that she was fairly up against the acute problem of Jack Dinneford.