<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Francesca</span> prided herself on being
able to see things from other people’s points of view,
which meant, as it usually does, that she could see her own point
of view from various aspects. As regards Comus, whose
doings and non-doings bulked largely in her thoughts at the
present moment, she had mapped out in her mind so clearly what
his outlook in life ought to be, that she was peculiarly unfitted
to understand the drift of his feelings or the impulses that
governed them. Fate had endowed her with a son; in limiting
the endowment to a solitary offspring Fate had certainly shown a
moderation which Francesca was perfectly willing to acknowledge
and be thankful for; but then, as she pointed out to a certain
complacent friend of hers who cheerfully sustained an endowment
of half-a-dozen male offsprings and a girl or two, her one child
was Comus. Moderation in numbers was more than
counterbalanced in his case by extravagance in
characteristics.</p>
<p>Francesca mentally compared her son with hundreds of other
young men whom she saw around her, steadily, and no doubt
happily, engaged in the process of transforming themselves from
nice boys into useful citizens. Most of them had
occupations, or were industriously engaged in qualifying for
such; in their leisure moments they smoked reasonably-priced
cigarettes, went to the cheaper seats at music-halls, watched an
occasional cricket match at Lord’s with apparent interest,
saw most of the world’s spectacular events through the
medium of the cinematograph, and were wont to exchange at parting
seemingly superfluous injunctions to “be good.”
The whole of Bond Street and many of the tributary thoroughfares
of Piccadilly might have been swept off the face of modern London
without in any way interfering with the supply of their daily
wants. They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but as
sons they would have been eminently restful. With a growing
sense of irritation Francesca compared these deserving young men
with her own intractable offspring, and wondered why Fate should
have singled her out to be the parent of such a vexatious variant
from a comfortable and desirable type. As far as
remunerative achievement was concerned, Comus copied the
insouciance of the field lily with a dangerous fidelity.
Like his mother he looked round with wistful irritation at the
example afforded by contemporary youth, but he concentrated his
attention exclusively on the richer circles of his acquaintance,
young men who bought cars and polo ponies as unconcernedly as he
might purchase a carnation for his buttonhole, and went for trips
to Cairo or the Tigris valley with less difficulty and
finance-stretching than he encountered in contriving a week-end
at Brighton.</p>
<p>Gaiety and good-looks had carried Comus successfully and, on
the whole, pleasantly, through schooldays and a recurring
succession of holidays; the same desirable assets were still at
his service to advance him along his road, but it was a
disconcerting experience to find that they could not be relied on
to go all distances at all times. In an animal world, and a
fiercely competitive animal world at that, something more was
needed than the decorative <i>abandon</i> of the field lily, and
it was just that something more which Comus seemed unable or
unwilling to provide on his own account; it was just the lack of
that something more which left him sulking with Fate over the
numerous breakdowns and stumbling-blocks that held him up on what
he expected to be a triumphal or, at any rate, unimpeded
progress.</p>
<p>Francesca was, in her own way, fonder of Comus than of anyone
else in the world, and if he had been browning his skin somewhere
east of Suez she would probably have kissed his photograph with
genuine fervour every night before going to bed; the appearance
of a cholera scare or rumour of native rising in the columns of
her daily news-sheet would have caused her a flutter of anxiety,
and she would have mentally likened herself to a Spartan mother
sacrificing her best-beloved on the altar of State
necessities. But with the best-beloved installed under her
roof, occupying an unreasonable amount of cubic space, and
demanding daily sacrifices instead of providing the raw material
for one, her feelings were tinged with irritation rather than
affection. She might have forgiven Comus generously for
misdeeds of some gravity committed in another continent, but she
could never overlook the fact that out of a dish of five
plovers’ eggs he was certain to take three. The
absent may be always wrong, but they are seldom in a position to
be inconsiderate.</p>
<p>Thus a wall of ice had grown up gradually between mother and
son, a barrier across which they could hold converse, but which
gave a wintry chill even to the sparkle of their lightest
words. The boy had the gift of being irresistibly amusing
when he chose to exert himself in that direction, and after a
long series of moody or jangling meal-sittings he would break
forth into a torrential flow of small talk, scandal and malicious
anecdote, true or more generally invented, to which Francesca
listened with a relish and appreciation, that was all the more
flattering from being so unwillingly bestowed.</p>
<p>“If you chose your friends from a rather more reputable
set you would be doubtless less amusing, but there would be
compensating advantages.”</p>
<p>Francesca snapped the remark out at lunch one day when she had
been betrayed into a broader smile than she considered the
circumstances of her attitude towards Comus warranted.</p>
<p>“I’m going to move in quite decent society
to-night,” replied Comus with a pleased chuckle;
“I’m going to meet you and Uncle Henry and heaps of
nice dull God-fearing people at dinner.”</p>
<p>Francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance.</p>
<p>“You don’t mean to say Caroline has asked you to
dinner to-night?” she said; “and of course without
telling me. How exceedingly like her!”</p>
<p>Lady Caroline Benaresq had reached that age when you can say
and do what you like in defiance of people’s most sensitive
feelings and most cherished antipathies. Not that she had
waited to attain her present age before pursuing that line of
conduct; she came of a family whose individual members went
through life, from the nursery to the grave, with as much tact
and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going through a
crowded bathing tent. It was a compensating mercy that they
disagreed rather more among themselves than they did with the
outside world; every known variety and shade of religion and
politics had been pressed into the family service to avoid the
possibility of any agreement on the larger essentials of life,
and such unlooked-for happenings as the Home Rule schism, the
Tariff-Reform upheaval and the Suffragette crusade were
thankfully seized on as furnishing occasion for further
differences and sub-divisions. Lady Caroline’s
favourite scheme of entertaining was to bring jarring and
antagonistic elements into close contact and play them
remorselessly one against the other. “One gets much
better results under those circumstances” she used to
observe, “than by asking people who wish to meet each
other. Few people talk as brilliantly to impress a friend
as they do to depress an enemy.”</p>
<p>She admitted that her theory broke down rather badly if you
applied it to Parliamentary debates. At her own dinner
table its success was usually triumphantly vindicated.</p>
<p>“Who else is to be there?” Francesca asked, with
some pardonable misgiving.</p>
<p>“Courtenay Youghal. He’ll probably sit next
to you, so you’d better think out a lot of annihilating
remarks in readiness. And Elaine de Frey.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think I’ve heard of her. Who
is she?”</p>
<p>“Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a
solemn sort of way, and almost indecently rich.”</p>
<p>“Marry her” was the advice which sprang to
Francesca’s lips, but she choked it back with a salted
almond, having a rare perception of the fact that words are
sometimes given to us to defeat our purposes.</p>
<p>“Caroline has probably marked her down for Toby or one
of the grand-nephews,” she said, carelessly; “a
little money would be rather useful in that quarter, I
imagine.”</p>
<p>Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity
that she wanted to see.</p>
<p>An advantageous marriage was so obviously the most sensible
course for him to embark on that she scarcely dared to hope that
he would seriously entertain it; yet there was just a chance that
if he got as far as the flirtation stage with an attractive (and
attracted) girl who was also an heiress, the sheer perversity of
his nature might carry him on to more definite courtship, if only
from the desire to thrust other more genuinely enamoured suitors
into the background. It was a forlorn hope; so forlorn that
the idea even crossed her mind of throwing herself on the mercy
of her <i>bête noire</i>, Courtenay Youghal, and trying to
enlist the influence which he seemed to possess over Comus for
the purpose of furthering her hurriedly conceived project.
Anyhow, the dinner promised to be more interesting than she had
originally anticipated.</p>
<p>Lady Caroline was a professed Socialist in politics, chiefly,
it was believed, because she was thus enabled to disagree with
most of the Liberals and Conservatives, and all the Socialists of
the day. She did not permit her Socialism, however, to
penetrate below stairs; her cook and butler had every
encouragement to be Individualists. Francesca, who was a
keen and intelligent food critic, harboured no misgivings as to
her hostess’s kitchen and cellar departments; some of the
human side-dishes at the feast gave her more ground for
uneasiness. Courtenay Youghal, for instance, would probably
be brilliantly silent; her brother Henry would almost certainly
be the reverse.</p>
<p>The dinner party was a large one and Francesca arrived late
with little time to take preliminary stock of the guests; a card
with the name, “Miss de Frey,” immediately opposite
her own place at the other side of the table, indicated, however,
the whereabouts of the heiress. It was characteristic of
Francesca that she first carefully read the menu from end to end,
and then indulged in an equally careful though less open scrutiny
of the girl who sat opposite her, the girl who was nobody in
particular, but whose income was everything that could be
desired. She was pretty in a restrained nut-brown fashion,
and had a look of grave reflective calm that probably masked a
speculative unsettled temperament. Her pose, if one wished
to be critical, was just a little too elaborately careless.
She wore some excellently set rubies with that indefinable air of
having more at home that is so difficult to improvise.
Francesca was distinctly pleased with her survey.</p>
<p>“You seem interested in your
<i>vis-à-vis</i>,” said Courtenay Youghal.</p>
<p>“I almost think I’ve seen her before,” said
Francesca; “her face seems familiar to me.”</p>
<p>“The narrow gallery at the Louvre; attributed to
Leonardo da Vinci,” said Youghal.</p>
<p>“Of course,” said Francesca, her feelings divided
between satisfaction at capturing an elusive impression and
annoyance that Youghal should have been her helper. A
stronger tinge of annoyance possessed her when she heard the
voice of Henry Greech raised in painful prominence at Lady
Caroline’s end of the table.</p>
<p>“I called on the Trudhams yesterday,” he
announced; “it was their Silver Wedding, you know, at least
the day before was. Such lots of silver presents, quite a
show. Of course there were a great many duplicates, but
still, very nice to have. I think they were very pleased to
get so many.”</p>
<p>“We must not grudge them their show of presents after
their twenty-five years of married life,” said Lady
Caroline, gently; “it is the silver lining to their
cloud.”</p>
<p>A third of the guests present were related to the
Trudhams.</p>
<p>“Lady Caroline is beginning well,” murmured
Courtenay Youghal.</p>
<p>“I should hardly call twenty-five years of married life
a cloud,” said Henry Greech, lamely.</p>
<p>“Don’t let’s talk about married life,”
said a tall handsome woman, who looked like some modern
painter’s conception of the goddess Bellona;
“it’s my misfortune to write eternally about husbands
and wives and their variants. My public expects it of
me. I do so envy journalists who can write about plagues
and strikes and Anarchist plots, and other pleasing things,
instead of being tied down to one stale old topic.”</p>
<p>“Who is that woman and what has she written?”
Francesca asked Youghal; she dimly remembered having seen her at
one of Serena Golackly’s gatherings, surrounded by a little
Court of admirers.</p>
<p>“I forget her name; she has a villa at San Remo or
Mentone, or somewhere where one does have villas, and plays an
extraordinary good game of bridge. Also she has the
reputation, rather rare in your sex, of being a wonderfully sound
judge of wine.”</p>
<p>“But what has she written?”</p>
<p>“Oh, several novels of the thinnish ice order. Her
last one, ‘The Woman who wished it was Wednesday,’
has been banned at all the libraries. I expect you’ve
read it.”</p>
<p>“I don’t see why you should think so,” said
Francesca, coldly.</p>
<p>“Only because Comus lent me your copy yesterday,”
said Youghal. He threw back his handsome head and gave her
a sidelong glance of quizzical amusement. He knew that she
hated his intimacy with Comus, and he was secretly rather proud
of his influence over the boy, shallow and negative though he
knew it to be. It had been, on his part, an unsought
intimacy, and it would probably fall to pieces the moment he
tried seriously to take up the <i>rôle</i> of mentor.
The fact that Comus’s mother openly disapproved of the
friendship gave it perhaps its chief interest in the young
politician’s eyes.</p>
<p>Francesca turned her attention to her brother’s end of
the table. Henry Greech had willingly availed himself of
the invitation to leave the subject of married life, and had
launched forthwith into the equally well-worn theme of current
politics. He was not a person who was in much demand for
public meetings, and the House showed no great impatience to hear
his views on the topics of the moment; its impatience, indeed,
was manifested rather in the opposite direction. Hence he
was prone to unburden himself of accumulated political wisdom as
occasion presented itself—sometimes, indeed, to assume an
occasion that was hardly visible to the naked intelligence.</p>
<p>“Our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill
struggle, and they know it,” he chirruped, defiantly;
“they’ve become possessed, like the Gadarene swine,
with a whole legion of—”</p>
<p>“Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill,” put in
Lady Caroline in a gently enquiring voice.</p>
<p>Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on
platitude and the safer kinds of fact.</p>
<p>Francesca did not regard her brother’s views on
statecraft either in the light of gospel or revelation; as Comus
once remarked, they more usually suggested exodus. In the
present instance she found distraction in a renewed scrutiny of
the girl opposite her, who seemed to be only moderately
interested in the conversational efforts of the diners on either
side of her. Comus who was looking and talking his best,
was sitting at the further end of the table, and Francesca was
quick to notice in which direction the girl’s glances were
continually straying. Once or twice the eyes of the young
people met and a swift flush of pleasure and a half-smile that
spoke of good understanding came to the heiress’s
face. It did not need the gift of the traditional intuition
of her sex to enable Francesca to guess that the girl with the
desirable banking account was already considerably attracted by
the lively young Pagan who had, when he cared to practise it,
such an art of winning admiration. For the first time for
many, many months Francesca saw her son’s prospects in a
rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously, to wonder
exactly how much wealth was summed up in the expressive label
“almost indecently rich.” A wife with a really
large fortune and a correspondingly big dower of character and
ambition, might, perhaps, succeed in turning Comus’s latent
energies into a groove which would provide him, if not with a
career, at least with an occupation, and the young serious face
opposite looked as if its owner lacked neither character or
ambition. Francesca’s speculations took a more
personal turn. Out of the well-filled coffers with which
her imagination was toying, an inconsiderable sum might
eventually be devoted to the leasing, or even perhaps the
purchase of, the house in Blue Street when the present convenient
arrangement should have come to an end, and Francesca and the Van
der Meulen would not be obliged to seek fresh quarters.</p>
<p>A woman’s voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the
other side of Courtenay Youghal, broke in on her
bridge-building.</p>
<p>“Tons of money and really very presentable. Just
the wife for a rising young politician. Go in and win her
before she’s snapped up by some fortune hunter.”</p>
<p>Youghal and his instructress in worldly wisdom were looking
straight across the table at the Leonardo da Vinci girl with the
grave reflective eyes and the over-emphasised air of
repose. Francesca felt a quick throb of anger against her
match-making neighbour; why, she asked herself, must some women,
with no end or purpose of their own to serve, except the sheer
love of meddling in the affairs of others, plunge their hands
into plots and schemings of this sort, in which the happiness of
more than one person was concerned? And more clearly than
ever she realised how thoroughly she detested Courtenay
Youghal. She had disliked him as an evil influence, setting
before her son an example of showy ambition that he was not in
the least likely to follow, and providing him with a model of
extravagant dandyism that he was only too certain to copy.
In her heart she knew that Comus would have embarked just as
surely on his present course of idle self-indulgence if he had
never known of the existence of Youghal, but she chose to regard
that young man as her son’s evil genius, and now he seemed
likely to justify more than ever the character she had fastened
on to him. For once in his life Comus appeared to have an
idea of behaving sensibly and making some use of his
opportunities, and almost at the same moment Courtenay Youghal
arrived on the scene as a possible and very dangerous
rival. Against the good looks and fitful powers of
fascination that Comus could bring into the field, the young
politician could match half-a-dozen dazzling qualities which
would go far to recommend him in the eyes of a woman of the
world, still more in those of a young girl in search of an
ideal. Good-looking in his own way, if not on such showy
lines as Comus, always well turned-out, witty, self-confident
without being bumptious, with a conspicuous Parliamentary career
alongside him, and heaven knew what else in front of him,
Courtenay Youghal certainly was not a rival whose chances could
be held very lightly. Francesca laughed bitterly to herself
as she remembered that a few hours ago she had entertained the
idea of begging for his good offices in helping on Comus’s
wooing. One consolation, at least, she found for herself:
if Youghal really meant to step in and try and cut out his young
friend, the latter at any rate had snatched a useful start.
Comus had mentioned Miss de Frey at luncheon that day, casually
and dispassionately; if the subject of the dinner guests had not
come up he would probably not have mentioned her at all.
But they were obviously already very good friends. It was
part and parcel of the state of domestic tension at Blue Street
that Francesca should only have come to know of this highly
interesting heiress by an accidental sorting of guests at a
dinner party.</p>
<p>Lady Caroline’s voice broke in on her reflections; it
was a gentle purring voice, that possessed an uncanny quality of
being able to make itself heard down the longest dinner
table.</p>
<p>“The dear Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded.
He read a list of box-holders for the opera as the First Lesson
the other Sunday, instead of the families and lots of the tribes
of Israel that entered Canaan. Fortunately no one noticed
the mistake.”</p>
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