<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">After</span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“From there, of course, the road would be open to him to
higher things.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Elaine, “he might become an
alderman.”</p>
<p>“Have you seen their photographs, taken together?”
asked Mrs. Brankley, abandoning the subject of Egbert’s
prospective career.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“It’s <i>very</i> 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.</p>
<p>“Of course, you’ve been hearing all about
<i>the</i> engagement from mother,” she cried, and then set
to work conscientiously to cover the same ground.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“My marriage with Egbert will, of course, enlarge the
sphere of my life enormously,” pursued Suzette.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“He looks bookish,” said Elaine, with a critical
glance at the photograph.</p>
<p>“Oh, he’s not at all a bookworm,” said
Suzette quickly, “though he’s tremendously
well-read. He’s quite the man of action.”</p>
<p>“Does he hunt?” asked Elaine.</p>
<p>“No, he doesn’t get much time or opportunity for
riding.”</p>
<p>“What a pity,” commented Elaine; “I
don’t think I could marry a man who wasn’t fond of
riding.”</p>
<p>“Of course that’s a matter of taste,” said
Suzette, stiffly; “horsey men are not usually gifted with
overmuch brains, are they?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A young man entering the room at this moment caused a
diversion that was rather welcome to Suzette.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“He is exactly the husband I should have chosen for you,
Suzette.”</p>
<p>For the second time that afternoon Suzette felt a sense of
waning enthusiasm for one of her possessions.</p>
<p>Mrs. Brankley detected the note of ironical congratulation in
her visitor’s verdict.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“And when are we to hear of your engagement, my
dear?”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“But who is it? Is it the young man who was with
you in the Park this morning?” asked Suzette.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“A flying-man?” asked Mrs. Brankley.</p>
<p>“Courtenay Youghal,” said Elaine.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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