“‘let us be consistent,’” said lady pomphrey, her three saddle-bag chins quivering with emotion, “‘or let us die’—that is what i have always said. here is my only niece, wendoleth caer-brydglingbury, goes—actually goes—and marries a liberal member of parliament in a red necktie—who makes speeches in townhalls and tents, and things, to masses of people, all about pulling down the house of lords and abolishing the peerage, and absolutely declines to allow his wife to drop her title. to you—so intimate a friend, don’t you know?—i may say in confidence i am sickened. i cannot imagine what the world is coming to. i could wish to die and leave it, were it not that jane and charlotte are still unmarried, and i have promised to present three of the sweetest girls—well-bred americans of the best type, without a trace of accent—at the first drawing-room of the winter season. and the family diamonds are being reset in view of rustleton’s approaching marriage—a union satisfactory from every point of view, especially a mother’s.”
lady pomphrey paused for breath, and the intimate friend-they had met at bad smellstein a fortnight previously while taking little early morning walks, and drinking little glasses of excessively nauseous waters warranted to correct the most aristocratic acidity—the intimate friend murmured something sympathetic.
“of course, i might have known one could look to you for comprehension and all that sort of thing,” said lady pomphrey, graciously bending her head, which was enveloped 318in a large mushroom hat of blue straw tied down all round with a drab silk veil, and patting the intimate friend upon the knee with the stick of her celebrated green silk sunshade. “one of those delightful literary creatures-was it algernon meredith or george swinburne?—has termed friendship ‘the marriage of true minds.’ ever since the hambridge-osts introduced us—in a thunderstorm—at the firework display in the park in honor of the grand duke’s birthday—and being sunday, i will own that the nerve-shattering meteorological demonstrations that drove us to shelter in that extremely leaky chinese pavilion seemed to me but a judgment upon german sabbath-breakers—ours has been such a union. cemented by your helpfulness in the matter of sandbags for a rattling window—lord pomphrey is completely impervious to all such nerve-shattering tortures, and will sleep happily in his cabin on the yacht in cowes roads through a royal naval review—and your timely ministrations with soda-mint lozenges when acute indigestion virtually prostrated me after a homicidal plat of eels with cranberry-sauce, of which i foolishly partook at the table d’h?te. the mysteriousness of it allured me. i wished for once to feel like a german. now i feel assured their extraordinary diet accounts for much that is abstruse and metaphysical in the national character. for you cannot possibly be normal if you are fed upon abnormal things. and i am grateful that rustleton has never shown himself in the least susceptible to the attractions of their women. i know—almost quite intimately—a grand duchess who has brought up every one of her nine young daughters upon red-cabbage soup, with sausage-meat balls and dumplings; and somehow it is suggested in the girls’ complexions and figures—especially the dumplings.”
the friend tittered. lady pomphrey placed upon the seat beside her a straw handbag containing a tauchnitz 319edition of the last new mudie novel, a black fan, a large bottle of frightfully strong salts, several spare pocket-handkerchiefs, several indelible-ink pencils, and a quantity of obsolete railway tickets, and became more confidential than ever.
“had i been consulted by destiny when the arrangement of rustleton’s matrimonial future came sur le tapis i could not—with my expiring breath i would repeat this—could not be more completely satisfied. it began by his hating her.... she hit him on the nose with a diabolo in june at ranelagh, and, ‘mother,’ he said afterwards to me—his upper lip perfectly rigid with wounded dignity—‘i should have greatly preferred to have been born in the days of “coningsby,” or “lothair.” muscular young women create in me a feeling of positive aversion!’ he found her agitating even at that early stage of affairs? how subtle of you to see that!”
the flattered friend murmured an interrogation.
“who is she?” repeated lady pomphrey. “but surely the newspapers?... you suffer too acutely from dancing spots in the field of vision ever to read when undergoing a cure?... poor dear, i can feel for you. she is the hon. céline twissing—will be baroness twissing of hopsacks in her own right when old lord twissing dies. he insisted upon that arrangement in the interests of his only child; when the intimation was conveyed from a certain quarter that the jubilee baronetcy he already enjoyed would be changed into a peerage did he encourage the idea. quite a bluff old english type, and i must say in hospitality imperial. ‘twissing’s bonded breweries.’... a colossal fortune, and that sweet girl is to inherit nearly the whole. shall i say that my heart went out to her from the first instant i saw her? as a mother yourself, you will understand! here comes the young woman with the tray 320for our glasses. ja, bitte, ich danke sie.... you don’t mean to tell me the creature is a cockney?... how distressing! i may be fanciful, possibly i am,” said lady pomphrey, “but i do prefer my surroundings to be congruous and in tone. i’m sure you feel what i convey? you do? how nice that is!...”
the friend smiled and inaudibly murmured something.
“of course,” cried lady pomphrey, “you’re on thorns to hear all about rustleton’s love-match. as i told you, céline twissing—the christian name has been gallicized from selina—and why on earth not? céline is an expert at diabolo. it’s a knack, sending these little black and red demons as high as a house, or into your neighbor’s eye; and she is a talented as well as a charming girl. with three languages, several sciences, a system of physical-culture exercises, golf, tennis, and the laws of hockey at her finger-ends, she would have gone far in these days of violent recreations and brusque manners, even without a dot. masculine? oh dear no! perhaps deficient in reverence for what we were taught to believe in as the superior sex. perhaps lacking in feminine finesse. i have heard it said that the girl of the twentieth century cannot cajole, and is ignorant how to be alluring. perhaps it is a pity. the woman who has a gift of managing difficult people, smoothing absurd people down, and being perfectly amiable to the absolutely objectionable is practically priceless as a greaser of the social cog-wheels. now céline calls that sort of woman, plumply and plainly, a hypocrite.... but is it not a woman’s duty to be a hypocrite, if telling the truth to everybody makes the world a place of gnashing?” demanded lady pomphrey, making her eyebrows climb up out of sight under the shadow of her mushroom hat.
the compliant friend assented.
“you understand, then, how dissonant was the chord 321céline twissing struck in rustleton. with his plantagenet dash in the blood, his hereditary intolerance of anything smacking of vulgarity, his medieval attitude of chivalry towards woman, his early victorian dislike of the outré and the bizarre, he frankly found her intolerable. ‘in a drawing-room,’ he said to me in confidence, ‘that girl reminds me of a polar bear in a hothouse.’ where the boy could have seen one i cannot imagine—probably it was only a young man’s daring figure of speech. shall we walk about a little? i think i felt a twinge.”
the friend agreed, and, gently ambling up and down the kreuzbrunnen promenade, lady pomphrey continued her narrative.
“rustleton said she was a new girl of the worst type. then came the diabolo affair, which, considering céline’s remarkable knack, i cannot think accidental. the bridge of rustleton’s nose was seriously contused, and his monocle was shattered—fortunately without danger to the eye. he took no revenge beyond an epigram, quite worthy of la rochefou—what’s his name?... she is keen on dancing, unlike other muscular girls; and said so in my boy’s near vicinity. ‘why not? she has hops in her blood,’ he uttered. of course, a little bird carried it to her ear.... how d’ye do, lady frederica? how d’ye do, count pyffer? i quite agree with you.... piercing winds, varied by muggy airlessness and a distressingly relaxing warmth, have made the last eight days intolerable.... my dear, where was i when i left off?” the suffering friend indicated the point. lady pomphrey continued:
“and after all they have come together. quite a romance. if a mother’s prayers have any influence, ... and i am old-fashioned enough to believe they have.... but i knew rustleton too well to breathe a hint of my hopes. i did not stoop to intrigue, as some mothers 322would, to bring the young people together. but dearest jane, who is always my right hand, conceived a devoted friendship for céline just at the psychological moment, and owing to that she and rustleton were constantly thrown in each other’s way. céline quite exerted herself to be overwhelmingly unpleasant. jane says that during a bicycling excursion in the neighborhood of our place at cluckham-pomphrey, she offered to help him to lift his machine over a stile, and would have done it unaided and alone if rustleton had not peremptorily seized the frame-bar, gripping both her hands in his. on jane’s authority, she crimsoned to the hat, throwing him off like a feather, and, mounting her machine, was out of sight in an instant. he was icily sarcastic on the subject of muscular young women all the way home, and limited his dinner to clear soup and a single cutlet with dry toast, while céline went through all the courses in her usual thoroughgoing way. they are not in the least ashamed to eat, do you notice?—these golfing, hockey-playing, open-air young people.... now you and i can recall placing a solid barrier of five o’clock cake and muffins between undue appetite and the eight o’clock dinner, at which we merely toyed with our knives and forks, trusting to our maids to have a tray of cold eatables ready in the bedroom for consumption while our hair was being brushed. of course! ‘but these girls devour at tea, wolf at dinner’—i quote rustleton—‘and probably stodge sandwiches and cold chicken and chocolate-wafers before they plunge into their beds. when there, how they must snore!’
“his eye gleamed with such feverish malignancy as he said this, that i involuntarily dropped a quantity of stitches in the silk necktie i was knitting for him—a soothing neutral shade not calculated to call attention to the tinge of bile in his complexion—and exclaimed, ‘good heavens!’ he immediately begged my pardon 323and bade me ‘good-night,’ whispering that he had arranged to shoot over the lower sixty acres with stubbins, the head keeper—purely as a filial duty, pomphrey not feeling robust enough to undertake it this year....
“whether it was my having breathed a hint of this to jane—who is, as a rule, a grave for chance confidence—or whether miss twissing had overheard, how can i say? but she and stubbins were waiting for my boy on the following morning, stubbins—who loathes sporting women—in a state of complacency that only a five-pound note could have brought about. her beautiful bond-street self-ejecting breechloader, her cap, tweeds, and gaiters were the dernier cri, and with the coolest self-possession she wiped my poor boy’s eye over and over again. out of thirty brace of birds before luncheon only three and a half fell to his gun, and those were of the red-legged french description, ‘bred for duffers to blaze at,’ according to lord pomphrey. rustleton went up to town that night, charging jane with all sorts of civil messages for miss twissing, and slept at his club, which was being painted and disagreed with him excessively.”
the friend sighed sympathy.
“even with every door and window open and a flat dish full of milk upon the washstand,” said lady pomphrey, taking the friend’s arm and emphasizing her utterances with the green sunshade, “white paint permeates my whole being in a way that is perfectly indescribable. my son inherits my receptiveness—perhaps my weakness-indeed, he came into the world at cluckham-pomphrey during an early visit of ours, subsequent to spring-cleaning, where, owing to an unhappy facility possessed by lord pomphrey of being easily persuaded by self-interested persons, the hall screen, grand staircase, and all the jacobean paneling had been covered by the local decorator with a creamy-hued, turpentiny and 324glutinous mixture known as ‘eggster’s exquisite enamel.’ it cost a fortune to get off again, and some of it still lingers in the crevices of the carving. my basket.... it is a little cumbrous, but i really couldn’t think of letting you.... well then, dear friend, if you insist.... now for the really remarkable ending of my boy’s story.
“he flew to his cousin for consolation. now, wendoleth caer-brydglingbury is extremely sympathetic. only for the color of her hair-a violent boadicean red, almost purple in some lights—rustleton and she—but i am devoutly thankful things have turned out as they have.
“‘a sea cruise,’ said wendoleth promptly, ‘will get the white paint out of your system quicker than anything i know; and your morbid feeling of vexation with this girl, impatience of her persistency in continuing to exist, and so forth, will vanish with other things. mr. mudge,’—the person she has since married,—‘has kindly asked papa and myself to join his party on board the steam-yacht fifi for a trip to lisbon, madeira, and the canaries; join us. i assure you a complete welcome and at least half a cabin.’ rustleton recognized the cousinly kindness in wendoleth’s proposal, accepted, and went with her and todmoxen—the earl is still robust, but not what he was in the ’seventies, nor is it to be expected—down to southampton to join the fifi. mudge is liberal member for the north clogger division of mudderpool. but for a crimson necktie—the party badge—and a habit of hanging on to his own coat-lapels when conversing, he is almost quite presentable, and, like all those people who begin by not having twopence, he is astonishingly rich. his welcome to rustleton was cordial in the extreme. but when rustleton found lord twissing and his daughter already on board, discovered that he was to share twissing’s cabin, and that céline 325slept in the one next door, he was dismayed. he would have excused himself and left the fifi only that she was already on her way. fate, like one of those curious jelly-like creatures which wave their tentacles to attract their prey and then clutch it and gradually absorb it, had wrapped its feelers around my poor boy. he is now resigned, calm, content, even happy; but when i think how he must have suffered.... my salts. in the basket. so kind of you, and so reviving.”
lady pomphrey inhaled with drooping eyelids and sniffed at the salts-flagon from time to time as she embarked once more upon her narrative way.
“the fifi anchored for the night, which promised to be squally, in southampton water, about a quarter of a mile from hythe pier. depressed and discouraged, my boy retired to his cabin, leaving the entire party screaming over ‘bridge’ at a number of little tables in the saloon. he had just put on his nightalines,—pink with a green stripe, the jacket ornamented with green braid in loops, to match—and was attending to his teeth with a palm-stick, when, with a terrific crash, all the electric lights went out and the fifi was plunged in darkness. i shudder when i realize the awfulness of all that. don’t you?”
the friend supplied a shudder expressly manufactured for the purpose.
“a welsh collier steamer, the rattletrap, from penwryg, had run down mr. mudge’s yacht, becoming firmly embedded in the hull of the craft—the details are graven on my memory,” said lady pomphrey impressively—“immediately forward of the engine-room. the crew turned out—not into the sea, but out of their hammocks—the ‘bridge’ players rushed in confusion upon deck. in their evening dresses, without being even able to save a bag from below, mr. mudge’s party were dragged over the grimy bows of the collier. the crew scrambled after. the captain of the rattletrap, having 326ascertained that the fifi was rapidly filling, and that all her passengers, as he thought, were safe on board his vessel, was about to give the signal from the bridge to reverse engines when, with an appalling scream a lithe young girl in a crêpe de chine evening wrap embroidered with roses and turtle-doves—quite symbolic when you think of it—leaped back upon the deck of the fifi and disappeared below. guess who she was, and whither she had gone? you can? you do? what romance in real life, isn’t it? céline twissing had missed rustleton, and, knowing that he occupied the cabin next to her own, had rushed below to save him.
“he had rung for his man and was waiting calmly to be dressed, when she burst in the door with her shoulder—have you ever noticed her shoulders?—and shrieked to him to come on deck and be saved. wrapped in a scotch plaid which he had hastily thrown over his pyjamas at the moment of her entrance, he defied her, rebuked her immodesty in entering a gentleman’s dressing-room unannounced, ordered her to quit the cabin and go back to her father. when properly attired to appear before ladies, my boy, ever chivalrous and delicate-minded, said he would board the rattletrap. ‘don’t you feel that this yacht is water-logged?’ screamed céline twissing. ‘don’t you know she’ll sink under our feet in another minute? come on deck at once, you duffing little precisian, unless you want me to carry you!’ he retorted with contempt. she instantly seized him in her muscular arms—have you ever noticed her arms?—threw him, scotch plaid and all, over her shoulder, carried him up the yacht’s companion-ladder, and amidst the cheers of the united crews of the fifi and the rattletrap, handed him over the bulwarks to the men of the collier. then she followed, the captain gave the order to go astern, the collier reversed her engines, the water rushed into the yacht, and she sank instantly. all that can be seen of 327her to-day is her masts. and céline twissing and my boy are to be made one at st. george’s, hanover square, in the first week of the winter season. céline will be married in white satin and mousseline trimmed with silver embroidery, and she goes away in a gown of putty-colored velvelise—the new stuff. i believe she secretly adored rustleton from the very beginning, and he, i feel, is reconciled to the inscrutable appointments of providence. how we have been chattering, haven’t we? time for luncheon now. oh, i pray, no carp in beer, or eels with currant jelly. but one never knows. au revoir, dear! au revoir!” and lady pomphrey put up her green sunshade and sailed away.
