LONDON LOVERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13647, 15 January 1908, Page 10

LONDON LOVERS.

; [PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ABKANGEMENT.]

BY MARGARET BAILLIE-SAUNDERS. '.-■ -. Anther of " Saints in Society."

COPYEiaHT.

CHAPTER Vl.—(Continued.)

Before the blossom bough these tributes would not have troubled his benefactor. Now they certainly did. At first he was angry, both with himself and Ronnie, though he had the strength of character not to let fly at that innocent person, his sense of justice teaching him that it was not by any manner of means the boy's own fault. For one thing he was determined on—he would not stir a step towards pushing himself into her presence. She should not accuse him of forcing himself into her way by the road of her brother's follies and his own services. A kind of surly delicacy forbade him from making any use of his nowobvious opportunities, though his mother and sister had clamoured continually that he should help them to attain their desires. "Really, Mord," said old Mrs. Lucason remonit'ratingly, when on the night ol one of Ronnie's triumphs ho went home rather silent, "you have spent a lot of money on young Waring. He has got his indentures, now is your opportunity. ' "Well, for what?" he said. His tone was' ominous. "Well, well, my dear—isn't it plain? To get to know the family yourself, arid so on. Lilliis just dying for further invitations— • you'ought to think of her." "What can 1 do for Lilla?" said he sulkily- , .. -, '» You might many the daughter, said Lilla with a sneer. " Don't bo a fool," he replied. "Oh, my dear brother, your manners are shocking. Perhaps it's as well you have not been introduced in that circle." He looked at his showy sister, .straining by noise and rude bluster and everlasting self-assertion to reach the goal that he was beginning to see was to him denied because too- intrinsically sacred. When he did so he felt farther away from his lady than ever. He must be overtired, he said. His mother and sister jarred quite horribly at times. ' -. But he was doomed by the Fates to get. gradually • nearer. While things were so - happening in Portgravc Square and the city, Constance came up to" town. Now, as has been said, Constance was the reigning Lady Hardwinter, a person of immense terrors to her world. To Lady Sarah the übiquitousness of Constance was one of the main horrors of her relation-haunted existence. Her own infinite capacity for seeing life in cartoon had received a most ironical stimulus from Fato when a few years ago her eldest son, Bernard Wrothesley War- '• ing sixth-Baron Hardwinter, had mamed p Miss Constance Barbaul, the daughter of a »- . neighbouring squire, of county celebrity. ■'- Constance had had money, and the HardA winters wanted that badly; but far more '"'" forcibly Constance had had a good education, a good sensible English girl s bring- £ ing-up, and at seven-and-twenty. when Hard- '" winter married her, she was so vast a carY toon of common sense that even Lady barati rasped at her magnitude,, accustomed as she was to bogeydom on the scale ot pantomime giants. That practical common sense had come as -, a whirlwind into the peaceful shades of the Hardwinter experience, not perhaps before it was wanted. Yet like many necessary f and progressive things it was annoying. .Paget Cheyne had been known to say K thaT Constance made him feel like going to *v the dentist's, but to her relations she was i"} ail incarnated spring cleaning. brie was atF ways " doing them up" and reinstating them k' and. restoring them. They suffered the sensation of being morally vacuum cleaned, an impression not lessened by the fact that the Hardwinter town house in Berkeley Square appeared to be- in a chronic condition of being vacuum cleaned and to Lady SarahV sorrowful eyes the red-painted putting, snorting machine for ever on that sacred doorstep seemed a sort of living type • of the Constance essence. • For Constance herself was large and red iV and noisy, and had the appearance of snorts' ing whetner she strictly did so or not, Her 'hose was like that usually given by !■ artists to the gigantic horse .Bucephalus v• a great curving sweep with wide nostrils,. : : sh'ehad big hard pale eyes and a bass voice, '■■:■ a good figure and fine teeth that gave the V, impression of being three rows rather than •■ the usual, two, arid also of being made of • ; strong white china. In the county she was ;,:. tacitly understood. to be a beauty; that is B to say each individual understood-that aLI . the other country people thought she was • and as vet no prophet had dared to arise and proclaim that'she wasn't. She had been % before her marriage, a kind of county superstition;' a belief, a dogma. -Now that f die had made the best match in the - place she had become a formally pronounced doctrine, and the world bowed. She lived in tweeds. They had) tremendously long coats and very short skirts and often there were Norfolk pleats and belts hanging loose in sporting fashion. rtei boots were invariably tan and of a good sensible size. She called this- costume busi-ness-like, and always liked her B ear to be "taut." She had a fine quantity of. *, quite colourless and perfectly straight hail* stretched back from her well-developed brow, and there was a good sensible worthy line of red round) her neck when she wore evening dress, showing the boundary where wind and weather had tanned her fair complexion of browny red in her honest outdoor life. She rather scorned evening drees —or rather she wore it on principle. Now evening dress worn on principle does not err on the side of being fluffy, and is not usually picturesque. Constance had appeared life-size in the Academy the year she was married!, in a three hundred guinea portrait and an evening frock severely .dic- \. tated by principle. , '< * ' "It was a good,' strong, shiny yellow satin, !'■ with nice solid old lace, and was worn with Ws the Hardwinter sapphires, jewels not unlike 't,'" the blue glass of which embrocation bottles ■'■•''■• ire made, set lumpily. The bride's hair was ! ■ well drawn*back from a worthy brow, and " the artist had'given her a fine polish on all { the v.tips of.uher features, including the bridge of her nose. A ehiny and impossible hound had) been placed at her side (she was posed on a terrace), giving a hint of her sporting tendencies. The picture said plainly, "I am a sensible woman, a success, and a beauty, and I have come to reign." Fortunately, perhaps, for Constance she was born in an age' which permitted her to come to maturity when eize, noise, force and shininess are accounted to constitute beauty, at any rate in the eyes of her own sex, and after all women usually create standards, even of beauty. They do not create the standard vhich wins love, but that is another matter. Constance, the perfected conglomeration of a college education, sports, money, county power and supreme self-confidence, was bound to take her vast snorting place - in the: world, just as a great red motor • , pushes 'aside all lesser and more graceful ' traffic in its deafening career. . She sometimes appeared in sporting papers of a feminine persuasion, in very busi-ness-like tweeds indeed, surrounded by strings, of dogs. This attitude was one of hit chief glories. Her dogs were famous, md she ruled and bullied sundry kennelilubs with a violence beautiful if unnerving. Lord Hardwinter had taken to himself this spouse for reasons known alone to himself, and highly inexplicable, as are usually the reasons why men marry other women. He was himself a replica of his mother— proud, .timid, neurotic, savagely conservative, and a sufferer from indifferent health. He had a stern and melancholy trend of character expressed in his long grave sallow face.and moody eyes, and the iron of his (poverty had entered into his*not very enterprising soul. So he had married a woman all volcanic energy and materialistic wisdom by way of contrast. Possessed himself of strange, vague religious convictions semi-mystical in tendency, and a habit of incurable fatalism, he had become united to a wife whose soul was as insensitive as a rubber, ball, who saw life in a ;,- breeze, and who had a sort of idea of sum- & marily disinfecting and spring-cleaning creaf- - tion. The result was reasonable happiness. K - There were two healthy children—; ' i the estate was improved, the various houses, ,•'' town and country, periodically cleaned, and the gallery of ancestors restored and vanished. Her dogs, her country life, her

children, her politics, kept Constance out of town for a great part of the year, but thero were occasions when she made a wild dash for occasions such as -kennel shows, courts," dentists, tailors, operas, and indiarubber baths for the children to be procured fr.-n store. Also crises in the lives of her relations by marriage which needed a quarterly overhauling. Consequently when a letter saying " Constance, slantwise across the top in immense gold letters, accompanied by the Hardwinter crest in red, reached Lady Sarah otie morning at breakfast, announcing her daughter-in-law's arrival, there was terror in the household. Wiiyiie, who wore a frivolous black and lace morning wrapper with many blue ribbons, looked blank. Lady Sarah sighed. "Of course she will will to-day," she said, glancing apprehensively at Winnie's garment, which would cause disapproval, though as a matter of fact home-made, and quite cheap. " Well, let her," said Winnie cheerfully. " Can't you imagine her clothesV True to herself trie lady arrived in the middle of the •forenoon, a chosen habit with one who boasted her early rising. She greeted her mother-in-law with a perfunctory kiss and began a rapid and noisy account of herself, her children, her business affairs, her dogs and her- responsibilities. To all of which Lady Sarah listened pensively in the cool dim shades 01 her faded rose drawing-room. It was a blazing summer's day, and the dark green Venetian blinds were drawn, creating a soft striped shadow on the shabby carpet that was calm and soothing. Lady Sarah, pale and emaciated, in black, gave a cool impression too. But Constance wore pillar-box red cloth, in coat and. skirt form, the coat very'long, and a small and sensible hat. with 'a quill. There is something, so painfully sensible about a quill. It looks so determined and so drab. This costume was worn instead of the tweeds as a kind of lofty concession to London follies, and the blaze that she thus created was very clearly effective. It reduced Lady Sarah to a dim shadowy Velasquez, as contrasted with a. play poster. The talk, or to some extent the monologue, did not long stay on such safe grounds as hygienic baths, new kennels and children's teeth. It suddenly swooped on to Lady Sarah and glanced from thence to Ronnie, the family thorn. •'Who are these people who I hear are doing things for him, and what have they done?" she said. Lady Sarah bridled her head a little in recounting Ronnie's triumph. Constance had not heard the particulars before, in fact she hardly knew more than the fact that Ronnie had partially earned his own living for a month. But like many other family reformers, especially those connected by marriage, she now showed no signs of pleasure 2n hearing that he was on the road to a clearing off of his debts and becoming a respectable member of Society. She did not even show surprise. All she said was, very drily, Well, I hope he'll be made to spend the money properly, and in a systematic manner. He's as likely as not to go and lose the whole lot to-morrow. Many people receive the news of others' success in this delightful manner. Lady Sarah drew herself up. . "He has excellent advice, ' she said coldly. "He needs no other." "Whose advice?" said Constance. "Mr. Lucason's." " Does Lucafion know of his debts, then". " Oh, yes, and is making a full and systematic arrangement as to paying them off by degrees." " Good gracious, whatever for? said Constance. „ " He likes and appreciates the dear boy.'' . "He can't have known him long then. What is he like? Is he feasible?" "Is he what?" "Ie he feasiblewill he do?"

Lady Sarah paused. "I have not met nun," she said. "You have not met him?" bellowed Constance. A woman with a bass voice always bellows in excitement, especially thw righteous kind. "Why should I? It is all a matter of business," said Lady Sarah, a little huffily. " Business? But what does the man get for his pains?" "I have had his mother and sister to lunch—called and all that," said Lady Sarah. " It is through his mother that the whole thing is being done." . ' "I don't call that business," said Conv stance. " The man must be got hold of at once. If Ronnie is to be got out of the way (Lady Sarah stared)-our way, Hardwinter's and mine, something more must be done for the man Lucason." " Mr. Lucason has not undertaken to get Ronnie out of anybody's way, that I am aware of." " Oh, nonsense. You know what I mean. That last affair of the job-master—Hor-rocks, wasn't that the creature's name?— and the summons he brought nearly killed Hardwinter. You know how little spare cash he has to meet the constant expenses of the estate alone, and this new revelation of Ronnie's liabilities gave him dyspepsia for a week. He had tq be fed on the most repulsive concoctions, pepsin and what not, for nearly a month, and the result was that he took up the study of Gregorian music, and resigned his seat on the Bench. Any more of these games, of Ronnie's and I will not answer for the consequences. Therefore I say this Lucason must be propitiated —nailed to the mast." Lady Sarah looked displeased. 'Well, of course, Constance, if you have taken up Ronnie's moral guidance yourself you had better do the propitiating." "Oh, dear, no. I am only up in town for one or two affairs, some shows and the next Court, and so on, and to see about an entirely new set of baths for the nursery, and I need some new back teeth, and a second maid and a deputy chauffeur. I am frightfully rushed, what with my dogs and committees and so on. But the man could be invited somehow. Has he really monev?" . . . "Oh?anv amount. But intimacy with a man—an unknown man—for people placed as we are, is a difficult matter. I do not entertain largely—and, and it is awkward." " Dear me, I don't see why," began my "There is—Winnie," said Lady Sarah, solemnly. The hard light eyes of Constance met hers like two motor lamps, in a sheer stare. "Well, wouldn't he do for Winnie?" she Lady Sarah clasped her thin hands and paled with anger. Do?—for Winnie? she repeated sternly. Really " said Consrtance, "I do not know what peopi» expect. There is no one else for Winnie. Look around you. Where is there a parti of her own rank with a farthing? That little cub of a Ringchester was the only good one and he has just married an American with a mouth like a rat-trap and no character, for her money. There is Jimmie D'Aulay, but those Hudson nirls have got him, and their good mother won't let him escape without one of them. The young Duke of Gal way won't be of age for three more years. Winnie can't possibly wait three more years. Her's is a style that will quickly fade. Besides, he has a weakness of the brain. Young Hardup refuses to look at a girl without money — he was saying so at dinner only the other night. 'He dined with us. I gathered meant Winnie. I thought Halmdale was like conning to the point at one time, but he was never really sober enough to quite do so, and now he is dying of cancer, Winnie has been very unlucky— misses ail the good chances. She must not be too proud about this Jew." "But I tell you she has never seen him." "Well then "she must. He must be invited to the play or the opera. He can't do much there and we can run an eye over him." , " Oh, certainly, an opera box is limited enough." " Yes, and of course he might get on in life, supposing he is decent at all. He might get into Parliament. There are ways enough. Hardwinter might put him up to lots of things—founding a hospital, for instance—to get himself on. We need one down our way. I'm sure I am appealed to for every bit of flannel that is used on the estate. He could do that —or a. library. We want one. Why, Hardwinter himself would stand a tremendous chance at the next election if he had a hand in a good library. There are plenty of openings for a rising person with money. The man might get a respectable baronetcy in a few years' time. Winnie could do worse." " I cannot picture Winnie marrying to provide you with flannel," said her suffering mother-in-law grimly. . "Really, said Constance, "you arc so material-minded. You know perfectly well what I mean. Besides, I'm rather astern-

ished that you are not more grateful. After all, th© man is rich, and he appears to have done simply wonders with Ronnie. He seems to have quite adopted him. You ought to be very thankful—for really it was becoming a problem who was going to keep him. You know how selfish men are! Hardwinter has simply refused to do any more for any more poor relations. He is bent, as you know, on doing up that horrid old parish church and the tombs of his ancestors—l will say against my wish, when we need some good baths so badly— and he has finally declared that any more doing up of living relations is now beyond his power. Men are like that— dogmatic and selfish. But it's no good saying anything more, as his mind is made up to put his foot down." "Then," said his mother, "he need hardly trouble to interfere in Winnie's matrimonial affairs." " Oh, he doesn't. But, like me, he wants to see her settled. She is still pretty, and—" "Still pretty?" said Lady Sarah, a sharp note in her usually grave voice. " Winnie is just twenty." " Well, that gives' her two seasons failure," said her sister-in-law. "My dear," said the elder, " you are talking quite bevorid your experience." • " I. happily," said Constance a little hotlv, "had not the humiliation of'two lost seasons in town—l was brought up sensibly to the healthy life of an English country gentlewoman." ( "And married at twenty-seven.' said Lady Sarah, quietly. "I suppose nine lonely country summers are a fair parallel to two what you term. ' lost' seasons in town.'' '• I had my father to thin! of! ' she said. Constance" gave a glance of fury. " Winnie has a lonely widowed mother, said the other, in a voice soft and a little Jar away. The young and self-confident, with their bitter truths and their hard arid ignorant theories are often very cruel. Does superior health,' and sometimes wealth, and a noisier education, always give them the right to tread upon the gentle old? Does never a day cohie when something louder and bolder* and stronger and more cruel than themselves rises up, of their own flesh and blood, to give them in their turn blow for blow? That is a world weighed in the scales of eternal justice. Possibly it does. . "Well'' said Constance, dealing her throat and putting a good sensible relation's rino- into her voice, " vou know I only mean Winnie's welfare. I "want to see her settled. You would all be the better for it. If this good man finds some sort of respectable future for Ronnie, why then things will all be well arranged. Suppose he takes to Winnie, say, he might provide for you much more comfortably than Hardwinter has been able to do, much as it was my wish that more should be done. Lady Sarah held up her hand. " Enough, Constance," she replied. "Do not let us discuss that old affair When my son married I fully expected to retire to the Dower House, as N do we all ; as you yourself will perhaps have to do one day. "i expected it as much as, sav, we expect death, or operations. 1 expected witu my reason and never with my heart. But I ask no one to pity me or to help me— of all you,' my dear, who now reign where once I reigned and only enjoy your due. My beautiful Winnie shall choose her future for herself. I say no more.""Well," said Constance, "in common gratitude I think vou ought to cultivate the man. Gratitude is only decent, after all. I do like to show a proper appreciation when people do really decent things by me. It's only the thing. So that is what we will arrange— him to the opera—a party of just ourselves and Winnie ana you, and Ronnie if you like. He has saved us all so much further trouble with Ronnie—we really ought to do the proper thine by him. When shall it be?" " 01), when you like, I think I am. pretty free at this moment/ "Oh. no, you must fix it." "You are very politebut of course I leave it to you and Hardwinter." " Ob, well, I could come the night after to-morrow, say. But you must secure a box at once." . . "I? My dear—l am pot giving the paity!" . 1., " Then who is.' . ~ ' "Aren't you? You proposed it." "My dear mamma," said Constance, rising in utter'exasperation, "you have failed to°understand me entirely. I cannot afford opera parties and such nonsense, with the new baths and' all our fixtures, arid so much on my hands. You forget that I have a family of children and a social connection to keep up. If you cannot afford to show hospitality to a man who is reclaiming Ronnie, and would make a nice catch for Winnie. I have nothing more to say." She went towards the door.

(To be continued on Saturday next.)