Tenterhooks. Ada Leverson
and so forth, would have had more sense of her responsibility—more tact. It shows a dreadful want of—I hardly know what to think of it—the daughter of a clergyman, too!'
'It's all right, Bruce,' Edith laughed. 'Miss Townsend told me she had been to see the Dame aux Camélias some time ago. She was enthusiastic about it. Archie dear, I'll take you to the Zoological Gardens and we'll see lots of other animals. And don't use that expression.'
'What! Can't I see the da—'
'Mr. Vincy,' announced the servant.
'I must go and dress,' said Bruce.
Vincy Wenham Vincy was always called by everyone simply Vincy. Applied to him it seemed like a pet name. He had arrived at the right moment, as he always did. He was very devoted to both Edith and Bruce, and he was a confidant of both. He sometimes said to Edith that he felt he was just what was wanted in the little home; an intimate stranger coming in occasionally with a fresh atmosphere was often of great value (as, for instance, now) in calming or averting storms.
Had anyone asked Vincy exactly what he was he would probably have said he was an Observer, and really he did very little else, though after he left Oxford he had taken to writing a little, and painting less. He was very fair, the fairest person one could imagine over five years old. He had pale silky hair, a minute fair moustache, very good features, a single eyeglass, and the appearance, always, of having been very recently taken out of a bandbox.
But when people fancied from this look of his that he was an empty-headed fop they soon found themselves immensely mistaken.
He was thirty-eight, but looked a gilded youth of twenty; and was sufficiently gilded (as he said), not perhaps exactly to be comfortable, but to enable him to get about comfortably, and see those who were.
He had a number of relatives in high places, who bored him, and were always trying to get him married. He had taken up various occupations and travelled a good deal. But his greatest pleasure was the study of people. There was nothing cold in his observation, nothing of the cynical analyst. He was impulsive, though very quiet, immensely and ardently sympathetic and almost too impressionable and enthusiastic. It was not surprising that he was immensely popular generally, as well as specially; he was so interested in everyone except himself.
No-one was ever a greater general favourite. There seemed to be no type of person on whom he jarred. People who disagreed on every other subject agreed in liking Vincy.
But he did not care in the least for acquaintances, and spent much ingenuity in trying to avoid them; he only liked intimate friends, and of all he had perhaps the Ottleys were his greatest favourites.
His affection for them dated from a summer they had spent in the same hotel in France. He had become extraordinarily interested in them. He delighted in Bruce, but had with Edith, of course, more mutual understanding and intellectual sympathy, and though they met constantly, his friendship with her had never been misunderstood. Frivolous friends of his who did not know her might amuse themselves by being humorous and flippant about Vincy's little Ottleys, but no-one who had ever seen them together could possibly make a mistake. They were an example of the absurdity of a tradition—'the world's' proneness to calumny. Such friendships, when genuine, are never misconstrued. Perhaps society is more often taken in the other way. But as a matter of fact the truth on this subject, as on most others, is always known in time. No-one had ever even tried to explain away the intimacy, though Bruce had all the air of being unable to do without Vincy's society sometimes cynically attributed to husbands in a different position.
Vincy was pleased with the story of the Mitchells that Edith told him, and she was glad to hear that he knew the Mitchells and had been to the house.
'How like you to know everyone. What did they do?'
'The night I was there they played games,' said Vincy. He spoke in a soft, even voice. 'It was just a little—well—perhaps just a tiny bit ghastly, I thought; but don't tell Bruce. That evening I thought the people weren't quite young enough, and when they played 'Oranges and Lemons, and the Bells of St. Clements,' and so on—their bones seemed to—well, sort of rattle, if you know what I mean. But still perhaps it was only my fancy. Mitchell has such very high spirits, you see, and is determined to make everything go. He won't have conventional parties, and insists on plenty of verve; so, of course, one's forced to have it.' He sighed. 'They haven't any children, and they make a kind of hobby of entertaining in an unconventional way.'
'It sounds rather fun. Perhaps you will be asked next Thursday. Try.'
'I'll try. I'll call, and remind her of me. I daresay she'll ask me.
She's very good-natured. She believes in spiritualism, too.'
'I wonder who'll be there?'
'Anyone might be there, or anyone else. As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual séance, or Kubelik, or fancy dress heads.'
'Fancy dress heads!'
'Yes. Or a cotillion, or just bridge. You never know. The house is rather like a country house, and they behave accordingly. Even hide-and-seek, I believe, sometimes. And Mitchell adores unpractical jokes, too.'
'I see. It's rather exciting that I'm going to the Mitchells at last.'
'Yes, perhaps it will be the turning-point of your life,' said Vincy.
'Ah! here's Bruce.'
'I don't think much of that opera glass your mother gave you,' Bruce remarked to his wife, soon after the curtain rose.
'It's the fashion,' said Edith. 'It's jade—the latest thing.'
'I don't care if it is the fashion. It's no use. Here, try it, Vincy.'
He handed it to Vincy, who gave Bruce a quick look, and then tried it.
'Rather quaint and pretty, I think. I like the effect,' he said, handing it back to Bruce.
'It may be quaint and pretty, and it may be the latest thing, and it may be jade,' said Bruce rather sarcastically, 'but I'm not a slave to fashion. I never was. And I don't see any use whatever in an opera glass that makes everything look smaller instead of larger, and at a greater distance instead of nearer. I call it rot. I always say what I think. And you can tell your mother what I said if you like.'
'You're looking through it the wrong side, dear,' said Edith.
CHAPTER III
The Golden Quoribus
Edith had been very pretty at twenty, but at twenty-eight her prettiness had immensely increased; she had really become a beauty of a particularly troubling type. She had long, deep blue eyes, clearly-cut features, hair of that soft, fine light brown just tinged with red called by the French châtain clair; and a flower-like complexion. She was slim, but not angular, and had a reposeful grace and a decided attraction for both men and women. They generally tried to express this fascination by discovering resemblances in her to various well-known pictures of celebrated artists. She had been compared to almost every type of all the great painters: Botticelli, Sir Peter Lely, Gainsborough, Burne-Jones. Some people said she was like a Sargent, others called her a post-impressionist type; there was no end to the old and new masters of whom she seemed to remind people; and she certainly had the rather insidious charm of somehow recalling the past while suggesting something undiscovered in the future. There was a good deal that was enigmatic about her. It was natural, not assumed as a pose of mysteriousness. She was not all on the surface: not obvious. One wondered. Was she capable of any depth of feeling? Was she always just sweet and tactful and clever, or could there be another side to her character? Had she (for instance) a temperament? This question was considered one of interest—so Edith had a great many admirers. Some were new and fickle, others were old and faithful. She had never yet shown more than a conversational interest in any of them, but always seemed