The Oyster. Peer
"And—what is it?"
For Esmé had turned white, put her hand to her throat, a sudden nausea seizing her.
"I've been like that twice before," she said; "it's the racket. Bertie, I don't feel up to luncheon now, and I like to be hungry when I lunch with Denise. Oh, thank you, dear."
For he brought smelling-salts, holding the fragrant, pungent, scented stuff to her nostrils. He was genuinely anxious.
"It's nothing," she said lightly; "something disagreed with me."
"Lunching with Denise?" He lighted his pipe. Carteret was not a cigarette-smoker. "Ever see Blakeney with her now, girlie?"
"No-o," she said reluctantly.
"H'm! I hear they're not too good pals. Denise has been playing the fool with young Jerry Roche—the 'wily fish' as they call him. She'd better not go too far with Cyril Blakeney. I was at school with him—came just when he left. But I knew his brother there also. I tell you, Esmé, they're a bad lot to vex."
Esmé shook her head thoughtfully.
"Hope Jimmie Helmsley won't be at luncheon," Carteret went on. "Steer clear of him, old dear."
"I'm lunching with him on Saturday, Bert."
"Well, don't again. He's a beast. Of course there's no fear of you, but there was the Grange Stukeley girl, poor soul, married off to a parson cousin; and Lettice Greene, and—oh, heaps of his victims."
There are some women who create trust. The dazzle about Esmé was not one of warmth. It was cold as she was selfish. Her husband, without realizing this, yet knew that he might trust her implicitly, that beyond mere careless flirtation nothing amused her.
"Well, good-bye, Esmé. I must go to do a few things which don't want doing, even as this morning I paraded unwilling youths at seven."
Carteret strolled out. Esmé picked up the salts bottle, sniffing at it. She rang for a trim, superior maid to take away, going back herself to the pretty drawing-room to write a few notes.
"I'm feeling rotten," wrote Esmé to a girl friend, "slack and seedy—" and then she jumped up, crying out aloud.
"Not that! Not that! Not the end of their dual in the treble. Not the real cares of life forced on her. Oh, it could not be—it could not!" Esmé raged round the room, crying hysterically, fighting off an imaginary enemy with her hands.
It would mean a move from the little expensive flat. Doctors, nurses, extra maids swallowing their income.
"It can't be!" she stormed. "I'm mad!" and rushed off to dress.
She looked hungrily at her slim figure in her glass, watched her maid fasten hooks and buttons until the perfectly-cut early summer gown seemed to cling to the slender figure. There was that, too—a figure spoilt. Dowdy, disfiguring clothes, and fear, the fear of the inevitable. She was counting, calculating as the maid finished fastening her dress, brought her a cloudy feather wrap, deep brown over the creamy gown, long white gloves, a scented handkerchief, a bunch of deep pink roses.
"Shall I alter Madame's yellow gown?" Marie wondered at Esmé's silence. "Madame is weary of its present aspect, with silver and violet. I can make it new—and the waist, it seemed a little tight last evening for Madame."
"It wasn't," Esmé flung out. "It's quite right. Get me new corsets, Marie—these are old. A taxi, yes."
Speeding westward swiftly, but with dread flying as swiftly. Not that—not the ending of her careless, selfish life.
"Why, Esmé, what a pretty gown; but you look pale, dear."
Lady Blakeney was at the Berkeley. A big, soft woman, with a weak, pretty face, palpably face-creamed, powdered, tinted, yet the whole effect that of a carefully-done picture, harmonizing, never clashing. With her brown hair, her deep brown eyes, she was a foil to flashing, dazzling Esmé.
"Just four, you see," Lady Blakeney sauntered to her table. She was in dull rose, exquisitely dressed.
"Yes, Jerry and Jimmie Helmsley."
Lord Gerald Roche, slim, distinctly young, just getting over being deeply in love, and still trying to think he was a victim to it, more impressive, as if to whip his jaded fancy, came in; a bunch of rare mauve orchids, fresh from a florist's, in his hand. Behind him, Jimmie Gore Helmsley, a tall man, dark, with satyr's ears, thick, sensual lips, and black eyes of cool determination. No one realized Jimmie's fascination until they spoke to him. It was in his manner, his power of subtle flattery, of making the woman he spoke to feel herself someone apart, not of common attraction, but a goddess, an allurement.
Unkind men, unfascinated, called Jimmie's black eyes boiled sloes, and swore that he rouged his cheeks; but women raved about him.
Jimmie was a pursuer of many women, a relentless one if his fancy were touched; there were girls—girls of his own rank of life—who whispered his name bitterly. The plucking of a bird sometimes amused him more than the wearing of a full-blown rose.
"Ah you! the sunshine is here now." He bent over Esmé's hands, and his flattery was as water pattering off polished marble. Esmé had no use for the Gore Helmsleys of life; she had laughed when he had given her a flower as though it were made of diamonds. Jimmie made things as cheap for himself as he could.
But Esmé talked to him now. Jerry was almost whispering to Denise Blakeney, making his adoration foolishly conspicuous.
The restaurant was filling. Denise had ordered luncheon; she never trusted to chance. A soufflet of fish, asparagus, grilled fillets of beef.
As the fish was handed to them, Denise Blakeney started and flushed painfully. Her young admirer had been showing her a jewel flashing in a tiny box—a pear-shaped pink pearl.
"Oh!" she cried sharply, and pushed the box away.
A bluff man, with heavy features, had gone up the room and sat down at a small table. His companion was an elderly woman, dowdy, rather fussily impressed.
"It's Cyrrie!" said Denise. "Cyrrie and his old Aunt Grace. He asked me to have her at Grosvenor Square to-day, and I told him a fib to escape." Denise fidgeted uneasily, her colour changing. "I told one fib," she said, "now it will take a dozen more to make it credible."
"The fib is a mental fly," said Jimmie, laughing; "he's grown large quickly. Cheer up, Milady, don't look tragic."
The big man nodded to his wife with a careless smile. It is an Englishman's need to be outwardly pleasant, to glaze a volcano with a laugh—in public.
"He hasn't scolded me enough lately," said Denise, grimly. "And the nature of husbands being to scold, it makes me nervous." She watched Cyrrie narrowly.
"Aunt Grace is having boiled chicken, specially ordered for her; she will finish up with stewed fruit and rice. It makes it so difficult when she comes. My cook is uncertain as to boiling chickens plainly." Lady Blakeney tried to fling off her depression, to do her duty as hostess. She muttered something sharply to Lord Gerald, she talked a little too fast, a little too gaily.
Esmé would flash smiles, planning some future gaiety, forget for a moment, and then, across her happiness, a cloud rose looming, threatening. Oh! it could not be! It must not be! There were so many things she meant to do. Bertie's appointment was up; he was going to South Africa until they got something else, or his other battalion came to Aldershot. Exchanges could always be managed. And Esmé was due at Trouville in August; she was going on to Scotland; she had been asked to Cheshire to hunt for two months. It must not be!
Once, in a spasm of fear, she clenched her hand, crushing her glass in her fingers, spilling her champagne. Esmé drank champagne on a hot May day because it looked well to see it there, because it brightened her wits, made pleasure keener. She liked expensive dishes, ordering them recklessly when she was asked out, taking the best of everything. She was never tired, never knew sleeplessness; could dance until four and be out riding next morning, with her bright colour undimmed. Perfect