The Oyster. Peer
held her close, sat silent for a time.
"I was at Evie's yesterday," he said. "Eve Gresham's my cousin. I saw her boy."
"Horrid little things at that age," said Esmé, unsympathetically.
"It wasn't—it was fat and bonny; and Eve is so proud of it. If we had a sonny, Butterfly, you and I, I'd like him to be like Eve's."
Esmé sat astonished. Bertie wishing for a third in their lives. Bertie! knowing the difference it would make.
She jumped up, almost angrily. "If we had, we couldn't hunt, or do half what we do," she said. "And you've got me, Bertie. Do you want more?"
She began to cry suddenly, broke down, overwrought by her morning's plot, by this new idea of Carteret's.
Something, stronger for the moment than her selfish love of amusement, fought with her. If she gave up their mad scheme, told him now, he would not go to Africa; he would stay, watching her, guarding her. Esmé wavered.
"I looked at those emeralds too, yesterday," Bertie said; he was staring into the fire; had not noticed her agitation. "You know that queer old clasp. Fifty pounds. I couldn't manage it, girlie, for you."
"I wanted it," said Esmé, fretfully.
"A note from Lady Blakeney, madame."
Marie brought the letter up, wondering at its plump softness, feeling the wad which the notes made. The chauffeur had bidden her be careful; refused to give it to the porter of the flats.
"Oh!" Esmé opened it, her back to her husband. There were bank notes, crisp, delightful; she saw five of them; five for fifty pounds each. Denise was beginning the payment already.
"Milady Blakeney also wishes to know if Madame will use the car to drive to luncheon. It is at Madame's service until five," Marie said.
"Denise is very good to you," Carteret turned round. "You have a lot of friends, my Butterfly."
Esmé crushed the notes up. The impulse to tell was gone. She wanted money, comfort, ease; the chance was hers, and she would take it.
The luncheon party was a big one, given by Luke Holbrook, the wine merchant. He paid his cook a clerk's income, and she earned her salary elaborately. What her dishes lacked in taste they made up for in ornament; if a white sauce be merely smoothly flour-like, who shall grumble if it is flecked with truffles, cocks-combs and pistachio nuts. No gourmet enjoyed eating at the Holbrooks', but ordinary people who are impressed by magnificence talked in hushed tones of the cook.
The house was as heavily expensive as the meal; gold plate shone on the vast sideboard; orchids decorated the tables; one's feet sank into deep carpeting. Mrs Holbrook, a plumply foolish little woman who had married the big man obediently that he might have a wife who claimed the prefix of "honourable" on her letters, accepted the magnificence placidly. She had a shrewd idea that outward show helped the business, and that they were not as rich as they seemed to be.
The dining-room had been opened into the study so that it ran right across the house, and to increase the apparent size at the end wall was a huge mirror reflecting the room.
They lunched at small tables. Sylvia Holbrook knew how to divide her guests. Esmé found herself one of four with Jimmie Gore Helmsley, Sybil Chauntsey, a soft-hued debutante, and a dark young soldier vividly in love with the girl.
"Going to the Bellews? Lord! I'm weary of cream pies done up in colours." Jimmie waved a sweet away. "Going, Mrs Carteret?"
"Bertie has to go home." Esmé had eaten nothing; she was feeling sick and tired. "He doesn't like my going there."
"To Thames Cottage? Oh, how I'd love to go," Sybil Chauntsey broke in. "They have such fun there."
Her peach bloom deepened; the beauty of youth, which is as no other beauty, sparkled in her deep grey eyes.
The big dark man looked at her, his own eyes taking fire. These men delight in rosebuds, find an unflagging zest in seeing the tender petals unfold to their hot admiration.
"Easily managed," he said. "If Madame the mother permits."
Captain Knox, a mere no one, son of a hunting Irishman, flushed.
"It's not a nice house," he said. "I've heard of it. Don't go, Miss Chauntsey."
"Lila Navotsky will be there"—Jimmie turned to the girl, carelessly ignoring the man—"she'll dance. It will be rather a bright party. Prince Fritz of Grosse Holbein is going, Lady Deverelle, and Loftus Laking, the actor. We'll have a moonlight dance, all costumes home made."
Fresh from the country, doing her first season, the great names dazzled the child. Mother's friends were so dull; the peach-bloom flush deepened, the sweet eyes flashed for Jimmie, who had watched so many flushes, seen so many bright eyes flash into his. Sybil was very pretty, soft and fresh as fruit just ripe; sun-kissed, unpowdered, roundly contoured.
With a smile Esmé saw that the conqueror's glances were no longer for her. He was growing fascinated by Sybil. Even the best of women hate to lose an admirer; no one knew better than Gore Helmsley how they will suddenly put good resolves aside to keep the slipping fancy. How many are morally lost because they fear to lose.
Young Knox turned to talk to Esmé, his handsome face troubled. A mere ordinary young fellow, capable of ordinary love, cleanly bred, cleanly minded, with nothing to offer the girl but the life of a marching soldier's wife, and some day a house on the shores of a lake far away in the west.
"It's—it's very rowdy, isn't it?" he asked.
But Esmé was not thinking of him.
"Oh, sometimes not," she said absently, eating a forced nectarine; "depends on the party there. Now they're moving."
Up to a drawing-room of oppressive luxury; the Staffordshire groups, the Dresden shepherdesses seemed larger than other people's; the brocades gleamed in their richness, the flowers stood in Venetian glasses; the whole room seemed to shake its wealth in your face, and to glitter and shine with colour. Coffee came in Dresden cups set in gold holders; sugar candy peeped from a gilt basin studded with dull stones. The cigarettes had their name blazoned over them in diamonds.
Luke Holbrook came among his guests, big, kind, frankly vulgar, redeemed by his good-natured eyes. Openly proud of seeing a Duchess in his drawing-room, pointing out to her a pair of historical figures which stood on the mantel-shelf.
"Wonderful they tell me," he said. "I don't know, but I like size when I buy."
"Yes," said the Duchess, blandly, looking round the room. "Yes. If you must pay thousands better pay them for two feet of glaze and colour than for two inches, no doubt."
"That's it," he said gaily, "that's it. Of course, you've such heaps of the stuff at Blenkalle. But my boy's collection has to be gathered now."
Holbrook's pure wines gained many orders in his own house. He had stored away, kept for customers with palates, a few casks of port which was not branded and flavoured for the English taste, some good hock and claret. But the pure wines he made his millions off did not deserve their title.
Esmé, sipping Turkish coffee, saw Sybil Chauntsey come hurrying to her mother. The girl was fresh and sweet, heads turned as she passed.
"Oh, Mumsie, Captain Gore Helmsley has telephoned. Oh, Mumsie, they've asked me to the Bellews for Saturday to Monday. Oh, may I go?"
"But alone, Sybil," said her mother.
"Mrs Carteret will take me. I'll ask her. Oh, Mumsie. Prince Fritz of Grosse Holbein will be there, and Madame Navotsky, Lord Ralph Crellton, Lady Deverelle. Mumsie, I might be asked to Deverelle if I meet her."
Princes, countesses, dancers. Might not Sybil attract the attention of Lord Ralph, who would one day be a Marquis. "But, aren't there stories?" Mrs Chauntsey wavered.
Jimmie strolled across. "Mrs Bellew is so anxious for your daughter