Gloria Mundi. Frederic Harold
it may surprise you to hear it.”
Lady Cressage, still looking away, shook her head very slightly. “No—I don’t find myself particularly surprised,” she said, with an effect of languor. “Really, I can’t be said to have given the matter a thought, one way or the other. It is neither my business nor my wish to form opinions about your husband’s friends. We were speaking of something else, were we not?”
“Why, yes,” responded Mrs. Edward; “I mentioned that sometimes I’m ‘Cora,’ and sometimes it’s very much the other way about. I merely mentioned it—don’t think I mean to complain—only I began calling you Edith from the start—from the first day I came here, after the—after the——”
“I know you did. It was very kind of you,” murmured Edith, but with no affectation of gratitude in her voice. Then, slowly, she turned her eyes toward her companion, and added in a more considerate tone: “But then you are by nature a much kindlier person than I am.”
“Oh, yes, you say that,” put in the other, “but it isn’t true, you know. It’s only that I’ve seen more of the world, and am so much older than you are. That’s what tells, my dear—it’s years that smooths the temper down, and rubs off one’s sharp corners—of course, if one has some sense to start with. I assure you, Edith, that when I was your age I was a perfect tiger-cat.”
Lady Cressage smiled in a wan fashion, as if in despite of her mood. “You always make such a point of your seniority,” she said, not unamiably, “but when I look at you, I can never believe you’re of any age at all. I seem a thousand years old beside you.” Mrs. Edward showed some dazzling teeth in her pleased appreciation of the compliment. Her smile was as characteristic as her voice, in its studiously regular and equable distribution. The even parting of her bright lips, with their symmetrical inner lines of white, was supported to a nicety of proportional value by eyelashes and eyes.
“It’s what I’ve been saying,” she commented, with frank enjoyment. “It’s good temper that does the trick.”
To tell the truth, Mrs. Edward’s was a face which bore no visible relation to years. It was of rounded oval in contour, with beautifully chiseled small features, a faultless skin which was neither fair nor dark and fine large eyes that seemed sometimes blue, and as often something else. In these eyes there lay always, within touch of the surface, a latent smile, ready to beam, to sparkle, to dance, to languish in mellow softness or glitter in cool abstract recognition of pleasantries afloat, all at the instant bidding of the lips below. These lips, delicately arched and of vivid warmth of color, were as restricted in their movements as is the mercury in a thermometer. They did not curl sidewise upon occasion; they never pouted, or pulled themselves inward together under the stress of sudden emotion. They did nothing but separate, in perfectly balanced measure, sometimes by only a hair’s breadth, again in the freest fashion, but always in painstaking harmony with the spirit of the glance above. Students of this smile, or rather of this range of graded smiles, ordinarily reached the conclusion that it was the lips which gave the signal to the eyes. Certain it is that they worked together in trained accord, and that the rest of the face did nothing at all. The white forehead furrowed itself with no lines of puzzled thought; there was not the shadow of a wrinkle at the corners of the little mouth, or about the shapely brown lashes—and it seemed incredible that time should ever bring one.
Beside this serene and lovely mask—in the placidity of which one found the pledge of an easy temper along with the promise of unfailing youth—the face of Lady Cressage was still beautiful, but in a restless and strenuous way. If she did produce the effect of being the older of the two, it was because Mrs. Edward’s countenance had nothing to do with any such standard of comparison.
“When you come to think of it,” the latter went on now, “you do seem older than I do, dear—I mean you seem so to me. Of course I know there’s a good six years’ difference between us—and as far as appearance goes, I needn’t say that you’d be the belle of the ball in London as easily as you were four years ago—but all the same you have the knack of making me feel as if I were the youngster, and you the grown-up. I’ve a sister—five years younger than me—and she does the same thing. When she looks at me—just quietly turns her eyes full on me, you know—it seems as if I ought to have a pinafore on, and she have spectacles and a cap. Oh, she used to give me the jumps, that girl did. We haven’t seen much of each other, these last few years; we didn’t hit it off particularly well—but—why, hello! this is odd, if you like!”
“What is it?” asked the other, perfunctorily.
Mrs. Edward had been, shuffling the envelopes in her hand the while she spoke, and idly noting their superscriptions. She held up one of them now, in explanation of her remark.
“Well, talk of the devil, you know—I was speaking of my sister Frank, and here’s a letter from her. She hasn’t written a line to me in—how long is it?—why, it must be—well, certainly not since I was married. Funny, isn’t it? I wonder if it’s anything about the pater.”
She continued to regard the sealed missive absent-mindedly, as if the resource of opening it had not yet suggested itself to her. In the meantime, something else occurred to her, and she turned to face Lady Cressage, who had seated herself again.
“I meant what I said about these men Eddy’s brought down,” she declared. “I didn’t want them to be asked, and I don’t like their being here, any more than you do. Yes, I want to have you understand,” she persisted, as the other offered a gesture of deprecation, “I hope I’m the last person in the world to round on old pals, but really, as I told Eddy, a man in his position must draw the line somewhere. I don’t mind giving a leg-up to old Pirie—in a quiet way, of course—for he’s not half a bad sort by himself; but as for the rest, what are they? I don’t care for their families or their commissions—I’ve seen too much of the world to be taken in by kid of that sort—I say they’re bounders. I never was what you might call keen about them as the right friends for Eddy, even before—I mean in the old days, when it didn’t matter so much what company he kept. But now, with everything so altered, he ought to see that they’re not in his class at all. And that’s just what I can’t get him to do in the least.”
“Men have their own views in these matters. They are often rather difficult to understand,” commented Edith, sententiously.
“I should think so!” began Mrs. Edward. “Why, if I were a man, and in Eddy’s place—”
Her words had ended aimlessly, as her eyes followed the lines of the letter she had at last opened and begun to read. She finished the brief task, and then, going back to the top of the single page, went over it again more attentively. There was something indefinably impressive about the silence in which she did this, and Lady Cressage presently raised an inquiring glance. Mrs. Edward’s face exhibited no marked change of expression, but it had turned deathly pale. The unabated redness of the lips gave this pallor a ghastliness which frightened Edith, and brought her to her feet.
“What in the name—” she began, but the other held up a black-gloved hand.
“Is this something you know about?—something you’ve been putting up?” Cora demanded, in a harsh, ungoverned voice, moving forward as she spoke. “Look at this. Here’s what my sister writes.” She did not offer to show the letter, but huskily read forth its contents:
“‘London, September 30.
“‘My dear Cora: I don’t know whether you will thank me or not, but I feel that some one ought to warn you, if only that you may pull yourself together to meet what is coming. Your house is built of cards, and it is only a question of days, perhaps of hours, when it will be pushed over. Your husband is not the heir, after all. I am truly in great grief at the thought of what this will mean to you, and I can only hope that you will believe me when I sign myself,
“‘Your sincerely affectionate sister,
“‘Frances.’”
The two women exchanged a tense look in which