XLIX THE SPIRIT OF THE RACE MOVES ON

Mabel, seated in a high-back Gothic chair, looking, in her ample flowing gown of white brocade embroidered with gold, her soft mass of “harvest-yellow hair” caught on either side with a jewel in an antique setting, like a cross between Rossetti’s Monna Vanna and his Venus Verticordia, wondered if this mob of people would never go. It seemed to her that all London, fashionable and artistic, lived in her mother’s drawing-rooms, and she wished that it had occurred to her to take a house of her own. True, the suggestion would have precipitated another discussion about that tiresome diplomatic future to which “Jackie” alluded now and again as a matter of course (he had returned to the Foreign Office), and, no doubt, it was as well to be relieved of all detail and care at this time: she felt well, but tired. Moreover, confident as she was in herself, normally, she had discovered that it was no light task to amuse a man who had been born bored, and that if he were to be kept in England, he must have its cream served up daily.

She congratulated herself, however, that she was growing cleverer every minute. Her husband had no suspicion that his departure for the Continent was to be delayed upon one pretext after another until pretexts were no longer necessary; did he retain his interest in diplomacy, the time would surely come when the Foreign Office would have no more of him. His good humour was unruffled. He was more kind, more captivating, than ever, and so considerate that his delicate young wife saw little of him. He sent her to bed early, and took himself off to the theatre, that “he might not keep her awake by roaming round the house; he had never gone to bed early in his life.” He made her lie down immediately after luncheon and remain on her couch until it was time to dress for the afternoon drive. Between half-past five and seven they had a crowded salon. He never had luncheon or dined away from home, and, like the courteous soul he was, entertained formally or familiarly those whose invitations he and his wife were obliged to decline for the present. It was the dinners that, for the most part, were informal, consisting of intimate friends of his mother or the Cuttings, whom he did not feel obliged to follow up to the drawing-room. The luncheons, or “breakfasts,” as it was the fashion to call them, were often imposing functions.

Of the impromptu afternoon salon he was even more the gay and fascinating host than at Ordham. No longer were Mrs. Cutting’s drawing-rooms the studiously select assemblies of the ante-Ordham-Bridgminster régime. True, there were many of greater social importance than she had mustered unaided, as well as that bevy of smart young American wives of English husbands so famous during the eighties, but in addition she found herself receiving all the prominent artists, authors, actors, poets, ?sthetes, musicians, and many—discoveries of her son-in-law—not yet famous but indisputably endowed. It was Ordham’s grief that Rossetti had died before he was able to do him honour, but he consoled himself by buying every picture of this consummate painter that found its way to the market. As they did not harmonize with the light, almost frivolous, effect of the drawing-rooms, he had them hung in the stately entrance hall downstairs, which Mrs. Cutting had left untouched that the effect of the French rooms above might seem the more brilliant by contrast. They lit up those dim spaces with their living colours, and Ordham often sat there alone. As available Rossettis were few, and he had an almost equal admiration for Burne-Jones, several fine paintings of this artist shared honours with the master. They would accompany him to the Continent.

Mabel, although at first delighted to be admired by artists, especially when they told her that she looked like The Blessed Damozel, to deck herself in Pre-Raphaelite gowns designed by her mother-in-law, and sit in a Gothic chair, was grown, in this month of March, heartily tired of it all, and confided to her maid that as soon as she was well again she should send ?sthetic duds to the old-clothes man, order a trousseau from Paris, such as even she had never possessed before, and become the smartest woman in London. Her husband might continue to have his artists if he wanted them, and they would cut their hair, but she had been born to grace another sphere.

Moreover, she was irritably tired of all this talk about Wagner and that Munich prima donna; London, always on the alert for a new fad, seemed to be obsessed. Five weeks of Wagner at Covent Garden! She devoutly hoped her Jackie would not demand that she sit in the back of his box and share his raptures. With all her little barrel-organ soul she hated Wagner; but she had not forgotten those carefully prepared appreciations of the courtship, and dared not retract them so soon after that first misguided confession she had worked so hard to obliterate.

At the end of five months she had progressed far in matrimonial tactics. But what a protracted mental campaign it was! And she had pictured a rose garden for two light-hearted lovers! Well, there was compensation in all things; she had become clever, at least. She might have married some nice, simple, unexacting person like poppa,—a gentleman who had attended strictly to his own affairs,—and become one of those undeveloped little American matrons who brought letters to them, and whose husbands talked of nothing but business or football. She felt her infinite superiority to all of them, happy and bright as they were; although there were times when she longed for the mental rest which one of these fine busy young fellows, whose brains were not crowded with their ancestors, would have afforded her. And how often she longed to be natural and free. But she was a true female; she adapted herself readily enough to her lot, at times thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of intrigue in which she felt herself moving, sure that in the long silent tussle of wills, she, with the superior tact and finesse of woman, must conquer. If Ordham had been a bold masterful person, such as his brother Stanley would be one of these days when his shyness had worn off, she would have knuckled under as a matter of course, enjoyed with all her feminine soul the battles royal which preceded each sure defeat, while remaining “good,” and “natural,” and “above board.” But the Machiavelli in Ordham had pumped to the surface all those obscure currents of intrigue and deceit which track through every woman’s nature. It was a strange circumstance, this secret pursuit of John Ordham’s ego, in the mysterious regions of the spirit, by two women at the same time; but they hunted on different planes and never met.

The last caller drifted out and down the stair. Ordham returned, and bending over his wife, asked her solicitously if she was tired.

“Not in the least!” said Mabel, brightly. All the married women she knew told her that men hated tired women. “How interesting you have made our salon, darling. Mother, can you imagine how we were ever satisfied with just smart people before?”

Mrs. Cutting shrugged her shoulders, but smiled indulgently. “We never receive those people in New York, but no doubt we make a great mistake. Genius ought to be recognized, and when artists and others are quite convenable, I certainly think they should be encouraged to remain so. Besides, it helps them to meet patrons.”

Ordham concealed a smile and replied gently, “I feel greatly honoured that they should come to my house.” Mrs. Cutting noted with some amusement that he characteristically assumed that this splendid mansion, leased, furnished, and supported by the Cutting millions, was his own. But, although she too had some time since discovered that she knew him very little, she liked him too well to feel more than a passing irritation. In her own way she was in love with him, as mothers often are with a charming young man come suddenly into the family as the husband of an idolized child. It is the only opportunity a woman has to love a man with a passion that is not legitimately sexual or maternal, but a little of both, boned of both danger and responsibilities.

“I might point out,” continued Ordham, “that we are not the first to receive the great in art, although, naturally, they prefer their own circles. But even this absurd ?sthetic movement has been of service to London society, for it has popularized art, at least, and permanently banished antimacassars. It only remains for some culinary genius to follow in their track to make England almost as inhabitable as Paris or Italy.”

“Don’t you love your country, Jackie darling?” asked Mabel, wistfully.

“Of course. But I was born, remember, when the Brotherhood, unknown to the herd, was commanding the attention of the elect, and of these my mother aspired to be. Naturally I became imbued with a love of change as well as of beauty; quite as naturally I find it necessary to gratify both out of England.”

“It is odd that you should be so different from your brothers,” interposed Mrs. Cutting, hastily.

“Oh, they are all reversions to the ancestral type, Ordhams from marrow to skin. My father did not like artists, and in time, my mother, being a dutiful wife, got her gowns from Worth until he died, although permitted to invite Rossetti and a few others to her big parties. And she had much political entertaining, political work generally, to do; she had little leisure to cultivate that side of London.”

“Well, I am rather glad she has followed her natural bent since,” said Mrs. Cutting, pleasantly. “Those nice Burne-Jones gowns she wears—or are they Rossettis? Frankly, I can’t tell the pictures of one from the other, except that Burne-Jones’s women seem to be longer and thinner, particularly as to neck. I wonder what beauty Rossetti could have found in incipient goitres.”

Ordham got up suddenly and lit a cigarette some distance away. Less than a week since he had received a letter from Count Kilchberg, in which that gentleman, innocently regaling him with the gossip of Munich, mentioned that Frau von Wass had no goitre, had been shut up by her husband, suddenly jealous of somebody, no one could discover whom. The story ran that the Nachmeister had opened the eyes of the Herr Geheimrath in order to save some friend of her own from the clutches of the fair Hélène. No key was necessary for Ordham, and his conscience had given him a bad hour, although it was with a pleasant sense of relief that he realized he could do nothing. He had accordingly locked up the memory again, and was irritated with his mother-in-law for liberating it. But when he turned, he said carelessly:

“That was Rossetti’s chief fault in his last years, and due, no doubt, to failing eyesight and too much chloral. Talking of throats always brings to my mind the great Styr’s. That is one of her assets. It really is as like a column of ivory as mere flesh can be. I have taken a box for the Wagner season, and hope that both of you will go with me to every performance.”

He hoped nothing of the sort, but he knew he was quite safe in expressing himself with propriety, and words never cost him anything.

“How wonderful five whole weeks of Wagner will be!” cried Mabel, with glittering eyes.

But Mrs. Cutting felt herself at liberty to be quite frank. “The first night; thank you very much. No doubt it will be a great sight. I understand the Prince has promised your mother to go, and of course that means the world. But I have no hesitation in admitting that Wagner bores me to extinction, no doubt because I cannot appreciate him. But I was raised on composers whose characters do not talk interminably in a sort of singing register, and I am too old to be converted. You do not mind my frankness, I hope?”

“Of course not. But Mabel must come, as she loves all music, and has heard nothing but The Mikado for months.”

“Occasionally,” said Mrs. Cutting, playfully. “But for a while yet we must be inflexible guardians.”

“Of course!” Ordham smiled into his wife’s eyes, but in truth was ill at ease and screwing up his courage. After all, this was not his house, and there was a point to be settled before Margarethe Styr arrived in London. He had delayed the inevitable discussion as long as possible, but now seemed as propitious a time as any; and although he did not suspect the cause, it had by no means escaped his attention that these people were at all times anxious to please him. He attributed it to the fact that he was English and they Americans, but thought it very nice of them.

He strolled over to the table again and lit another cigarette, came back to his deep chair, and turned his charming smile and large ingenuous eyes upon his mother-in-law.

“Did I ever mention that Countess Tann is quite a friend of mine?”

Mrs. Cutting also braced herself. She, too, had anticipated this crisis. “I think we spoke of her the first time we met again in London,” she answered vaguely. “But you are such a diplomat! I should hardly know the name of a single one of your London acquaintance if they did not come to the house. I don’t think you have ever mentioned any of your Continental friends. I doubt”—with a brilliant smile—“if your left hand is on bowing terms with your right.”

“How can you say such a thing? How very odd! It seems to me that I must often have spoken of Countess Tann—she was so very hospitable to me in Munich. I met her at Neuschwanstein, where we both were guests of that strangest of all strange mortals, Ludwig of Bavaria. Otherwise, I might not have met her at all, for although Munich society is at her feet, she goes about very little. No doubt she opened her doors to me because we are both such good friends of your own good friend, Princess Nachmeister, but she certainly showed me marked hospitality, and I shall be glad to return it here in London.”

There was an ominous silence. Mrs. Cutting fanned herself vehemently, a bright spot in either cheek. Ordham, his nervousness conquered, looked at her steadily. Mabel twisted the ears of LaLa until he squealed and ran off in dudgeon.

Mrs. Cutting spoke at last. “Do you recall any of our conversation on the subject of—a—Countess Tann?”

“Was anything in particular said? I recall the fact of a conversation, nothing more.”

“I think I expressed my disapproval of that sort of people. On the stage, of course, it doesn’t matter; but to ask them under one’s roof—that is quite another question. Of course, no one knows better than yourself, dear John, that a man has many acquaintances his family cannot receive.”

“I don’t think I follow you,” he said wonderingly. “You spoke just now of feeling it a duty to encourage artists by social recognition. You surely have no objection to the stage—above all, to the operatic stage?”

“Oh, not at all! But I have to this Countess Tann.” Mrs. Cutting, driven to a defence of her principles, was the woman to fling social diplomatics to the winds.

“What objections have you to Countess Tann?”

“It is not possible that you have not heard all the—gossip about that woman?”

“I have heard gossip of every woman I have ever heard discussed at all. Gossip is the relaxation of overburdened minds, and most minds are burdened one way or another. I cannot understand your attitude to Countess Tann, when you receive—” and he mentioned the names of several women notorious for more than beauty and fashion.

Mrs. Cutting flushed. “They go everywhere,” she said tartly. “Nevertheless, I have received them only to please your mother; it has been under protest, even although nothing against them is proved. In time I shall tactfully weed them out.”

“There are no proofs against Countess Tann.”

“I am afraid proofs could easily be had. You were in the next room only this afternoon when Mr. Levering entertained a group of us, not for the first time, with reminiscences of Margaret Hill. That, he asserts, is her real name, and he not only saw her year in and out in New York, but knew her personally.”

“Levering is one of those rheumatic old beaux that sit in club windows and manufacture scandal. There is no wheat in his chaff. And what a cur to run about prejudicing people against a woman who has no man to defend her, a woman so great, for that matter, that it is a presumption to gossip about her at all! I shall cut him.”

“Dear me, I had no idea you could bring yourself to do anything so direct and undiplomatic!” Mrs. Cutting laughed, but she was growing angry. “And do remember that he is not only a very old friend of mine, but a power even here in London, where he has come every season for twenty years.”

“I have nothing to fear from Levering,” replied Ordham, coldly. “He is not even a second-rate Englishman, and these transplanted American men that have nothing better to do than invent or peddle racy gossip in order to make sure of being asked every night to meet a title or two at dinner are not taken very seriously by us.”

Mrs. Cutting made no reply for a moment. She realized that her son-in-law rude must be very much in earnest. Her American soul rose in wrath, but she kept Mabel’s happiness steadily before her, and finally said, in her usual calm even tones: “I am afraid it is all true. We won’t discuss poor old Levering. I have heard of Styr from other sources, and although it distresses me greatly to refuse you anything you wish, I fear I cannot receive her under my roof.”

“Granting that these stories are true, what difference does it make?” No tones could be more even, more mellifluous, than Ordham’s. “She is a great artist, many hold the greatest living. Shall we be more provincial than Munich, which receives the artist with no reference to what she may have been ten years ago, on the other side of the globe?”

“Why should artists be treated as if they were different from ordinary mortals?”

“Because they are.”

Mrs. Cutting set her lips in a straight white line. “I recognize only one code of morals. We Americans are brought up on splendid old-fashioned principles. Nor do I recall anything in the Bible that might be construed as exempting genius from the code that is necessary to preserve society from anarchy.”

Mabel interposed hurriedly. She knew that on certain points her mother was rigid, and she, too, regarded people that misbehaved themselves with shocked disapproval. But it was too soon to put her husband on the defensive. “Mother dear,” she said, in her clear little voice, “don’t you think you might relax your rule for once, as Countess Tann is a friend of Jackie’s? Besides, perhaps it is our duty to encourage these people when they are trying to do right. Both Princess Nachmeister and Mr. Levering say that her life has been exemplary in Munich. If we snubbed her, we might drive her to the bad again.”

As she concluded her little effort she looked eagerly at her husband, expecting a flash of gratitude from his expressive eyes, and not only for coming to his rescue, but for refraining from the common jealousy of wives. But Ordham averted his gaze, conscious of a still more intense irritation. Mabel was not clever enough to play her part in daily intercourse, little as she suspected it; and there were times when she quite forgot the r?le she now knew it was necessary to act in order to reinspire her husband with the belief that he had married the ideal woman. Few women can spend their lives in full dress. In humbler walks of life than Mabel’s, the wife exhibits herself to her husband in curl papers and untidy wrappers. Mabel’s toilettes would have been perfect on a desert island had her trunks been washed ashore, but to let her mind run down at the heels was a temptation not to be resisted, now and again, for had she not bagged her quarry? And although she schemed to please her husband, adopted all the wise advice of Lady Pat, crossing him in nothing and surrounding him with diversions, still would she read no more books, still would she chatter; and she avoided “clever” men and women as she would the plague. To know how to manage a man was cleverness enough; what she did not know was that deft management, while it may achieve certain results, is not always redolent of charm. Ordham avoided her by the aid of every device his fertile brain could suggest, for he dreaded the moment when self-restraint would snap and betray him into wounding the poor little thing. She might be a silly child, but he appreciated that she loved him devotedly. This uxorious affection, however, was irritating him in more ways than one. Since their return to town hardly a day had passed that she had not given him a present. Extravagant and wealthy, it delighted her to shower costly “trifles” on her husband; his rooms were littered with superb and superfluous baubles. The new cigarette case in his pocket was of gold incrusted with jewels, the old silver necessaries of his dressing-table had been replaced with gold; he had now five watches, eight cigarette cases and match boxes, fourteen ash trays, three sets of white pearls of the first water and one of black, more cuff links than he pretended to count, four sets of furnishings for his writing table, one of gold, one of Russian enamel, one of Dresden china, and one of antique silver; and so on, ad infinitum. Many of these precious objects were inscribed “Jackie.”

Only that morning it had occurred to him that all this stuff represented a sum far in excess of the wretched thousand pounds which had caused him so much torment and debasement of spirit, and he had felt not only vexed at the senseless extravagance, but sick of saying “Thank you”; the constant repetition of which phrase creates in time a sense of obligation fatal both in love and friendship. Feeling that if called upon once more to tell her, upon her daily return from Bond Street, that she was the most marvellous and the most generous creature in the world, he should disgrace himself, he had announced with playful decision that she must waste no more money on him; he could not accustom himself all at once to such extravagance, had a vague sense of defrauding the poor—these were the only excuses he could think of. Mabel, who had heard of his princely expenditures in Paris on an income of ￡500 a year, was astonished, but inferred that he still felt the difference in their fortunes, and had too much humour to return her presents with the money she had given him. But nothing had been further from Jackie’s mind than this delicate hair-splitting. The ￡200,000 he regarded as a right and proper marriage settlement, not as a present; he had never mentioned the subject to his wife. And whereas nobody liked making presents better than himself, he made appropriate ones; and if he gave none to Mabel, it was because he could think of nothing she did not possess already.

So he avoided her eyes when she flew to his relief, left his seat once more, and with his back to them ground his teeth. He had himself well in hand, but he was still too young to have at his absolute command that gay and impenetrable mask, that perfect suavity of manner, for which he is celebrated to-day. Nevertheless, he always rallied his unevenly developed gifts in such crises as these.

“I don’t think it is worth while to discuss the question from an ethical standpoint,” he said in a moment, turning to his wife with a smile on his lips and none in his eyes. “Countess Tann, admitting that she ever dwelt without the pale, will not be driven back by any act of ours. She has the strongest character of any person I have ever known. The question is merely this: I feel under certain obligations of hospitality to her which I should be glad to discharge, and she is a great artist who gives the world far more than it can ever give her in return. Granting that she is this Margaret Hill of Levering’s, society is now too deeply in her debt to consider anything but the interest it must pay as long as she remains in the position to demand it.”

“I quite agree with you—up to a certain point.” Mrs. Cutting had almost visibly choked over the largest doses of British insolence she had ever been called upon to swallow, but she forced her lips to smile. “I am quite willing to take a box at the opera, show myself often, and lend it to my friends at other times—there are so many Americans in London just now. I am not as young and as modern as you are, but at least I should never dream of boycotting a stage artist in her own sphere; I am as ready as any one to acknowledge the debt of the ordinary mortal to genius. And nothing has ever distressed me more than the dreadful tales of gifted people dying in garrets because a selfish world would not pause to listen to them. But never, willingly at least, have I received under my roof a woman of blemished reputation. My mother and my grandmother were both leaders of society in New York, and that was their inflexible rule; I was brought up on it. As you English people are so much more—charitable, let us call it—I have endeavoured to make up my mind to believe no gossip unproven by the divorce courts; but really, some things are a bit too flagrant, and one professional beauty, at least, who was here this afternoon will never come again by invitation. And if I decline to receive a woman who has fairly blossomed in the sunshine of royalty, and who is well born and bred, I can hardly be expected to receive a creature that began life as a social outcast. I do not assert anything so foolish, of course,” she added hastily, “as that we have not a certain small percentage of wicked and foolish women in American society. I am merely emphasizing the standard of the country, and I for one shall continue to uphold it as a matter both of principle and inclination.”

“Both are highly commendable, but, it strikes me, a trifle provincial and inconvenient. In a new country I can understand that you must draw hard and fast lines, but now that you have come to live among people that are quite sure of themselves, why not emulate their independence? It has struck me more than once since I have had the pleasure of knowing so many Americans, that we have more independence, freedom, under our old-fashioned monarchy, than you under a form of government where those words may be worn meaningless with too constant iteration; you seem to have an idea that their antithesis is aristocratic.”

“I don’t think you see my point.” Mrs. Cutting’s tones were so even that they were monotonous, and she fixed her eyes on her fan. “You English aristocrats indulge in the fiction that you are above all laws, are a law unto yourselves. You are mental and moral anarchists. With us it is quite different. It may be because we are new, but one thing is quite positive: our standards are higher than yours, and they are fixed. We are as free of mind as you are, but we don’t choose to use our freedom in the same way. We reverence the laws we have accepted from the highest authority, because they are right and proper laws, because they conduce to purity of conduct and true happiness. But you—you English might exist on a planet of your own. And yet you are a mass of contradictions. Mr. Wilde was lamenting to-day, for the fortieth time, of British provincialism, respectability, philistinism. Others make the same lament. I have seen little of it myself. You—I am talking of your class, of course,—use those characteristics as an excuse when it happens to be convenient. To be just, I have not the slightest doubt that most of the women I meet are faithful wives, but it is only because the reverse does not appeal to them; they would admit, if pushed to the wall, that the laws made to govern the conduct of common mortals do not apply to them—certainly not! But if their anarchy—or, shall we say, their insolence?—does not take that form, it does some other. The only absolutely well-regulated women, according to the American standard, that I have met in England, are, it would seem, survivals from your middle class.”

“It is irresistible, dear Mrs. Cutting, to ask why, since you admire your own country and despise ours, you have come to live among us?”

Mrs. Cutting raised her cold angry eyes and met the cold impassive eyes opposite. Even had she been less fond of him, the utter absence of insolence in his voice and face, the repose and detachment of his manner, would have compelled her admiration. He continued with a smile: “It would be a genuine deprivation were you to leave us in a fit of disgust, but I am afraid you will, one of these days, unless you make up your mind to take us as we are, swallow us whole.”

“It has occurred to me once or twice of late that I may return to New York.” She paused a moment and then continued deliberately: “It is an intensely disagreeable and humiliating conclusion to have come to, but I believe that I am a snob. It annoys me the more as I have no justification, like so many of these Americans at present going the pace in London, wild with delight at being able to address peers of the realm as ‘Bertie’ and ‘Billy.’ Even the founder of my family in America helped to model its social structure. What is the secret of this fascination of England for the well-born of the United States? Perhaps its mere picturesque contrast to our republican institutions, architecture, customs. Perhaps some harking back of the blood. Perhaps it is an unconscious attempt to live the literature of our childhood, where all the fascinating characters were kings and queens, lords and ladies. Perhaps the sleepless American instinct to go straight to the top, that ‘the best is none too good for us,’ as our slang so patly expresses it. Perhaps because you have reached the superlative, while we are still in the comparative degree. No doubt, however, the reason, or all the reasons, are given the complete and final expression in that one hideous little word, ‘snob.’?”

Ordham had never felt so much respect and liking for his mother-in-law. His eyes softened and he said solicitously: “I hope you are not unhappy here. Surely no American has ever been so well treated.”

“Ah! There is another point. One must live in, not merely visit, England, to discover that its reasoning runs something like this: ‘We do not say, of course, that you are not as good as we are—pray, what does that matter? But you are different, and being different, of course you are not quite as good.’?”

Ordham laughed heartily. “I never heard it so cleverly put!” The warmth in his voice and eyes brought the colour back to Mrs. Cutting’s face, the animation to her glance. “Indeed, you must never leave us! We should miss you too dreadfully. And you are one of us—really!—however some stupid people may regard the majority of Americans. Is not my mother devoted to you?”

“How devoted do you think Lady Bridgminster could be to any one?”

“Oh, I was not thinking of affection. She never pretends to much of that. But with whom else is she so intimate?—and at least you have never found her rude.”

“Bad manners are not one of her fads, as they are with a good many I could mention; and, beyond all question, I like her better than any woman in London, for, in her way, she is genuine; she is, in fact, too arrogant to be anything else. But that she regards me wholly as her equal—not for a moment do I believe anything of the sort. And the position is beginning to gall me.”

“Momma!” Mabel had listened to this conversation appalled, almost breathless. “Surely, you would not go away and leave me?”

“Not for a while yet, darling—certainly not! But I feel that the time will come when we shall have to satisfy ourselves with a yearly interchange of visits.” She looked at Ordham as if bracing herself again. “Let us have it out. We like each other too well to quarrel, and it is better to come to a complete understanding now than to be continually bringing up unpleasant subjects. Nothing disgusts me more than this English worship of what you call personality. To receive people that have forfeited their social rights merely because they have some remarkable personal charm, have painted a picture, or written a book, is putting a premium upon libertinage, swells the ‘artistic’ hordes that hardly dare be virtuous lest they be thought second-rate. Nor do I in the least believe in the sincerity of all this kow-towing to talent. You are a great and bored people, you must have fads; that is all there is to it!”

“Does all that mean you will not receive Countess Tann?” He stood up, looking appealingly at his mother-in-law, whom he liked better for sticking to her little guns, inconvenient as they were to himself. He drew his arms together, after his fashion when nervous. “Are you really unrelenting? Will you not call on Countess Tann, and ask her to come here? I shall feel very awkward if you do not. My mother has promised to be nice to her, but I am not living in her house.”

“Do, mother,” whispered Mabel.

But on this point Mrs. Cutting was pure steel, although she found it no easy matter to resist Ordham when he deigned to coax. “No—I am desperately sorry, but I cannot. You must not ask it of me. If I forced myself to take that woman by the hand, I should lose my self-control and be rude to her. But, indeed, to touch her would be a physical as well as a moral impossibility. I am very sorry. I hate to deny you anything.”

She swept out of the room hastily, and Mabel looked apprehensively at her husband, who, for the fourth time, was striking a match with his back to her.

“Jackie!”

Jackie gritted his teeth, but answered politely, “Well, Mabel?”

“Are you angry with me? It is too severe of mother.”

“Of course not. How can you say such a thing?”

“Well, you have a right to be. But perhaps I can talk mother over.”

“I am sure you cannot. But it doesn’t matter. I fancy Countess Tann will understand—she is an American! Besides, no doubt we have wasted a lot of talk and temper over nothing. She will be much too busy for society. Your mother might have sacrificed her principles by leaving a card. A Wagner prima donna who is to sing eighteen times in five weeks, besides rehearsing with a scratch company, would no doubt herself spare you the indignity of meeting a woman who not only has been as much gossiped about as some eight or ten that were here to-day, but who hails from the ranks—”

“Jackie! Please don’t talk as if we were dreadful snobs.”

“On the contrary, I think your mother did herself an injustice. What more natural than to prefer England to America? Besides, she has the courage of her opinions—I think nobody, certainly not Americans, appreciates that sort of courage as much as the English. By the way, you will not mind if I dine with my mother to-night? I have rather neglected her.”

“Your mother dines out every night of her life! Do you really mean that you will leave me if I beg you not to?”

“Oh, I am sure you will not do that—you are quite the most charmingly unselfish person in the world.”

Once more he watched those great crystal tears well up and over. The sight fascinated him as a phenomenon, but he too was pure steel. Mabel saw the long line of his jaw grow longer and harder under the fine firm flesh, stared into the eyes that were veiled to conceal their glitter. He felt immeasurably older than this poor silly child to whom, under God knew what delusion, he had fastened himself for life, and he was still determined to treat her with what kindness and consideration he could command. He took out his handkerchief and dried her eyes. “I am so sorry! But you must let me play the dutiful son once in a while. Suppose you take your dinner in bed. You will feel that much more refreshed to-morrow.”

“Will you come home early?” sobbed Mabel.

“Of course!”