have written to keep you off. In a great house like that there’s always room.”
The young man watched her a moment. “How you DO like to tuck us in and then sit up yourself! What do you want to do, anyway? What ARE you up to, mummy?”
She rose at this, turning her eyes about the room as if from the extremity of martyrdom or the wistfulness of some deep thought. Yet when she spoke it was with a different expression, an expression that would have served for an observer as a marked illustration of that disconnectedness of her parts which frequently was laughable even to the degree of contributing to her social success. “You’ve spent then more than four pounds in five days. It was on Friday I gave them to you. What in the world do you suppose is going to become of me?”
Harold continued to look at her as if the question demanded some answer really helpful. “Do we live beyond our means?”
She now moved her gaze to the floor. “Will you PLEASE get away?”
“Anything to assist you. Only, if I SHOULD find I’m not wanted—?”
She met his look after an instant, and the wan loveliness and vagueness of her own had never been greater. “BE wanted, and you won’t find it. You’re odious, but you’re not a fool.”
He put his arms about her now for farewell, and she submitted as if it was absolutely indifferent to her to whose bosom she was pressed. “You do, dearest,” he laughed, “say such sweet things!” And with that he reached the door, on opening which he pulled up at a sound from below. “The Duchess! She’s coming up.”
Mrs. Brookenham looked quickly round the room, but she spoke with utter detachment. “Well, let her come.”
“As I’d let her go. I take it as a happy sign SHE won’t be at Brander.” He stood with his hand on the knob; he had another quick appeal. “But after Tuesday?”
Mrs. Brookenham had passed half round the room with the glide that looked languid but that was really a remarkable form of activity, and had given a transforming touch, on sofa and chairs, to three or four crushed cushions. It was all with the hanging head of a broken lily. “You’re to stay till the twelfth.”
“But if I AM kicked out?”
It was as a broken lily that she considered it. “Then go to the Mangers.”
“Happy thought! And shall I write?”
His mother raised a little more a window-blind. “No—I will.”
“Delicious mummy!” And Harold blew her a kiss.
“Yes, rather”—she corrected herself. “Do write—from Brander. It’s the sort of thing for the Mangers. Or even wire.”
“Both?” the young man laughed. “Oh you duck!” he cried. “And from where will YOU let them have it?”
“From Pewbury,” she replied without wincing. “I’ll write on Sunday.”
“Good. How d’ye do, Duchess?”—and Harold, before he disappeared, greeted with a rapid concentration of all the shades of familiarity a large high lady, the visitor he had announced, who rose in the doorway with the manner of a person used to arriving on thresholds very much as people arrive at stations—with the expectation of being “met.”
II
“Good-bye. He’s off,” Mrs. Brookenham, who had remained quite on her own side of the room, explained to her friend.
“Where’s he off to?” this friend enquired with a casual advance and a look not so much at her hostess as at the cushions just rearranged.
“Oh to some places. To Brander to-day.”
“How he does run about!” And the Duchess, still with a glance hither and yon, sank upon the sofa to which she had made her way unaided. Mrs. Brookenham knew perfectly the meaning of this glance: she had but three or four comparatively good pieces, whereas the Duchess, rich with the spoils of Italy, had but three or four comparatively bad. This was the relation, as between intimate friends, that the Duchess visibly preferred, and it was quite groundless, in Buckingham Crescent, ever to enter the drawing-room with an expression suspicious of disloyalty. The Duchess was a woman who so cultivated her passions that she would have regarded it as disloyal to introduce there a new piece of furniture in an underhand way—that is without a full appeal to herself, the highest authority, and the consequent bestowal of opportunity to nip the mistake in the bud. Mrs. Brookenham had repeatedly asked herself where in the world she might have found the money to be disloyal. The Duchess’s standard was of a height—! It matched for that matter her other elements, which were wontedly conspicuous as usual as she sat there suggestive of early tea. She always suggested tea before the hour, and her friend always, but with so different a wistfulness, rang for it. “Who’s to be at Brander?” she asked.
“I haven’t the least idea—he didn’t tell me. But they’ve always a lot of people.”
“Oh I know—extraordinary mixtures. Has he been there before?”
Mrs. Brookenham thought. “Oh yes—if I remember—more than once. In fact her note—which he showed me, but which only mentioned ‘some friends’—was a sort of appeal on the ground of something or other that had happened the last time.”
The Duchess dealt with it. “She writes the most extraordinary notes.”
“Well, this was nice, I thought,” Mrs. Brookenham said—“from a woman of her age and her immense position to so young a man.”
Again the Duchess reflected. “My dear, she’s not an American and she’s not on the stage. Aren’t those what you call positions in this country? And she’s also not a hundred.”
“Yes, but Harold’s a mere baby.”
“Then he doesn’t seem to want for nurses!” the Duchess replied. She smiled at her hostess. “Your children are like their mother—they’re eternally young.”
“Well, I’M not a hundred!” moaned Mrs. Brookenham as if she wished with dim perversity she were.
“Every one’s at any rate awfully kind to Harold.” She waited a moment to give her visitor the chance to pronounce that eminently natural, but no pronouncement came—nothing but the footman who had answered her ring and of whom she ordered tea. “And where did you say YOU’RE going?” she enquired after this.
“For Easter?” The Duchess achieved a direct encounter with her charming eyes—which was not in general an easy feat. “I didn’t say I was going anywhere. I haven’t of a sudden changed my habits. You know whether I leave my child—except in the sense of having left her an hour ago at Mr. Garlick’s class in Modern Light Literature. I confess I’m a little nervous about the subjects and am going for her at five.”
“And then where do you take her?”
“Home to her tea. Where should you think?”
Mrs. Brookenham declined, in connexion with the matter, any responsibility of thought; she did indeed much better by saying after a moment: “You ARE devoted!”
“Miss Merriman has her afternoon—I can’t imagine what they do with their afternoons,” the Duchess went on. “But she’s to be back in the school-room at seven.”
“And
