CHAPTER II

Two days after the visit of Arabian to d.i.c.k Garstin's studio Lady Sellingworth received a note from Francis Braybrooke, who invited her to dine with him at the Carlton on the following evening, and to visit a theatre afterwards. "Our young friends, Beryl Van Tuyn and Alick Craven"

would be of the party, he hoped. Lady Sellingworth had no engagement.

She seldom left home in the evening. Yet she hesitated to accept this invitation. She had not seen Miss Van Tuyn since the evening in Soho, nor Braybrooke since his visit to Berkeley Square to tell her about his trip to Paris, but she had seen Craven three times, and each time alone.

Their intimacy had deepened with a rapidity which now almost startled her as she thought of it, holding Braybrooke's unanswered note. Already it seemed very strange to recall the time when she had not known Craven, when she had never seen him, had never heard of him. Sixty years she had lived without this young man in her life. She could hardly believe that.

And now, with this call to meet him in public, before very watchful eyes, and in the company of two people who she was sure were in different ways hostile to her intimacy with him, she felt the cold touch of fear. And she doubted what course to take.

She wondered why Braybrooke had asked her and suspected a purpose. In a moment she believed that she had guessed what that purpose was.

Braybrooke was meditating a stroke against her. She had felt that in her drawing-room with him. For some reason--perhaps only that of a social busybody--he wanted to bring about a match between Craven and Miss Van Tuyn. He had said with emphasis that Craven had almost raved about the lovely American. Lady Sellingworth did not believe that a.s.sertion. She felt sure that when he had made it Braybrooke had told her a lie.

Craven had amply proved to her his indifference towards Miss Van Tuyn.

Braybrooke's lie surely indicated a desire to detach his old friend's attention from the young man he had introduced into her life, and must mean that he was a little afraid of her influence. It had been practically a suggestion to her that youth triumphant must win in any battle with old age; yet it had implied a doubt, if not an actual uneasiness. And now came this invitation to meet "our young friends."

Lady Sellingworth thought of the contrast between herself and Beryl Van Tuyn. She had not worried about it in the _Bella Napoli_ when she and the young friends were together. But now--things were different now.

She had, or believed she had, something to lose. And she did not want to lose it. It would be horrible to lose it!

Perhaps Braybrooke wished Craven to see her with Beryl Van Tuyn in the glare of electric light. Perhaps that was the reason of this unexpected invitation. If so, it was an almost diabolically cruel reason.

She resolved to refuse the invitation. But again a voice through the telephone caused her to change her mind. And again it was Craven's voice. It asked her whether she had received an invitation from Braybrooke, and on her replying that she had, it begged her to accept it if she had not done so already. And she yielded. If Craven wished her to go she would go. Why should she be afraid? In her ugliness surely she triumphed as no beauty could ever triumph. She told herself that and for a moment felt rea.s.sured, more than rea.s.sured, safe and happy. For the inner thing, the dweller in the temple, felt that it, and it alone, was exercising intimate power. But then a look into the gla.s.s terrified her. And she sat down and wrote two notes. One was to Francis Braybrooke accepting the invitation; the other was to a man with a Greek name and was addressed to a house in South Moulton Street.

Francis Braybrooke felt rather uneasy about his party when the day came, but he was a man of the world, and resolved to "put a good face on it." No more social catastrophes for him! Another fiasco would, he was certain, destroy his nerve and render him quite unfit to retain his place in society. He pulled himself together, using his will to the uttermost, and dressed for dinner with a still determination to carry things through with a high hand. The worst of it was that he had an uneasy feeling--quite uncalled for, he was sure of that--of being a false friend. For Lady Sellingworth was his friend. He had known her for many years, whereas Craven and Beryl Van Tuyn were comparatively new-comers in his life. And yet he was engaged in something not quite unlike a conspiracy against this old friend. Craven had said she was lonely. Perhaps that was true. Women who lived by themselves generally felt lonelier than men in a like situation. Craven, perhaps, was bringing a little solace into this lonely life. And now he, Braybrooke, was endeavouring to make an end of that solace. For he quite understood that, women being as they are, a strong friendship between Adela Sellingworth and Craven was quite incompatible with a love affair between Craven and Beryl Van Tuyn. He hoped he was not a traitor as he carefully arranged his rather large tie. But anything was better than a tragedy. And with women of Adela Sellingworth's reputed temperament one never knew quite what might happen. Her emergence, after ten years, into Shaftesbury Avenue and Soho had severely shaken Braybrooke's faith in her sobriety, fostered though it had been, created even, by her ten years of distinguished retirement. Damped-down fires sometimes blaze forth unexpectedly and rage with fury. He hoped he was doing the right thing. Anyhow, it was not his fault that Lady Sellingworth was to be of his party tonight. Miss Van Tuyn was responsible for that.

He rang the bell, which was answered by his valet.

"Please fetch the theatre ticket, Walter. It is in the drawer of my writing-table in the library. A box for the Shaftesbury Theatre."

"Yes, sir."

Walter went out and returned in a moment with the ticket. He was an old servant and occasionally exchanged ideas with his master. As he gave Braybrooke the envelope containing the ticket, he said:

"A very remarkable play, sir. I think you will enjoy it."

"What! Have you seen it?"

"Yes, sir, _The Great Lover_. My wife would go. She liked the name, sir.

About a singer, sir, who kept on loving like a young man when the age for it was really what one might call over, sir. But it seems that for some it never is over, sir."

"Good heavens, have I done the wrong thing again?" thought Braybrooke, who had chosen the play almost at random, without knowing much about it except that an actor unknown to him, one Moscovitch, was said to be very fine in it.

"How old is the singer?" he inquired anxiously.

"I couldn't say for certain, sir. But somewhere in the forties, I should think, and nearing fifty. He loses his voice, sir, but still answers to young women at the telephone."

"Dear! Dear!"

"But as my wife says, sir, with a man it's not such a great matter. But with a woman--well!"

He pursed his narrow lips and half-shut his small grey eyes.

"Ah!" said Braybrooke, feeling extremely uncomfortable. "Good night, Walter. You needn't sit up."

"Thank you, sir. Good night, sir."

"Really the evil eye must have looked at me!" thought Braybrooke, as he went downstairs. "I'm thoroughly out of luck."

He arrived in good time at the Carlton and waited for his guests in the Palm Court. Craven was the first to arrive. He looked cheerful and eager as he came in, and, Braybrooke thought, very young and handsome. He had got away from the F. O. that afternoon, he said, and had been down at Beaconsfield playing golf. Apparently his game had been unusually good and that fact had put him into spirits.

"There's nothing like being in form with one's drive for bucking one up!" he acknowledged.

And he broke out into an almost boyish paean in praise of golf.

"But I always thought you preferred lawn tennis!" said Braybrooke.

"Oh, I don't know! Yes, I'm as keen as ever on tennis, but anyone can play golf. Mrs. Sandhurst was out to-day playing a splendid game, and she's well over sixty. That's the best of golf. People can play, and play decently, too, up to almost any age."

"Well, but my dear boy you're not in the sixties yet!"

"No. But I wasn't thinking about myself."

Braybrooke looked at him rather narrowly, and wondered of whom he had been thinking. But he said nothing more, for at this moment Miss Van Tuyn appeared in the doorway at the end of the court. Braybrooke went to meet her, but Craven stayed were he was.

"Is Adela Sellingworth coming?" she asked instantly, as Braybrooke took her hand.

"She promised to come. I'm expecting her."

He made a movement, but she stood still, though they where close to the doorway.

"And what are we going to see?"

"A play called _The Great Lover_. Here is Alick Craven."

At this moment Craven joined them. Seeing Miss Van Tuyn standing still with a certain obstinacy he came up and took her hand.

"Nice to meet you again," he said.

Braybrooke thought of Miss Van Tuyn's remark about the Foreign Office manner, and hoped Craven was going to be at his best that evening. It seemed to him that there was a certain dryness in the young people's greeting. Miss Van Tuyn was looking lovely, and almost alarmingly youthful and self-possessed, in a white dress. Craven, fresh from his successes at golf, looked full of the open-air spirit and the robustness of the galloping twenties. In appearance the two were splendidly matched. The faint defiance which Braybrooke thought he detected in their eyes suited them both, giving to them just a touch of the arrogance which youth and health render charming, but which in old people is repellent and ugly. They wore it like a feather set at just the right rakish angle in a cap. Nevertheless, this slight dryness must be got rid of if the evening were to be a success, and Braybrooke set himself to the task of banishing it. He talked of golf. Like many American girls, Miss Van Tuyn was at home in most sports and games.

She was a good whip, a fine skater and lawn tennis player, had shot and hunted in France, liked racing, and had learnt to play golf on the links at Cannes when she was a girl of fifteen. But to-night she was not enthusiastic about golf, perhaps because Craven was. She said it was an irritating game, that playing it much always gave people a worried look, that a man who had sliced his first drive was a bore for the rest of the day, that a woman whom you beat in a match tried to do you harm as long as you and she lived. Finally she said it was certainly a fine game, but a game for old people. Craven protested, but she held resolutely to her point. In other games--except croquet, which she frankly loathed in spite of its scientific possibilities--you moved quickly, were obliged to be perpetually on the alert. In tennis and lawn tennis, in racquets, in hockey, in cricket, you never knew what was going to happen, when you might have to do something, or make a swift movement, a dash here or there, a dive, a leap, a run. But in golf half your time was spent in solemnly walking--toddling, she chose to call it--from point to point. This was, no doubt, excellent for the health, but she preferred swiftness. But then she was only a light-footed girl, not an elderly statesman.

"When I play golf much I always begin to feel like a gouty Prime Minister who has been ordered to play for the good of the country," she said. "But when I'm an old woman I shall certainly play regularly for the sake of my figure and my complexion. When I am sixty you will probably see me every day on the links."

Braybrooke saw a cloud float over Craven's face as she said this, but it vanished as he looked away towards the hall. There, through the gla.s.s of the dividing screen, Lady Sellingworth's tall and thin figure, wrapped in a long cloak of dark fur, was visible, going with her careless, trampish walk to the ladies' cloak-room.

"Ah, there is Adela Sellingworth!" said Braybrooke.

Miss Van Tuyn turned quickly, with a charming, youthful grace, made up of a suppleness and litheness which suggested almost the movement of a fluid. Craven noted it with a little thrill of unexpected pleasure, against which an instant later something in him rebelled.

"Where is she?" said Miss Van Tuyn.