CHAPTER XVIII

LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA

Be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.

"And, of course, you know every one in the room?" Dora was saying to her cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into "G.o.d bless the Prince of Wales."

"Good gracious, no!" Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up to curtsey to the Royal party.

It was the great artistic _soiree_ of the year, and crowds of n.o.bodies jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might be credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.

"Of course," said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of the Welsh air had been suppressed "by desire," "they may be very great swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not look it."

Miss Mazerod looked round critically.

"Some of them," she said, "are frame-makers, a good many of them, with big bills in high places. Others are actresses--very great actresses off the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an actress 'pour se faire photographier.'"

"And this is the cream of London society?" said Dora, looking round her with considerable amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Society," returned her cousin, "is not allowed to stand for cream now.

It is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets hopelessly mixed up with the cream. That young man who is now talking to the actress person is not what he looks. He is, as a matter of fact, the scion of a n.o.ble house, who models in clay atrociously."

"And the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?"

"One of his models."

"Of clay?"

"Essentially so."

And Miss Mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. Hers was not the bitterness of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more suggestive. It was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted contempt, which is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.

"Who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?" asked Dora.

"My dear! That is one of the great lady artists of the age. She lectures to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over tiger-lilies. Her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat--I imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. She objects to backbone."

Miss Mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.

"Then," said Dora, "I feel quite consoled about my sketches."

For the first time Miss Mazerod looked serious.

"Dora," she said, "I often wonder whether it would be profane to mention in one's prayers a little grat.i.tude for not having an artistic soul.

There are lots of women like that in the world, especially in London.

They pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in their hearts that they are inferior to women. For they have not something that women ought to have--No, Dolly, no brown studies here; you must not dream here!"

Dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. It was the face of a man--brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long drooping nose.

"Who is _that_ man?" she inquired at once. "Now, he is quite different from the rest. He is about the only person who is not furtively finding out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting."

"Yes, that is a man with a purpose."

"What purpose?" inquired Dora.

"I don't know; I shouldn't think any one knows."

"_He_ knows," suggested Dora.

"Yes, _he_ knows."

Miss Mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing his way through the mixed crowd towards them.

"What is his name?" asked Dora, who was still looking at the man with a purpose.

"General Seymour Michael."

"The Indian man?"

"Yes."

There was a little pause, during which Miss Mazerod glanced in the direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with a purple dress and a depressed daughter.

"I should like to know him," said Dora.

"Nothing easier," replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. "I know him quite well."

"He is looking at you now."

Miss Mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too young to be stately; one of those bows that say "Come here."

At this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with Dora, slowly with Miss Mazerod.

"Jack," said that young lady, "I have just beamed on General Michael, who is behind you. I want to introduce him to Dora."

Jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with alacrity.

Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile. He certainly was one of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant ribbon across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect which stamps the successful soldier.

"When did you come back to England?" inquired Edith Mazerod, whose father had worked with this man in India.

"I--oh! I have been home six months," he replied, shaking hands with a subtle _empressemant_ which was more effective than words.

"On leave?"

"No. Laid on the shelf."

He stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to show as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work in him yet.