II

Miss Townly, gracefully turned away from Hermione's door by Selim, did, as Artois had surmised, drift away in the fog to the house of her friend Mrs. Creswick, who lived in Sloane Street. She felt she must unburden herself to somebody, and Mrs. Creswick's tea, a blend of China tea with another whose origin was a closely guarded secret, was the most delicious in London. There are merciful dispensations of Providence even for Miss Townlys, and Mrs. Creswick was at home with a blazing fire. When she saw Miss Townly coming sideways into the room with a slightly drooping head, she said, briskly:

"Comfort me with crumpets, for I am sick with love! Cheer up, my dear Evelyn. Fogs will pa.s.s and even neuralgia has its limits. I don't ask you what is the matter, because I know perfectly well."

Miss Townly went into a very large arm-chair and waveringly selected a crumpet.

"What does it all mean?" she murmured, looking obliquely at her friend's parquet.

"Ask the baker, No. 5 Allitch Street. I always get them from there. And he's a remarkably well-informed man."

"No, I mean life with its extraordinary changes, things you never expected, never dreamed of--and all coming so abruptly. I don't think I'm a stupid person, but I certainly never looked for this."

"For what?"

"This most extraordinary engagement of Hermione's."

Mrs. Creswick, who was a short woman who looked tall, with a briskly conceited but not unkind manner, and a decisive and very English nose, rejoined:

"I don't know why we should call it extraordinary. Everybody gets engaged at some time or other, and Hermione's a woman like the rest of us and subject to aberration. But I confess I never thought she would marry Maurice Delarey. He never seemed to mean more to her than any one else, so far as I could see."

"Everybody seems to mean so much to Hermione that it makes things difficult to outsiders," replied Miss Townly, plaintively. "She is so wide-minded and has so many interests that she dwarfs everybody else. I always feel quite squeezed when I compare my poor little life with hers.

But then she has such physical endurance. She breaks the ice, you know, in her bath in the winter--of course I mean when there is ice."

"It isn't only in her bath that she breaks the ice," said Mrs. Creswick.

"I perfectly understand," Miss Townly said, vaguely. "You mean--yes, you're right. Well, I prefer my bath warmed for me, but my circulation was never of the best."

"Hermione is extraordinary," said Mrs. Creswick, trying to look at her profile in the gla.s.s and making her face as Roman as she could, "I know all London, but I never met another Hermione. She can do things that other women can't dream of even, and n.o.body minds."

"Well, now she is going to do a thing we all dream of and a great many of us do. Will it answer? He's ten years younger than she is. Can it answer?"

"One can never tell whether a union of two human mysteries will answer,"

said Mrs. Creswick, judicially. "Maurice Delarey is wonderfully good-looking."

"Yes, and Hermione isn't."

"That has never mattered in the least."

"I know. I didn't say it had. But will it now?"

"Why should it?"

"Men care so much for looks. Do you think Hermione loves Mr. Delarey for his?"

"She dives deep."

"Yes, as a rule."

"Why not now? She ought to have dived deeper than ever this time."

"She ought, of course. I perfectly understand that. But it's very odd, I think we often marry the man we understand less than any one else in the world. Mystery is so very attractive."

Miss Townly sighed. She was emaciated, dark, and always dressed to look mysterious.

"Maurice Delarey is scarcely my idea of a mystery," said Mrs. Creswick, taking joyously a marron glace. "In my opinion he's an ordinarily intelligent but an extraordinarily handsome man. Hermione is exactly the reverse, extraordinarily intelligent and almost ugly."

"Oh no, not ugly!" said Miss Townly, with unexpected warmth.

Though of a tepid personality, she was a worshipper at Hermione's shrine.

"Her eyes are beautiful," she added.

"Good eyes don't make a beauty," said Mrs. Creswick again, looking at her three-quarters face in the gla.s.s. "Hermione is too large, and her face is too square, and--but as I said before, it doesn't matter the least.

Hermione's got a temperament that carries all before it."

"I do wish I had a temperament," said Miss Townly. "I try to cultivate one."

"You might as well try to cultivate a mustache," Mrs. Creswick rather brutally rejoined. "If it's there, it's there, but if it isn't one prays in vain."

"I used to think Hermione would do something," continued Miss Townly, finishing her second cup of tea with thirsty languor.

"Do something?"

"Something important, great, something that would make her famous, but of course now"--she paused--"now it's too late," she concluded. "Marriage destroys, not creates talent. Some celebrated man--I forget which--has said something like that."

"Perhaps he'd destroyed his wife's. I think Hermione might be a great mother."

Miss Townly blushed faintly. She did nearly everything faintly. That was partly why she admired Hermione.

"And a great mother is rare," continued Mrs. Creswick. "Good mothers are, thank G.o.d, quite common even in London, whatever those foolish people who rail at the society they can't get into may say. But great mothers are seldom met with. I don't know one."

"What do you mean by a great mother?" inquired Miss Townly.

"A mother who makes seeds grow. Hermione has a genius for friendship and a special gift for inspiring others. If she ever has a child, I can imagine that she will make of that child something wonderful."

"Do you mean an infant prodigy?" asked Miss Townly, innocently.

"No, dear, I don't!" said Mrs. Creswick; "I mean nothing of the sort.

Never mind!"

When Mrs. Creswick said "Never mind!" Miss Townly usually got up to go.

She got up to go now, and went forth into Sloane Street meditating, as she would have expressed it, "profoundly."

Meanwhile Artois went back to the Hans Crescent Hotel on foot. He walked slowly along the greasy pavement through the yellow November fog, trying to combat a sensation of dreariness which had floated round his spirit, as the fog floated round his body, directly he stepped into the street.

He often felt depressed without a special cause, but this afternoon there was a special cause for his melancholy. Hermione was going to be married.