CHAPTER IV
Not many days later Craven received a note from Miss Van Tuyn asking himto come to see her at a certain hour on a certain day. He went and foundher alone in a private sitting-room overlooking the Park. For the firsttime he saw her without a hat. With her beautiful corn-coloured hairuncovered she looked, he thought, more lovely than when he had seen herat Lady Sellingworth's. She noted that thought at once, caught it on thewing through his mind, as it were, and caged it comfortably in hers.
"I have seen the 'old guard,'" she said, after she had let him hold andpress her hand for two or three seconds.
"What, the whole regiment?" said Craven.
She sat down on a sofa by a basket of roses. He sat down near her.
"No; only two or three of the leaders."
"Do I know them?"
"Probably. Mrs. Ackroyde?"
"I know her."
"Lady Archie Brook?"
"Her, too."
"I've also seen Lady Wrackley."
"I have met Lady Wrackley, but I can hardly say I know her. Still, sheshows her teeth at me when I come into a room where she is."
"They are wonderful teeth, aren't they?"
"Astonishing!"
"And they are her own--not by purchase."
"Are you sure she doesn't owe for them?"
"Positive; except, of course, to her Creator. Isn't it wonderful tothink that those three women are contemporaries of Lady Sellingworth?"
"Indeed it is! But surely you didn't let them know that you knew theywere? Or shall I say know they are?"
She smiled, showing perfect teeth, and shook her corn-coloured head.
"You see, I'm so young and live in Paris! And then I'm American. Theyhave no idea how much I know. I just let them suppose that I only knewthey were old enough to remember Lady Sellingworth when she was still areigning beauty. I implied that _they_ were buds then."
"And they accepted the implication?"
"Oh, they are women of the world! They just swallowed it very quietly,as a well-bred person swallows a small easy-going bonbon."
Craven could not help laughing. As he did so he saw in Miss Van Tuyn'seyes the thought:
"You think me witty, and you're not far out."
"And did you glean any knowledge of Lady Sellingworth?" he asked.
"Oh, yes; quite a good deal. Mrs. Ackroyde showed me a photograph of heras she was about eleven years ago."
"A year before the plunge!"
"Yes. She looked very handsome in the photograph. Of course, it wastremendously touched up. Still, it gave me a real idea of what she mustonce have been. But, oh! how she has changed!"
"Naturally!"
"I mean in expression. In the photograph she looks vain, imperious. Doyou know how a woman looks who is always on the watch for new lovers?"
"Well--yes, I think perhaps I do."
"Lady Sellingworth in the photograph has that on the pounce expression."
"That's rather awful, isn't it?"
"Yes; because, of course, one can see she isn't really at all young.It's only a _fausse jeunesse_ after all, but still very effective. Thegap between the woman of the photograph and the woman of 18A BerkeleySquare is as the gulf between Dives and Lazarus. I shouldn't have lovedher then. But perhaps--perhaps a man might have thought he did. I meanin the real way of a man--perhaps."
Craven did not inquire what Miss Van Tuyn meant exactly by that.Instead, he asked:
"And did these ladies of the 'old guard' speak kindly of thewhite-haired traitress?"
"They were careful. But I gathered that Lady Sellingworth had been foryears and years one of those who go on their way chanting, 'Let us eat,drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.' I gathered, too, that herefforts were chiefly concentrated on translating into appropriate actionthe third 'let us.' But that no doubt was for the sake of her figureand face. Lady Archie said that the motto of Lady Sellingworth's lifeat that period was 'after me the deluge,' and that she had so dinned itinto the ears of her friends that when she let her hair grow white theyall instinctively put up umbrellas."
"And yet the deluge never came."
"It never does. I could almost wish it would."
"Now?"
"No; after me."
He looked deep into her eyes, and as he did so she seemed deliberatelyto make them more profound so that he might not touch bottom.
"It's difficult to think of an after you," he said.
"But there will be, I suppose, some day when the Prince of Wales wearsa grey beard and goes abroad in the winter to escape bronchial troubles.Oh, dear! What a brute Time is!"
She tried to look pathetic, and succeeded better than Craven hadexpected.
"I shall put up my _en tout cas_ then," said Craven very seriously.
Still looking pathetic, she allowed her eyes to stray to a neighbouringmirror, waited for a moment, then smiled.
"Time's a brute, but there's still plenty of him for me," she said. "Andfor you, too."
"He isn't half so unpleasant to men as to women," said Craven. "He makesa very unfair distinction between the sexes."
"Naturally--because he's a man."
"What did Lady Wrackley say?" asked Craven, returning to their subject.
"Why do you ask specially what she said?"
"Because she has a reputation, a bad one, for speaking her mind."
"She certainly was the least guarded of the 'old guard.' But she saidshe loved Lady Sellingworth now, because she was so changed."
"Physically, I suppose."
"She didn't say that. She said morally."
"That wasn't stupid of her."
"Just what I thought. She said a moral revolution had taken place inLady Sellingworth after the jewels were stolen."
"That sounds almost too tumultuous to be comfortable."
"Like 'A Tale of Two Cities' happening in one's interior."
"And what did she attribute such a phenomenon to?"
"Well, she took almost a clerical view of the matter."
"How very unexpected!"
"She said she believed that Adela--she called her Adela--that Adela tookthe loss of her jewels as a punishment for her sins."
"Do you mean to say she used the word sins?"
"No; she said 'many lapses.' But that's what she meant."
"Lapses from what?"
"She didn't exactly say. But I'm afraid she meant from a strict moralcode."
"Oh, Lord!" said Craven, thinking of Lady Wrackley's smile.
"Why do you say that?"
"Please--never mind! So Lady Wrackley thinks that Lady Sellingworthconsidered the loss of her jewels such a fitting punishment for her manylapses from a strict moral code that she never tried to get them back?"
"Apparently. She said that Addie--she called her Addie then--that Addiebowed her head."
"Not beneath the rod! Don't tell me she used the word rod!"
"But she did!"
"Priceless!"
"Wasn't it? But women are like that when they belong to the 'old guard.'Do you think she can be right?"
"If it is so, Lady Sellingworth must be a very unusual sort of woman."
"She is--now. For she really did give up all in a moment. And she hasnever repented of what she did, as far as anyone knows. I think--"
She paused, looking thoughtful at the mirror.
"Yes?" said Craven gently.
"I think it's rather fine to plunge into old age like that. You go onbeing young and beautiful till everyone marvels, and then one day--ornight, perhaps--you look in the glass and you see the wrinkles as theyare--"
"Does any woman ever do that?"
"_She_ must have! And you say to yourself, '_C'est fini!_' and you throwup the sponge. No more struggles for you! From one day to another youbecome an old woman. I think I shall do as Lady Sellingworth has done."
"When?"
"When I'm--perhaps at fifty, yes, at fifty. No man really cares for awoman, as a woman wants him to care, after fifty."
> "I wonder," said Craven.
She sent him a sharp, questioning glance.
"Did you ever wonder before you went to Berkeley Square?"
"Perhaps not."
A slight shadow seemed to pass over Miss Van Tuyn's face.
"I believe there was a famous French actress who was loved after she wasseventy," said Craven.
"Then the man must have been a freak."
"Lots of us are freaks."
"I don't think you are," she said provocatively.
"Why not?"
"I have my little private reasons," she murmured.
At that moment Craven was conscious of a silly desire to take her in hisarms, bundle of vanities though he knew her to be. He hated himself forbeing so ordinary. But there it was!
He looked at her eyebrows. They were dark and beautifully shaped andmade an almost unnerving contrast with her corn-coloured hair.
"I know what you are thinking," she said.
"Impossible!"
"You are thinking that I darken them. But I don't."
And then Craven gave up and became frankly foolish.