Tenterhooks

by Ada Leverson

CHAPTER XVI

More of the Mitchells

Edith had become an immense favourite with the Mitchells. They hardly ever had any entertainment without her. Her success with their friends delighted Mrs Mitchell, who was not capable of commonplace feminine jealousy, and who regarded Edith as a find of her own. She often reproached Winthrop, her husband, for having known Bruce eight years without discovering his charming wife.

One evening they had a particularly gay party. Immediately after dinner Mitchell had insisted on dressing up, and was solemnly announced in his own house as Prince Gonoff, a Russian noble. He had a mania for disguising himself. He had once travelled five hundred miles under the name of Prince Gotoffski, in a fur coat, a foreign accent, a false moustache and a special saloon carriage. Indeed, only his wife knew all the secrets of Mitchell's wild early career of unpractical jokes, to some of which he still clung. When he was younger he had carried it pretty far. She encouraged him, yet at the same time she acted as ballast, and was always explaining his jokes; sometimes she was in danger of explaining him entirely away. She loved to tell of his earlier exploits. How often, when younger, he had collected money for charities (particularly for the Deaf and Dumb Cats' League, in which he took special interest), by painting halves of salmon and ships on fire on the cold grey pavement! Armed with an accordion, and masked to the eyes, he had appeared at Eastbourne, and also at the Henley Regatta, as a Mysterious Musician. At the regatta he had been warned off the course, to his great pride and joy. Mrs Mitchell assured Edith that his bath-chair race with a few choice spirits was still talked of at St Leonard's (bath-chairmen, of course, are put in the chairs, and you pull them along). Mr Mitchell was beaten by a short head, but that, Mrs Mitchell declared, was really most unfair, because he was so handicapped—his man was much stouter than any of the others—and the race, by rights, should have been run again.

When he was at Oxford he had been well known for concealing under a slightly rowdy exterior the highest spirits of any of the undergraduates. He was looked upon as the most fascinating of farceurs. It seems that he had distinguished himself there less for writing Greek verse, though he was good at it, than for the wonderful variety of fireworks that he persistently used to let off under the dean's window. It was this fancy of his that led, first, to his popularity, and afterwards to the unfortunate episode of his being sent down; soon after which he had married privately, chiefly in order to send his parents an announcement of his wedding in The Morning Post, as a surprise.

Some people had come in after dinner—for there was going to be a little sauterie intime, as Mrs Mitchell called it, speaking in an accent of her own, so appalling that, as Vincy observed, it made it sound quite improper. Edith watched, intensely amused, as she saw that there were really one or two people present who, never having seen Mitchell before, naturally did not recognise him now, so that the disguise was considered a triumph. There was something truly agreeable in the deference he was showing to a peculiarly yellow lady in red, adorned with ugly real lace, and beautiful false hair. She was obviously delighted with the Russian prince.

'Winthrop is a wonderful man!' said Mrs Mitchell to Edith, as she watched her husband proudly. 'Who would dream he was clean-shaven! Look at that moustache! Look at the wonderful way his coat doesn't fit; he's got just that Russian touch with his clothes; I don't know how he's done it, I'm sure. How I wish dear Aylmer Ross was here; he would appreciate it so much.'

'Yes, I wish he were,' said Edith.

'I can't think what he went away for. I suppose he heard the East a-calling, and all that sort of thing. The old wandering craving you read of came over him again, I suppose. Well, let's hope he'll meet some charming girl and bring her back as his bride. Where is he now, do you know, Mrs Ottley?'

'In Armenia, I fancy,' said Edith.

'Oh, well, we don't want him to bring home an Armenian, do we? What colour are they? Blue, or brown, or what? I hope no-one will tell Lady Hartland that is my husband. She'll expect to see Winthrop tonight; she never met him, you know; but he really ought to be introduced to her. I think I shall tell him to go and undress, when they've had a little dancing and she's been down to supper.'

Lady Hartland was the yellow lady in red, who thought she was flirting with a fascinating Slav.

'She's a sort of celebrity,' continued Mrs Mitchell. 'She was an American once, and she married Sir Charles Hartland for her money. I hate these interested marriages, don't you?—especially when they're international. Sir Charles isn't here; he's such a sweet boy. He's a friend of Mr Cricker; it's through Mr Cricker I know them, really. Lady Everard has taken such a fancy to young Cricker; she won't leave him alone. After all he's my friend, and as he's not musical I don't see that she has any special right to him; but he's there every Wednesday now, and does his dances on their Sunday evenings too. He's got a new one—lovely, quite lovely—an imitation of Lydia Kyasht as a water-nymph. I wanted him to do it here tonight, but Lady Everard has taken him to the opera. Now, won't you dance? Your husband promised he would. You both look so young!'

Edith refused to dance. She sat in a corner with Vincy and watched the dancers.

By special permission, as it was so intime, the Turkey Trot was allowed. Bruce wanted to attempt it with Myra Mooney, but she was horrified, and insisted on dancing the 1880 trois-temps to a jerky American two-step.

'Edith,' said Vincy; 'I think you're quieter than you used to be.
Sometimes you seem rather absent-minded.'

'Am I? I'm sorry; there's nothing so tedious to other people. Why do you think I'm more serious?'

'I think you miss Aylmer.'

'Yes, I do. He gave a sort of meaning to everything. He's always interesting. And there's something about him—I don't know what it is. Oh, don't be frightened, Vincy, I'm not going to use the word personality. Isn't that one of the words that ought to be forbidden altogether? In all novels and newspapers that poor, tired word is always cropping up.'

'Yes, that and magnetism, and temperament, and technique. Let's cut out technique altogether. Don't let there be any, that's the best way; then no-one can say anything about it. I'm fed up with it. Aren't you?'

'Oh, I don't agree with you at all. I think there ought to be any amount of technique, and personality, and magnetism, and temperament. I don't mind how much technique there is, as long as nobody talks about it. But neither of these expressions is quite so bad as that dreadful thing you always find in American books, and that lots of people have caught up—especially palmists and manicures—mentality.'

'Yes, mentality's very depressing,' said Vincy. 'I could get along nicely without it, I think…. I had a long letter from Aylmer today. He seemed unhappy.'

'I had a few lines yesterday,' said Edith. 'He said he was having a very good time. What did he say to you?'

'Oh, he wrote, frankly to me.'

'Bored, is he?'

'Miserable; enamoured of sorrow; got the hump; frightfully off colour; wants to come back to London. He misses the Mitchells. I suppose it's the Mitchells.'

Edith smiled and looked pleased. 'He asked me not to come here much.'

'Ah! But he wouldn't want you to go anywhere. That is so like Aylmer. He's not jealous; of course. How could he be? It's only a little exclusiveness…. And how delightfully rare that is, Edith dear. I admire him for it. Most people now seem to treasure anything they value in proportion to the extent that it's followed about and surrounded by the vulgar public. I sympathise with that feeling of wishing to keep—anything of that sort—to oneself.'

'You are more secretive than jealous, yourself. But I have very much the same feeling,' Edith said. 'Many women I know think the ideal of happiness is to be in love with a great man, or to be the wife of a great public success; to share his triumph! They forget you share the man as well!'

'I suppose the idea is that, after the publicity and the acclamation and the fame and the public glory and the shouting, you take the person home, and feel he is only yours, really.'

'But, can a famous person be only yours? No. I shouldn't like it.

It isn't that I don't like cleverness and brilliance, but I don't care for the public glory.'

'I see; you don't mind how great a genius he is, as long as he isn't appreciated,' replied Vincy. 'Well, then, in heaven's name let us stick to our obscurities!'