IV
Feo’s new man, Clive Arrowsmith, had driven her down to the races at Windsor. Two of his horses, carrying colors new to the betting public, were entered. No one knew anything about them, so that if they won, and they were out to win, the odds would be good. There was a chance of making some money, always useful.
“I rather like this meeting,” she said. “It’s a sort of picnic peopled with caricatures,” and sailed into the enclosure, elastically, in more than usually characteristic clothes. She had discarded the inevitable tam-o’-shanter for once in favor of a panama hat, which looked very cool and light and threw a soft shadow over her face. She was in what she called a soft mood,—meaning that she was playing a feminine role and leading up to a serious affair. Arrowsmith was obviously pucca and his height and slightness, well-shaped, close-cropped head, small straw-colored moustache, straight nose, strong chin with a deep cleft, and gray eyes which had a way, most attractive to women, of disbelieving everything they said had affected Feo and “really rather rattled” her, as she had confessed to Georgie Malwood late one night. After her recent bad picks, which had left a nasty taste of humiliation behind, she was very much in the mood for an old-fashioned sweep into sentiment. She had great hopes of Arrowsmith and had seen him every day since Sunday. He was not easy. He erected mental bunkers. He was plus two at the game, which was good for hers. Altogether he was very satisfactory, and his horses added to the fun, on the side.
“It’s rather a pet of mine,” he said, looking round with a sort of affectionate recognition, “because when I was at Eton I broke bounds once or twice and had the time of my life here. Everything tastes better when there’s a law against drinking. But I never thought I should come here with you.”
“Have you ever thought about it then?”
“Yes,” he said, leaning on the rail and looking under her hat with what was only the third of his un-ironical examinations. She had memorized the other two. Was she approaching the veteran class? “The day you were married I happened to be passing St. Margaret’s and the crowd of fluttering women held me up. I saw you leave the church and I said to myself, ‘My God, if I ever know that girl, I’ll have a try to put a different smile on her face,’”
“You interest me, Cupid,” she said, giving him a nickname on the spur of the moment. “What sort of smile, if you please?”
“One that wouldn’t make me want to hit you,” he answered, still looking.
“You’ll never achieve your object on the way out of church.”
“No, that’s dead certain.”
And she wondered whether he had scored or she had. She would like to feel that he was hard hit enough to go through this affair hell for leather, into the Divorce Court and out into marriage. It came to her at that moment, for the first time, that she liked him,—more than liked him; that he appealed to her and did odd new things to her heart. She felt that she could make her exit from the gang with this man.
As for Arrowsmith, he was sufficiently hard hit to hate Feo for the record that she had made, sufficiently in love with her to resent her kite-tail of indiscriminations. He loved but didn’t like her, and this meant that he would unmagnetize himself as soon as he could and bolt. The bunkers that she had found in his nature were those of fastidiousness, not often belonging to men. But for being the son of Arrowsmith, the iron founder, whose wealth had been quadrupled by the War, he would have been a poet, although he might never have written poetry. As it was, he considered that women should be chaste, and was the object of derision for so early-Victorian an opinion. The usual hobby thus failing, he raced, liking thoroughbreds who played the game. A queer fish, Arrowsmith.
Georgie Malwood came up. She was with her fourth mother-in-law, Mrs. Claude Malwood, whose back view was seventeen, but whose face was older than the Pyramids. And Arrowsmith drifted off to the paddock.
But they lunched and spent the day together and one of the horses, “Mince Pie,” won the fourth race at six to one, beating the favorite by a short head. And so Feo had a good day. They got away ahead of the crowd, except for the people of the theater, who had to dine early and steady down before entering upon the arduous duties of the night, especially those of the chorus who, in these days of Reviews, are called upon to make so many changes of clothes. Art demands many sacrifices.—It had been decided that the Ritz would do for dinner and one of the dancing clubs afterwards. But on the way out Gilbert Macquarie pranced up to Feo, utterly inextinguishable, with a hatband of one club and a tie of another and clothes that would have frightened a steam roller. “Oh, hello, old thing,” he cried, giving one of his choicest wriggles. “How goes it?”
To which Feo replied, with her most courteous insolence, “Out, Mr. Macquarie,” touched Arrowsmith’s arm and went.
But the nasty familiarity of that most poisonous bounder did something queer to Arrowsmith’s physical sense, and he couldn’t for the life of him play conversational ball with Feo on the road home. “To follow that,” he thought, and was nauseated.
But Feo was in her softest, her most feminine mood. After dinner she was going to dance with this man and be held in his arms. It was a delightful surprise to discover that she possessed a heart. She had begun to doubt it. She had been an experimentalist hitherto. And so she didn’t have much to say. And when they emerged from the squalor of Hammersmith and were passing Queen’s Road, Bayswater, the picture of Lola came suddenly into her mind, the girl in love, and she wondered sympathetically how she was getting on. “What shall I wear to-night? I hate those new frocks.—I hope the band plays Bohème at the Ritz.—No diamonds, just pearls. He’s a pearl man, I think. And I’ll brush Peau d’Espagne through my hair. What a profile he has,—Cupid.”
And she shuddered. She had married a profile, the fool. To be set free was impossible. The British public did not allow its Cabinet Ministers to be divorced.
At Dover Street Arrowsmith sprang from the car. He handed Feo out and rang the doorbell.
“You look white,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
He was grateful for the chance. “That old wound,” he said. “It goes back on me from time to time.”
“That doesn’t mean that you’ll have to chuck tonight?” She was aghast.
“I’m awfully afraid so, if you don’t mind. It means bed, instantly, and a doctor. Do forgive me. I can’t help myself. I wish to God I could.”
She swallowed an indescribable disappointment and said “Good night, then. So sorry. Ring me up in the morning and let me know how you feel.”
But she knew that he wouldn’t. It was written round his mouth. And as she went upstairs she whipped herself and cursed Macquarie and looked back at her kite-tail of indiscriminations with overwhelming regret. Arrowsmith was a pucca man.