CHAPTER II
AFTER a hurried knock Louise burst into Miriam’s room. Miriam was seated before the mirror brushing her reddish-brown hair. “Who do you suppose has turned up to the feast?” cried Louise, reaching for a chair and impatiently rescuing the filmy pink draperies of her frock from the handle of a drawer. “Aunt Denise, straight from Quebec! After all these months of dilly-dallying she stalks in when we’re having a reunion of the men her husband spent half his editorial and political career in insulting!”
“Why didn’t she telegraph?”
“Too stingy,—heaven forgive me for saying it,—and too old-fashioned. She arrived with Papa and the Bootses and Pearl and Amy Sweet. They were stuffed into the car like flowers in a vase, her trunk lashed on behind. Papa tried to telephone, but Aunt Denise said if her own niece couldn’t take her in without being warned, she wouldn’t come at all. That’s her spirit. What am I to do?”
“Have you explained the situation to her?”
“Does one try to explain red to a bull?”
“Then tip the others off. We’ll have to engage her on safe subjects.”
“If you would Miriam. In French,—for she hates English. She behaves as though French were the official language of Canada. . . I’ve been waiting for something to go wrong, and now it will. ‘Claudia dear’ was difficult enough. There’s no keeping that woman off a scent.”
“What scent?”
Louise was vexed at her slip. “Oh, scents in general. Yours in particular is most refreshing. Is that the Coty?”
Without waiting for an answer she plunged on. “Now I’ll have to rearrange the seating. If I put Aunt Denise near Grandfather she may scalp him. His triumphant progress across the continent must have rubbed her the wrong way . . . I’ll have enough on my hands without that. If Papa drinks one glass too many he’ll tease Aunt Denise about the Pope. And the Bootses are fanatical teetotallers, and I wouldn’t put it past them to dash the glass from old Papa Windrom’s lips!”
“Make me the spare woman,” Miriam offered. “That will leave me free to shush Pearl and prompt Mrs. Brown. I’ll watch you for cues.”
Louise gave herself a final glance in the cheval glass, pulled Miriam’s skirt straight, and left a grateful kiss on her forehead to dispel any questioning trend that might have lingered as a consequence of the inadvertent “scent”. Then she made her way downstairs to readjust the place cards which Dare had decorated with appropriate caricatures.
This done she stepped out on the terrace. Dare was there, leaning against the parapet. He offered her a cigarette and lit it in silence.
“There’s a dreadful ordeal ahead of you,” said Louise, sending a little cloud of smoke skyward.
“I’m getting used to ordeals,” he replied.
“This is a new kind. You have to take the pastor’s wife in to dinner.”
“I shall ask her to rescue my soul from the devil.”
“She will be glad of the occasion.”
In his eyes there was a shadow of the glance that had proved epoch-making the day before. “On second thoughts,” he added, “I shall do no such thing. The devil is welcome to it.” He looked away, and Louise for once could find nothing to say. “Except,” Dare finally resumed, “that he won’t have it at any price. Neither will God. That leaves me on my own.”
“Isn’t that——” Louise began, in a low voice, then was conscious of a step. Turning, she saw Mrs. Windrom, in purple satin, advancing from the front terrace, pinning to her corsage a pink rose which drew attention to the utterly unflowerlike character of her face. The last rays of the setting sun fell full upon the lenses of the pince-nez which Louise was once “too damn polite” to smash.
“What have you two got your heads together about?” she inquired with an archness that suited her as little as the rose.
“A plot,” Louise replied, holding out a hand to Mrs. Windrom, and noting with a little pang the half cynical smile which Dare allowed himself on seeing the ease of her transition. As if good acting were necessarily a sin of insincerity!
“We’re terrifically mixed to-night, and owing to the unforeseen arrival of my aunt I’ve had to throw everybody up in a blanket and pair them as they came down. I’ve done what your clever son calls playing fast and loose with the social alphabet: natives paired with dudes, atheists with Methodist ministers, teetotallers with bibbers, socialists with diehards. And all my tried and true friends have a duty to perform,—namely to keep the talk on safe ground. Poor Aunt Denise, you know, is the widow of that old man who was fined a dollar for libeling the king.”
During the last few weeks Mrs. Windrom had acquired a smattering of Canadian political history. Louise felt her stiffen.
“Aunt Denise has always lived under a cloud of illusions. First of all in convents, then with her husband whom she transformed from a village lawyer into a national enfant terrible. She wouldn’t believe a word against him, and I think it showed rather a fine spirit. We all idolize our husbands in some degree, though some of us take more pains not to show it.” Louise let this remark sink in, and felt Mrs. Windrom’s shining lenses turn towards Dare, whose gaze was negligently resting on the opposite shore of the lake. “Consequently, if Aunt Denise should let her illusions get the better of her tact, I do hope you two will help change the subject.”
Mrs. Windrom enjoyed conspiracies. “You may count on me, my dear,” she replied. “Now I must run up and see if my husband has lost his collar buttons as usual.”
Mrs. Windrom looked at the clock on the drawing-room mantle, crossed to a window to watch the retreating figures of Louise and Dare, then went towards the great square hall with its rough rafters and balcony, its shining floor, fur rugs and trophies of Keble’s marksmanship. For no ulterior reason, but simply because she could not resist an open door, she peeked into the dining-room, then walked upstairs.
She had timed her visit to a nicety. Her husband’s tie was being made into a lopsided bow.
“Sore?” he asked, when she had straightened it.
“A little. But I’m used to western saddles. Madame Mornay-Mareuil has suddenly turned up. Louise is in a panic. For heaven’s sake don’t talk politics. I can’t see why you leave the cuff buttons till after you’ve got your shirt on. It’s so simple to put them in beforehand.”
“Simple, old girl; I just forget, that’s all.”
“What I can’t make out . . . now I’ve bent my nail! . . . is Louise’s treatment of Keble.”
“What treatment?”
“I mean she ignores him.”
“Have you seen my other pump?”
“Do stand still. In favor of the handsome architect.”
“Steady on, Claudia dear. You’ve already dug up one scandal here. Isn’t that enough?”
“Scandal?”
“Didn’t you tell me the good-looking secretary was making eyes at Keble?”
Mrs. Windrom was indignant. “Most certainly not!”
“Well, those may not be the words you used. But the idea never came into my head all on its own.”
This was highly plausible. Tremendous ideas regarding revenues and tariffs found their way unaided into Mr. Windrom’s head, but not ideas having to do with illicit oeillades.
“If you deliberately choose to distort my words!” said Mrs. Windrom.
“I don’t choose to distort anything; I was only looking—Here I am like ‘my son John’ and it’s going on for eight.”
Mrs. Windrom tranquilly fished a pump from under a discarded garment which had been allowed to fall to the floor.
“Have you your handkerchief?”
Mr. Windrom nodded and followed his wife out to the balcony, which overlooked the hall. He was rubbing his hands together in anticipation of a cocktail when his wife seized his arm.
A tall, elderly woman in a trailing gown of rusty black crossed the balcony with a slow stride and descended the stairs. She had large black eyes, a high nose, and tightly drawn white hair streaked with black.
“Lady Macbeth!” whispered Mr. Windrom, tapping his wife’s arm and making a face like some sixty-year-old schoolboy. “Mum’s the word, eh? De mortuis——”
Mrs. Windrom was nettled. “What I can’t make out,” she said, “is how a squat little doctor could have a sister like that!”
“You’re always running on to things you can’t make out Claudia. It’s scarcely for want of trying.”
“I have to keep my eyes open for two, for you never see anything, and Girlie’s blind to things she should see. If she’d had a little of Louise’s vim four years ago——”
Mr. Windrom came to a halt and made a queer grimace.
“What’s the matter?”
“I forgot my handkerchief.”
“Really, Charles! If I reminded you once I reminded you a dozen times.”
Mr. Windrom sneezed, loud and long, and turned back towards his room. “Come now, Claudie,” he protested, “make it six.”