For herself, she had no doubt as to what lay beyond: she was so sure that when once that door closed behind you there would be nothing any more, fair or foul, bright or dark, that no speculation on the subject could have the smallest interest. It would all be over and done with: out of the dark stream above which in the sunshine the fly danced and hovered would come a great sucking mouth, and gulp it down. There would be a ripple on the surface which would in a moment die away, and most assuredly there would be no fly there in the sunshine. Sometimes the great fish rose at you, and missed you, and you had another dance, but sooner or later he swallowed you. Sometimes you were already floating, water-logged, on the stream, not dancing any more—that was what old age meant—and then, perhaps, the sooner the great ugly mouth caught you, the better.
But the shadow that sometimes, as now, lay across her garden was not of this nature: it was derivable from no fear of old age or death. It was rather due to a certain obstinate, uninvited questioning as to what was the good of it all, this intense pursuit of distraction of any kind that frightened away tranquillity and leisure, this hot fever of living. But good or bad, the only alternative to amusing yourself was boring yourself, which was a more obvious idiocy. Yet was there, possibly, a certain tedium arising out of the mere repetition of experience and excitements, however delightful in themselves, if there was nothing, in Mrs. Cyril Pounce’s inimitable American phrase, “back of them?”
Well, her secretary had disentangled Tuesday for her, and read out in her calm, monotonous voice the hours of her engagements. One had to be omitted, but as that was only a bazaar in aid of something, it was quite as easy to send a suitable cheque without demanding an equivalent, as to visit the bazaar in person and carry away something she didn’t want. Certainly there was nothing “back of” the bazaar. She was sorry for the blind or for indigent spinsters, or for anybody who wasn’t enjoying himself, but she couldn’t make them any happier by buying an object, than by paying for it without getting it.... Mrs. Pounce! That wonderful woman was coming down in time for lunch to-day, and was to motor back to town after dinner. She would probably be dressed in diamonds, with a petticoat of pearls. She was much richer than anybody else had ever been, and so was entitled to respect, but at the moment what Lady Grote envied her for was her simple rule of life, which was never to do anything “back of” which there was not something more.
At present her chief ambition seemed to be to know the whole of London. She had nearly accomplished that, but one of the few vacant spaces in her social stamp-book was the place where the Lord Thorley specimen should have been. She knew she would meet him here, and so, with great good nature, Helen Grote had invited her down for Sunday afternoon. That seemed about fair—Henry had a vague horror of her as a collector, so Lady Grote had not asked her down from Saturday till Monday. But Henry must just put up with her for a few hours, that was not too much to ask, especially since so many other people were coming down for this curtailed visit, people she had not room to saddle herself with for a whole week-end, but people who wanted so much to get to Grote somehow. Mrs. Pounce! And at the thought of Mrs. Pounce and the divine applicability of her name to her methods, Helen began to come out of the shadow again. There was Mrs. Pounce, who had travelled ten or fifteen years longer than she in this vale of tears, and yet had abated not one jot of her insatiable demands on life, or had ever begun to weep. But then, Mrs. Pounce had had the great luck to begin her explorations from the very bottom of the ladder, whereas poor Helen had started on the very topmost rung. If you started there, you had either to descend, or, take wings and soar. But for soaring there had to be something “back of it” all.... Mrs. Pounce could never really arrive at the haven where she would be, and certainly long before she ever thought she had got there, the great fish would have got her instead.... And even if she ever thought she had quite got there, her whole time would be taken up in maintaining her precarious balance, whereas Helen Grote would be obliged to do something quite outrageous ever to lose hers.
Society, success, position, all that vocabulary of ridiculous phrases, had only a meaning for such as had not got them. If you had all these things, not even round you but at your feet, you were unconscious of them: the words became gibberish. The only happiness was in getting: what you had got you took for granted. You didn’t want to possess anything of which the essence was yours, just as you never bought a book you had already read. And Lady Grote had read a very large number of such books.
But the shadow cleared off when Miss Armitage produced such a smooth Tuesday for her, and the thought of Mrs. Pounce proved such a tonic. She was about a hundred times as clever as Mrs. Pounce, and it would be absurd to allow even a half-hour of shadow to darken her own existence, when Mrs. Pounce so gladly stepped ahead through thunderclouds and baffling storm to secure her ultimate serenity.
So, dismissing Miss Armitage, she sent for the manicurist, who always paid a visit here on Sunday morning, coming down from London, quite at his own expense in the sure and certain hope of securing an admirable return on his speculation. There were always half a dozen woman in the house who would take advantage of his services and, since Mr. Boyton was here, at least one man. Mr. Pantitzi, for such was his florid name was also an expert on the hair, and brought down in his discreet wallet little bottles, whose contents, judiciously selected and mixed, produced colours that defied detection. Lady Grote adored talking to Mr. Pantitzi about the wickedness of the world as he, with his sad, cynical face, made the requisite mixture. “And our tears,” as she once expressed it, “mingle with the poisonous dye.”
The passing of the shadow produced a reaction, and, looking at herself in the glass, after Miss Armitage had gone to the telephone, she determined to have a crowded hour of glorious Mr. Pantitzi, and to introduce a rather deeper shade of red into her hair. As a girl, she had owned a superb Titian hue, but Mr. Pantitzi’s ministrations had only in part preserved it. But now was the time to start again: it had not yet “gone so far” as to render a rejuvenescence absurd, and she intensely wanted to encourage herself by presenting to the world the vivider hues of youth.
She was forty, and she owned, even with eagerness, to that exact number of years, conscious that she looked not within six years of that age which gives pause to every woman. Probably nobody believed her, for apart from the fact that she had a son of nineteen there was no record in the kindly page of Peerages which gave away what she quite freely admitted. But the right criterion of youth is the consciousness of youth, and this morning, after the passage of the shadow, she felt ten years younger than her age.... It was worth while looking the age you felt, and recalling the excitements of the early thirties, she knew that she could live back into those agitating days, if her hair would back her up. At the moment it had got a little cendré; there was a dullness as of ashes about it. But with an hour to spare she would rectify all that.
The room where she sat adjoined her bedroom, on the other side of it was her bathroom; beyond that again was her maid’s room. It was not quite an ideal arrangement, since she had to pass through her sitting-room to reach her bathroom, but the little suite formed a corner of the house, and was pleasantly withdrawn by baize doors and a little passage of its own from the big corridor. Her maid, as a matter of fact, never slept in the room beyond the bathroom, but only used it as a sort of dress-wardrobe, and sewing-room by day. In fact, the little nest of rooms was really a sort of flat, an island of her own in the great hotel of a house. No one penetrated there uninvited: if anyone from the rest of the house, even Gracie or Grote, wanted to see her, inquiry must first be made over the silver and white enamel telephone that stood on her table as to whether she was disengaged.... Silver and white were indeed the only two colours used in the furnishing and decoration of the room. The floor was painted white, and on it were strewn white skins: the walls were of white boiseries with silver panels: there were silver brocade chairs and chairs of white embroidery: silver fire-dogs stood on the white-tiled hearth, and Gracie the consistent used to tell her that she should have the logs of wood white-washed. Without accurately knowing why, she, with all her vivid colour-scheme of life, felt an intense satisfaction in this uncoloured nest that somehow represented her, and, as all rooms should be, was a projection of herself.