In the same way too she used her friends’ gifts; those who were musical had to play the piano or the violin or sing at her concerts at Rye House, while the less-gifted might confine themselves to taking guinea tickets; those with histrionic gifts were expected to place them at her service, and even go so far as to buy the dresses in which they would appear, and pay their fares to distant parts of the country in order to assist deserving objects in the manufacturing districts; poets, major and minor alike, wrote odes which the less poetical had to buy at really scandalous prices; those with gardens filled her bazaars with the finest orchids and all that was best and rarest in their greenhouses; and though Peggy was ruthless, persistent, and merciless in her demands nobody ever resented or refused them, and only when goaded past all bearing—as, for instant, when she wanted to give a bazaar during Ascot week—told her that, though she appeared not to know it, there were limits. For, as has been said, she had the most valuable of all social gifts—namely, the habit of enjoying herself, which is quite irresistible, and though she did not spare them, she was even more merciless to herself.
It must be remarked too that without taking a cynical view of the efforts and services of her friends, it was unquestionably a very comfortable thing for those of otherwise worldly inclinations to be friends of Peggy’s, for she did not confine herself, as might be gathered, to making the lower classes more comfortable at the cost of all comfort to the upper, but she ministered with the same eager unwearying kindness to their tastes, and if those who were musical, for instance, lent her their talents in aid of her schemes, she on her side was always ready to lend them her opera-box, and entertained largely both in town and country. She was also in this caravanserai of London one of the very few people who really “mattered,” and though her wealth and the way in which she spent it might be supposed to have something to do with this, such a supposition would be entirely false where there were so many more wealthy than she who would spend their uttermost farthing to “matter,” yet never succeeded in doing so. What mattered was her wisdom and her charm, and the cachet so seldom won, of a woman of this kind who instead of spending a busy life in amusing herself, spent it seriously in ameliorating the condition of the people, while at the same time she gave and went to dances, entertained and was entertained and was entertaining. Socially she enjoyed herself immensely, and with her big house, her genius as hostess, her deep-rooted desire that other people should enjoy themselves, especially at her expense, she was on a pinnacle in her own world, while, like some skilful circus-rider of two horses, she used all this to sell her guinea tickets and make people buy the leadless glaze of her innocuous dinner-services. She would, in fact, couple her invitation to a week-end party—not at the sequestered cottage at Cookham, but at the big house at Kingston—with a request for a couple of pianoforte solos from some renowned player at the forthcoming concert in aid of some specialised sort of cripples in a manner of which the significance could scarcely be missed.
Peggy had the rather rare and wholly enviable faculty of being able to sit down and think, and when sitting to arrange her thoughts, and having arranged the particular strain of them which occupied her, to dismiss them again. Thus when she left Cookham the following day in order to open a bazaar at the Waynfleet Hall in the afternoon, she lunched in the train, arranged her thoughts, which were concerned with the speech she was going to make, and when she arrived at Paddington was at leisure again, and able to give herself up to that most entrancing form of entertainment—namely, the mere watching of the busy, jostling life of the streets.
But how that spectacle enthralled her! To her keen and vivid mind there was no such delectable pasture on which to browse, and not even the liquid, dustless lawn and river were so entrancing. Much as she loved the swift play of mind on mind, much as she loved the mere quietude of Thames and green forest, or the idle, nonsensical, vivid intercourse with friends, or with friends the grave note that was often struck, there was nothing more attune to her than this sight of the eager crowded streets, alive with strangers, each an enigma to her and not less an enigma to himself. Hugh had once said to her that he always got up early even in this London of late hours for fear of missing something, and that sentiment appeared to her wholly admirable. What he was afraid of “missing” neither he nor she knew; indeed, had it been a definite “missing” it must have been an engagement or appointment of some sort, which would have been devoid of romance. It was the very vagueness of it that to her half-practical, half-Celtic mind was so attractive. “Something might have happened,” he had said, “and how dreadful to have been asleep like a pig!” That was so like him, and yet it was like him too, though unsatisfactory, that he should do nothing definite with this life, that he should refuse this wonderful offer to sing at Covent Garden. Artist-like, he had for the last four years absolutely devoted himself to the cultivation of his voice, spending the five winter months in every year in the desolating town of Frankfort, so as to allow no distraction to interfere with his lessons, and now when a practical reward for his industry was offered him he refused it. To her, as to Edith, it seemed almost a crime; a miracle of a voice had been given him, and also part, though not all, of the artistic temperament which, like genius, has unlimited capacities for taking pains. But what had been left out was ambition; he had, strong as an instinct, the internal need of learning all he could of the art of singing, but not the wish to dazzle and hold the world. It was for singing’s sake that for five months in every year he had cheerfully undergone the incomparable tedium of Frankfort, not for the sake of knowing that on the other side of the footlights the huge hushed house, packed from stall to gallery, was holding its breath in expectation while he stood before the masters in the meadow by the Pegnitz, or, as Tristan, strained dying eyes over the untenanted blue of the Cornish sea for the ship that came not, or voyaged miraculously on the swan to where by the Scheldt the maiden Elsa called on her unknown and nameless champion. That at present anyhow—the sting and goad of ambition, of impressing himself on others—had not awoke in him; he did not in the least care whether the world knew that he sang as long as Reuss knew it and he knew it. To Edith his refusal seemed criminal, for never before, as far as she knew, had a man’s voice arrived so early at maturity, and perhaps at perfection. At last the ideal Wagner hero had come, one who was still young, still with all the glow and thrill of youth on him; at last it was possible to see a Tristan who was not middle-aged and obese, and a Lohengrin who should indeed be the ideal of a girl’s dream; and these possibilities were all ruled out because Hugh “didn’t want to.” It was as if the key that unlocked some priceless treasure was put into the hands of an idle, irresponsible child, who might throw open the jewelled case, but simply did not care to turn the key.
Peggy made an effort to bring back her thoughts into their more usual channels, for at this point she became aware again that she was driving down Pall Mall and wasting her time terribly in thinking about Hugh instead of devouring the crowded pavements, and she turned her attention to them. There was an elderly man exactly like a rabbit, talking with a curious nibbling movement of the mouth to a middle-aged woman whose face was like a chest of drawers, square, obviously useful, with knobs on it. Then she passed a hansom in which was sitting Arthur Crowfoot, one of those red-hot faddists who spend their whole time in pursuing health-giving practices. He had spent all April in deep-breathing, and one was liable to come across him even in the streets, or sitting on a little green chair in the Park, looking rather apoplectic because he was holding his breath for ten seconds previous to expelling it slowly through his left nostril while his right was firmly closed by his finger. Then he gave up deep-breathing, and devoted May to the open-air cure, being quite well already, with the result that he caught a dreadful cold. That, however, he had remedied by giving up eating flesh and living on a curious gray paste made of nuts and drinking water in sips for an hour or two every day. At this moment he was observing his tongue rather anxiously in the looking-glass of his hansom, and so did not see Peggy. She registered the premonition that nut-paste would probably be soon abandoned. How heavenly people were!
Then—she was really in luck—she found all sorts of enchanting things. A circus was going somewhere, and the elephant at this colossal moment did not want to go. Instead he wanted buns, and with a view to getting them had taken his stand, kindly but extremely firmly on the pavement opposite the Guards’ Club and had inserted his trunk through the open window of the smoking-room; he picked up a Pall Mall, waved it hysterically in the air, and then ate it. A little further on two intensely English-looking men, appearing to be rather annoyed with each other, wanted to pass, the one going east, the other west. But, with aggrieved and offended faces, they danced a sort of sideways minuet in front of each other, choosing the same side simultaneously. Then a man on a bicycle approached, with a tied-up look about his face. Peggy could not imagine why he looked so tied-up, until a hideous convulsion seized him and he sneezed. The pavement had been lately watered, his bicycle skidded, and he fell off. And how she longed to go back and see whether the elephant had any more beautiful plans!
Mrs. Allbutt was staying while in London with her sister and brother-in-law, in the huge chocolate-coloured house in Piccadilly which Hugh had called the Clapham Junction of good works. Half a dozen families could easily have been accommodated there without coming into the contact too close for perfect liberty of action; and, as a matter of fact, friends and relations were encouraged to and did treat it rather like a hotel without bills. “For what,” as Peggy said, “is the use of dwelling in marble halls in this very central situation unless one’s friends will come and dwell there too?” So they came and dwelt, since Peggy with true hospitality besought everybody to make any arrangements they chose, to ask anybody to dinner or to go out to dinner, or to have high tea exactly as they wished without consultation or notice given to her provided only that one motor-car should be considered—as indeed it was—her private property, and not to be used without reference to her. Similarly, on days of big dinner parties she asked that the intentions of any of those staying with her should be notified as soon as convenient, so that the servants should not go mad; but in the ordinary routine, when one person was going to the opera, and another to the theatre, and a third dining quietly at home at eight, people simply went to the dining-room at the time they had appointed, and there, as by a miracle, always found that something was ready for them.
Thursday evening, in fact, the night when Andrew Robb was going to make his bow before the dramatic world, was a typical instance of an ordinary night. Lord Rye was going to the opera with his sister, and had ordered dinner for half-past seven. Peggy, Mrs. Allbutt, and Hugh were going to dine at seven, in order to be in time for the first fatal and excruciating rise of the curtain; while Frank Adams and his a week of whirl had been down to Ascot all day, and preferred to dine at home, and go to a ball afterward. Peggy herself had been delayed in a manner which it had been impossible to foresee over some charitable visit to the East End, and returned at exactly seven, meeting Edith as she came downstairs dressed on the way to her room.
“Darling, I am late,” she said, “and it wasn’t my fault. You look perfectly beautiful, and how you can be so calm! Go in with Hugh as soon as he comes, won’t you, and don’t wait for me, because we must be there in time.”
She whirled on to her room, and Edith, finding a letter or two for her on the table by the hall door, stopped to read them, and witnessed Hugh’s arrival, who, like Peggy, seemed somehow to be going faster than usual, and on dismounting instantly became involved in a dispute with the cabman.