“May I wait, then? I came to see her,” Kate said timidly.
“Of course, my dear! You must stay to lunch.” Mrs. Drover’s naturally ceremonious manner became stiff with apprehension. “You look tired, you know; this continuous travelling must be very exhausting. And the food!... Yes; Anne ought to be back for lunch. She and Nollie went off to the Glenvers’ to see the tennis finals; didn’t they, Lilla? Of course I can’t promise they’ll be back ... but you must stay....” She rang and gave orders that another seat should be put at table. “We’re rather a large party; you won’t mind? The men are off at a polo practice at Hempstead. Dawson, how many shall we be for lunch?” she asked the butler. Under her breath she added: “Yes; champagne.” If we ever need it, she concluded in a parenthetic glance, it will be today!
The hall was already filling up with a jocund bustle of Drovers and Tresseltons. Young, middle-aged and elderly, they poured out of successive motors, all ruddy, prosperous, clamouring for food. Hardly distinguishable from the family were the week-end friends returning with them from one sportive spectacle or another. As Kate Clephane stood among them, going through the mechanical gestures of greeting and small-talk, she felt so tenuous and spectral that she almost wondered how she could be visible to their hearty senses. They were all glad to see her, all a little surprised at her being there, and all soon forgetful of their own surprise in discussing the more important questions of polo, tennis and lunch. Once more she had the impression of being hurried with them down a huge sliding stairway that perpetually revolved upon itself, and once more she recalled her difficulty in telling one of them from another, and in deciding whether it was the Tresseltons or the Drovers who had the smallest noses.
“But Anne—where’s Anne?” Hendrik Drover enquired, steering the tide of arrivals toward the shining stretch of a long luncheon-table. He put Mrs. Clephane at his left, and added, as he settled her in her seat: “Anne and Nollie went off early to the Glenver finals. But Joe was there too—weren’t you, Joe?”
He did not wait for Joe Tresselton’s answer, but addressed himself hurriedly to the lady on his right. Kate had the feeling that they all thought she had committed an error of taste in appearing among them at that particular moment, but that it was no business of theirs, after all, and they must act in concert in affecting that nothing could be more natural. The Drovers and Tresseltons were great at acting in concert, and at pretending that whatever happened was natural, usual, and not of a character to interfere with one’s lunch. When a member of the tribe was ill, the best doctors and most expensive nurses were summoned, but the illness was spoken of as a trifling indisposition; when misfortune befell any one of them, it was not spoken of at all. Taking Lilla for granted had brought this art to the highest point of perfection, and her capture of Horace Maclew had fully confirmed its usefulness.
All this flashed through Kate Clephane while she refused the champagne ordered on her behalf, and pretended to eat Maryland chicken and corn soufflé; but under the surface-rattle of her thoughts a watchful spirit brooded haggardly on the strangeness and unreality of the scene. She had come, in agony of soul, to seek her daughter, to have speech with her at all costs; and the daughter was away watching a tennis match, and no one seemed surprised or concerned. Life, even Anne’s life, was going on in its usual easy way. The girl had found her betrothed again, and been reunited to him; what would it matter to her, or to her approving family, if the intruder who for a few months had gone through the pretence of being one of them, and whose delusion they had good-naturedly abetted, should vanish again from the group? As she looked at them all, so obtuse and so powerful, so sure of themselves and each other, her own claim to belong to them became incredible even to herself. She had made her choice long ago, and she had not chosen them; and now their friendly indifference made the fact clear.
Well—perhaps it also made her own course clearer. She was as much divided from them already as death could divide her. Why not die, then—die altogether? She would tell Anne the truth, and then go away and never see her again; and that would be death....
“Ah, here they are!” Hendrik Drover called out genially. Lunch was over; the guests, scattered about in the hall and billiard-room, were lighting their cigarettes over coffee and liqueurs. Mrs. Clephane, who had drifted out with the rest, and mechanically taken her cup of coffee as the tray passed her, lifted her head and saw Anne and Nollie Tresselton. Anne entered first. She paused to take off her motor coat, glanced indifferently about her, and said to Mrs. Drover: “You didn’t wait for us, Aunt Enid? We were so late that we stopped to lunch at Madge’s—.” Then she saw her mother and her pale cheek whitened.
Mrs. Clephane’s eyes filled, and she stood motionless. Everything about her was so blurred and wavering that she dared not stir, or even attempt to set down her cup.
“Mother!” the girl exclaimed. With a quick movement she made her way through the cluster of welcoming people, and went up with outstretched arms to Mrs. Clephane.