A Comedy of Masks: A Novel

by Ernest Christopher Dowson; Arthur Moore

CHAPTER XXVI

If Eve could have mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so that for the outward world it would still present the same uncompromising surface, so that no inquisitive or bungling touch could bring to light the grim, disfiguring fracture which it had sustained, it is probable that she would have chosen this part, and hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of all save those who were so inseparably connected with the tragedy of that autumnal afternoon. But it was so completely shattered, the pieces were so many; and, worst of all, some of them were lost. To forget! What a world of bitter irony was in the word! And she could not even bury her illusions quietly and unobserved of uncharitable eyes; there was the sordid necessity of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts to be fashioned, and the half-truths to be uttered, which bore an interpretation so far more damning than the full measure which it seemed so hard to give.

Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on the alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than before, had soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere; an explanation had been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat in its least attractive features by Eve's natural reticence, had gone to swell the volume of similar experiences recorded in Mrs. Sylvester's brain. That she felt a genuine sorrow for Rainham is certain, for the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral atmosphere, as she emerged from the door of her daughter's house after this momentous interview, drawing her furs about her with a little shiver before she stepped into her well-appointed brougham. She had the air of saying to herself, "Dear me, dear, dear! it's very sad, it's very terrible; but I! how clever I have been, and how beautifully I behaved!" There was nothing particularly novel from her point of view in the story which she had just extracted from her reluctant daughter; the situation called for an edifying, comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what might have been expected—though this (which was somewhat hard) did not render the episode any the less reprehensible.

And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's homeward drive, and the half hour's tête-à-tête, before dinner, which she had utilized for an exchange of confidences with her son.

"I didn't know that there had been an—an exposure," he said, as he stood, a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little drawing-room. "But I had an idea that it was inevitable from—from certain information which I have received. In fact, I have been rather puzzled. You must do me the justice to remember that I never liked the man—though he had his good points," he added a little awkwardly, as inconvenient memories of the many kindnesses which he had received at Rainham's hands thrust themselves upon him. "But I'm afraid he's hardly the sort of person one ought to be intimate with. Especially you, and Eve. Of course, for her it's out of the question."

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Sylvester decisively; "and they haven't seen him since, I need hardly say. In fact, they haven't even heard of him. They haven't told a soul except me, and of course I sha'n't tell anybody," the lady concluded with a sigh, as she remembered how difficult she had found it to drive straight home without breaking the vow of secrecy which her daughter had exacted from her.

Whatever Mrs. Sylvester may have thought, it is certain that the interview, from which she enjoyed the impression of having emerged so triumphantly, had brought anything but consolation to her daughter, whose first impulse was to blame herself quite angrily for having admitted to her secret places, after all so natural a confidante.

Nor had Eve repented of this feeling. As time went on she found her mother's somewhat too obviously complacent attitude more and more exasperating, and she compared her want of reserve very unfavourably with her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his reasons for a certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also, she cherished something of resentment, for he, too, more especially in collaboration with her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly, moral reflections, which, although for the most part no names were mentioned, were evidently not directed generally and at hazard against the society of which the Colonel and Mrs. Sylvester formed ornaments so distinguished.

Upon one afternoon, when Christmas was already a thing of the past, and the days were growing longer, it was with considerable relief that Eve heard the outer door close upon her mother, leaving her alone in the twilight of the smaller portion of the double drawing-room. She was alone, for Mrs. Sylvester had been the last to depart of a small crowd of afternoon callers, and Dick was interviewing somebody—a frame-maker, a model, or a dealer—in the studio. She sat with a book unopened in her hand, gazing intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her face, giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd. Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs. Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by sharp-eyed journalists at the play-houses on "first nights"; her carriage-horses performed extensive nightly pilgrimages in the regions of Kensington and Mayfair; and she had made a reputation for her dressmaker. And already she realized that her efforts to live outside herself were futile; moments like these must come, and the knowledge that, in spite of her countless friends and voluminous visiting list, she was alone.

Her mother? Dick? After all, they were only in the position of occupying somewhat exceptionally prominent places on the visiting-list.