“Beyond that definition cynicism cannot go,” said Olive, ceasing to smile.
“What a pity!” said Herbert. “At any rate, it is true as far as it goes. To call Miss O’Reilly’s hair chameleon-colored would be considered cynical. Yet it is but accurate observation. The inaccurate observer of life would call it auburn, not seeing that it is only auburn pro tem., and that it goes through as many editions as her books. Similarly, to call her complexion hand-painted—”
“Would be rudeness,” interrupted Olive, more severely, “especially as I heard her asking Mrs. Wyndwood to introduce to her the young man who looked so much like the hero of one of her novels.”
“Ah, that puts another complexion on the matter,” said Herbert, lightly. Under cover of the confusion of feminine compliment that greeted the quick sally, Matthew Strang slipped away, leaden-hearted, from the sight of the smiles and the sound of the laughter. Even had he been free, what chance would he have had, pitted against his brilliant cousin? He knew himself a silent man, scarcely speaking, unless abnormally moved, much less scintillating. He had only one talent—one poor talent for expressing the Beautiful to one sense—and this one talent he had prostituted. Everything grew black to his morbid mood. The dying afternoon, cool, sun-glinted, had no beauty for him; the speckless grooms outside the door irritated him; the shining carriages dashing along the great arteries of the West End, bearing their lolling occupants to dress and dinner, stirred him to something of the same revolt that he had felt when he had walked the metropolis of wealth and fashion in broken boots. After all, he had never really entered this circle of pleasure, it had always been a fairy-ring he could not step into. Beautiful as his boots were externally, there had always been a nail, a pebble inside; that adverse atom which, according to the philosopher, suffices to destroy happiness. His had always been a life of labor, of misery. He was still of the down-trodden classes, of those whom fate, if not man, grinds down, whose lives slip by in a vain yearning for the sun, who see happiness as a phantasm that is only solid for others, and love as the mocking mirage of a beauty that is far away. He was angry—so unreasonably angry that the unreason seemed a reason for fresh anger with himself. And he was angry, not only with himself, but with Herbert, with the world, aye, with Eleanor Wyndwood and her idle, hare-brained visitors, reeking of the toilet-table, chattering of poems, pictures, and symphonies.
The thought of his mother came up from dim recesses of memory—still babbling in the asylum that was her haven of refuge after a life of storm and stress and sorrow and weary watchings for a vagrant mate—and he was jealous of Eleanor for her sake, jealous of her beauty, her breeding, her wealth, her fine dresses, her carriage, her fashionable visitors; jealous of all that made her different from his mother, of all that made her life fuller, freer, higher, richer—of all, in fine, that made him love her! Ah, God, how he loved her! He could scarcely keep back the hysteric sobs that swelled at his throat. But they had always been shut out from the sunshine, his mother and he. Happiness! oh, to clasp it, to hold it tight! Nothing counted except happiness—ambition, success, art, money, alike vain gauds, shadows. He walked past his turning, and far beyond. Lights began to twinkle in the great tired city; the summer evening brooded, fresh and cool, over the vast stretches of dusty stone. When at last he reached his studio the sun had set. He saw the pale rose-glow, mystically tender, at the end of the long suburban avenue of green trees and yellow street-lamps; it spoke to him of peace and rest and resignation, and some secret beauty behind all.
Not many days later his restless feet took him again to the Mayfair house. He would speak out—at some opportunity which the shrewd, kindly Olive would not fail to afford him—he would tell Eleanor all she meant to him, how she was becoming the pivot of his thought, how she and she alone might inspire his art to higher purpose. He would not ask for love, only for a noble friendship; he needed an understanding soul to sympathize with his inmost self, his aspirations, his agonies. He had always been hedged in by thick barriers of ice, through which no human soul had ever pierced. No one knew what tinder for divine fires lay awaiting the spark within, nor how cold and lonely he felt in his glacial isolation.
But at first his visit threatened to be even more disappointing than the last. Another man was taking tea—or rather, eating nougat with Mrs. Wyndwood and Miss Regan—young and fascinating of feature, but with a fatal air of the minor poet. And a poet, indeed, he proved to be: a poet of considerable pretensions, who might win the bays if only he could get over his unfortunate appearance, which seemed to tie him down to sugared prettiness and elegant concetti. Matthew Strang had read one of his dainty, gilt-edged volumes, wherein dapper lyrics posed in the centre of broad-margined pages, and he wondered resentfully why Mrs. Wyndwood did not lecture him into spirituality instead of feeding him with nougat, which his poetry already resembled. But though Harold Lavender was accommodating enough to go soon, Matthew Strang profited little by his retirement from the field, for Eleanor seemed to be in a freakish mood, as if the contagion of Olive had infected her, or the nougat had made her terrestrial, and she played a lively second to her vivacious friend in recapitulating the charms of their dog, Roy, a slumbrous Scotch collie, that he had barely noted before, but which now became the climax of creation.
“We’ve only hired him,” Mrs. Wyndwood explained. “Lady Arthur, to whom the house belongs, asked us to take charge of him, so he’s in the inventory. His father was a pedigree dog, and won five hundred guineas.”
“Yes, her ladyship had him catalogued completely, lest we should lose a bit of him,” said Olive, rolling the animal over, and digging her fingers affectionately into his fur and pulling his ears and his paws and his tail to illustrate her recital of his perfections. “Brown-and-white coat—the brown of an autumn filbert, with a collar and shirt-front of white fur over skin as pink as rosebuds—look at it—black gums and palate, with the whitest of teeth, canines, I believe; a tail of russet and black and white that waves like a palm-tree. Observe the little black ring; we identified him once by it, though we had never noticed it before, had we, my beauty?”
Mrs. Wyndwood took up the ball. “He was lost, stolen, or strayed, and information was lodged at a police-station that a collie with a black ring round his tail had been found. We told the superintendent ours had no such ring.”