“Anyhow,” said Cheriton, in the bounty of his heart, “Lascelles is your man. Tell the wife I say so.”
When Cheriton came to reflect upon George’s attitude, that is, as far as his prescience could discern it, he felt that the position of affairs called for less decisive action than Caroline Crewkerne had indicated. His interview with her that morning, however, had the effect of crystallizing his ideas. He had now definitely made up his mind that George Betterton should not marry Miss Perry.
CHAPTER XXIII
MUFFIN MAKES HER APPEARANCE AT PEN-Y-GROS CASTLE
IT was now July, and in spite of Goodwood, and Lord’s, and a constant succession of parties, Miss Perry remained faithful in her allegiance to the Acacias. Her attendance at the wooden structure in the small Balham back garden was not absolutely necessary, because the picture was in quite an advanced stage, but there can be no question that her presence was a great aid to the artist. As a rule, Lord Cheriton conceived it to be his duty to accompany her on these pilgrimages. With that disinterested benevolence, for which he was well known, he feared lest the mazes of traffic in which the vast metropolis abounded should overwhelm that ingenuous but charming child of nature. And further, he seemed to find Mrs. Lascelles a singularly agreeable woman.
While the great things of art were toward across the garden, Mrs. Lascelles and Lord Cheriton would sit in the tiny drawing-room with the French window open to the grass plot, and the fierceness of the obtrusive Balham sunshine mitigated by a sunblind, striped green and red. Here in a couple of wicker-work chairs with ingenious arrangements for the feet they could recline, with half an eye upon the wooden structure at the other side of the lawn, where the wonderful Miss Perry was just visible in chiaroscuro through the open door. They discoursed of the great days when Cheriton was a younger son, and at the Embassy at Paris, and used to wear a stripe down the leg of his trousers.
The world was younger in those days, and giants lived in it. That fellow Gautier, who used to swagger at the play in a coat of plum-colored velvet and a yellow dicky; and the dandies, the poets, the painters, the musicians, the men in politics and diplomacy, the gay, careless, brilliant, cosmopolitan company that thronged the French capital before the Fall—yes, those were the days to live in and to remember! But where were they now? Where were the snows of the year before last?
Let us drink of the cup, for we know not what the morrow holds for us, was the burden of Cheriton’s reflections. He had seen the great hulking beslobbered Germans at Versailles in ’71, and he had seen the mutilated city after peace.
“War is so bête,” said he. “And everything is that makes us unhappy. I don’t believe that any fragrant thing ever sprang out of misery. All the things we live for are wrought of happiness. I am sure, Mrs. Lascelles, it gave you great pleasure to write the first chapter of your novel.”
Jim’s mother smiled charmingly. She had been prevailed upon to read her simple and unpretending narrative of life as she saw it, which could find no publisher, because “there was not enough in it” for the public taste.
“We must respect the public,” said Cheriton. “And of course we must respect those who diagnose its need. But what a joy it must have been to you to compose your little prelude to, shall I say, the works of Stendhal!”