“Mr. Lascelles,” said Lady Crewkerne, speaking very distinctly, “I have since thought that matter over carefully, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no need for me to revise the judgment I formed at the time. You were very much in the wrong. All the same, I have pleasure in accepting your apology. Burden, we will return. I feel the heat.”
Things having been placed on this amicable basis, the mistress of Pen-y-Gros Castle withdrew with her retinue, and Muffin returned to the water.
CHAPTER XXVII
REVEL IS HELD AT PEN-Y-GROS CASTLE
MODEST revel was held that evening at the Castle. Jim’s mother erred so much on the side of youth that Jim was disposed to blame her for wearing her best gown. She knew as well as anybody that she always did look young in her best gown, almost to the point of impropriety. It had been obtained in Paris for one thing, not very recently, it is true, for Jim was then a gay and careless student at L’École des Beaux Arts; but, even at that time of day, the dressmakers of Paris were said to possess a lightness of touch, a grace, and a felicity which made for youth. In her heart, there is reason to believe, Jim’s mother considered her son to be unduly sensitive upon the score of her appearance.
Caroline Crewkerne was moderately civil to Jim’s mother. But of course she wore a certain number of airs, as she did invariably when she had to do with persons of her own sex whom she did not consider to be her equals socially. But perhaps there is no need to blame her. The chameleon can change its spots, but it is not really more respected than the leopard. Caroline Crewkerne was three and seventy, and habit was strong in her. She belonged to a period when airs were more in vogue, when the world was not so democratic as it is in these days, when human destinies were more unequal.
If Jim’s mother was a little amused by the “grand manner”—and doubtless she was, because she had seen something of Cosmopolis, and was therefore not exactly a provincial—she was too good-natured and too well bred to show it. But it is to be feared that Jim resented it. He blamed himself for being fool enough to come. Jim had at least one of the essentials necessary to success in life. He was an excellent hater. He hated well, and he hated heartily, and he forgave with difficulty. And certainly he hated this old woman and all her works.
A common and watchful friend in fine lawn and pomatum stood a little apart to witness Caroline Crewkerne offer two fingers and to witness Jim Lascelles accept them. Jim got through the ordeal without any real loss of credit, although his mother knew that he was angry. However, there were compensations. George Betterton greeted the young fellow in quite a hearty manner; Miss Burden beamed upon him, and her appearance was singularly agreeable with “a romantic tale on her eyelashes”; while the Miss Perrys, of course, were triumphs of female loveliness. The elder of the twain, in her “play-acting frock,” as Aunt Caroline called it, and with her daffodil-colored mane done low down in her neck in a most remarkable simulation of the eighteenth century, by the hand of the incomparable but exacting Fanchette, was enough to haunt any young painter for many days to come. Muffin, too, with her brilliant health and her open manners, with a coloring only less wonderful than that of her sister, and with a physique pure of line and of a spreading stalwart symmetry, looked every inch of her a veritable younger sister of the goddess. Fanchette had been coaxed, perhaps by an inborn love of her art, to embellish Muffin’s yellow mane also with the hand of her great talent, so that it also sat low down in her neck in a fashion fit to inspire a sonnet. Muffin’s frock was of pure white—at least, it was of that hue when it was first purchased. And although it was cheap and countrified and by no means new, and it was rent in three places, and was very short in the sleeves and very tight all over, it really suited her to perfection, as somehow everything did that she wore.
Lord Cheriton was delighted.
“Mrs. Lascelles,” said he, at the first opportunity, “what do you think of our Miss Gunnings?”
Jim’s mother sighed a little.