“At a tea shop.”
The half amused eyes of the hostess suddenly encountered those of Mrs. Spencer-Jobling. Among her fellow guests the theory was growing that not only was Lady Elfreda suffering from a queer form of “side” but also that she was a little “cracked.” Certainly her manner was most odd and her behavior matched it.
Girlie, however, was now at bay. She took her seat in the midst of her critics, sipped tea and pecked at bread and butter. Never in her life had she felt so wretched. The affair was getting unbearable. As she suffered the rather scathing politeness of Mrs. Spencer-Jobling and the icy tones of the other ladies her mind ran upon suicide. But the demon within bade her go on. There was Shelley’s authority that what poets learn in suffering they teach in song. Of novelists, no doubt, that maxim was equally true.
XXII
The ladies were still drinking tea when a footman ushered in a visitor.
“Mrs. Lancelot.”
The elderly mistress of Amory Towers aroused the curiosity of even the professional blasèes who greeted her. She was “County.” They might seem to scorn her in the way they scorned all things and everybody, their veiled amusement had a touch of malice no doubt, but there was also Mrs. Lancelot’s faculty of engaging the interest of all the world and his wife to be reckoned with.
She was like nothing upon this earth—the yellow chrysanthemum lady, Mrs. Spencer-Jobling and Mrs. Conrad Jones were agreed upon that!—yet in her queer way the old dame stood for something. What she stood for was, no doubt, a bygone phase. She might have stepped out of a page of Punch for the year 1890. Her dress with its decided waist and its antediluvian tuckers round wrist and neck was of amethyst colored merino, a necklet of amethyst hung upon her ample chest, her hair with a Queen Alexandra fringe was barber’s blocked after the manner of royalty, her toque baffled all description, but it had pansies in it, and her manner, plain and practical rather than “grand,” carried a weight that her odd appearance should have countervailed, yet somehow failed to do so. Mrs. Lancelot, no doubt, was une figure pour rire, but only those very accomplished in the world could have got her “range” with a nicety sufficient to take advantage of the fact. Her present critics, for example, inclined to scorn as they were, could not help being fettered a little by a secret sense of their own inadequacy.
A dutiful neighbor, Mrs. Lancelot had called once on the yellow chrysanthemum lady and the call had been promptly returned. There, however, the intercourse had ceased. Somehow they had hardly set each other’s genius. But this afternoon there was no hint of that fact in Mrs. Lancelot’s entrance or of Mrs. Minever’s reception of her. The visitor was cautious, almost comically cautious, as she always was when not quite sure of her bearings; the yellow chrysanthemum lady was slightly more exuberant than usual, as she was apt to be when cherishing a similar doubt on her own part. In the sight of Mrs. Spencer-Jobling, rather declassèe daughter of a not undistinguished sire, it was as good as a play to see them together: this resolute survivor of a discredited phase of human history—the august visitor’s relations had held more than one job about the court of Victoria the Good—and the forthcoming hostess who made no secret of the fact that she was bored by “frills” and “fine shades.”
The reason of Mrs. Lancelot’s visit to Clavering Park, if not immediately clear, was soon revealed. A discerning but imperious eye fixed itself upon Girlie, who, seated a little apart from the others in a bergère chair, was feeling a strong desire to take cover inside her tea cup.