Because she was only twenty-one, thoroughly healthy and full of life, she danced round the room holding the paper to her breast. Her eyes were alight with happiness; her soft lips were curved with the joy of love and life.
Then having danced her little Te Deum to the music of her heart, she waltzed out of the door with a cheery shout for Billie. She would take him for a walk and give him joy, too.
CHAPTER V
GREEN BAY-LEAVES
Lady Currey was not at all pleased with her son’s engagement, and she said so. She came to town for this purpose, and made Gilbert give her lunch while she strongly disapproved, from the hors d’œuvres to the coffee. She had the soulless good looks which Time, as if contemptuous, neglects to touch. And because she could afford to do so, she purposely dressed in a middle-aged, sober fashion which she considered dignified. She had a great sense of her own importance, and the modern grandmother of fifty in ninon and picture-hats was to her extreme anathema. She and Circe were much the same age. Sybil Daunton-Pole had flashed into society like a brilliant comet, a trail of admirers behind her, when Gilbert’s mother, the amiable daughter of the then Home Secretary, had been one of the small and unremarked stars that dot the social firmament.
Lady Currey had brought her husband a considerable sum of money, but the only thing for which she needed money was to gratify her craze for old china. If she had any heart or soul it was given to her specimens of priceless Ming and old Chelsea. She spent hours every day dusting her cabinets. Her only idea of travel was the opportunity it gave her for visiting museums and picking up bargains in rare porcelain.
For Gilbert she had a pleasant feeling of proprietorship—much the same as she felt for the wonderful famille rose-jar of the Kien-Lung period which she had herself unearthed in a visit to the East. Gilbert was an only child, and he had been little or no trouble. This was the first time he had disappointed her. When other mothers complained of their sons, of escapades at Eton and Oxford, or premature and undesirable love affairs, of monumental debts and lack of family pride, Lady Currey’s lips always took on an added shade of complacency as she thought of Gilbert and the even and admirable tenour of his way. It was entirely becoming that Gilbert should be so satisfactory and in some way reflected well on herself, just as did the discovery of the famille rose-jar. Lady Currey liked everything around her to be comme il faut, not the elastic comme il faut of fashion, but rather the correctness of the copybook and the ten commandments. Curiously enough, engrossed in herself and her china, she had never until quite recently speculated, as do most mothers, on her son’s probable choice of a wife. When she had thought of it, she had dismissed the idea with the assurance that Gilbert would choose wisely and soberly and to his advantage. It was not in her to feel any jealousy of the woman Gilbert should love.
“I am grieved,” she said, sitting very upright—she rarely used the back of a chair—“I am grieved to think that you intend to marry into the Iverson family. The Iversons are not a family of which I—or any right-thinking people—approve.”
“But, mother,” said Gilbert, rather taken aback, for he had become used to her invariable approval, “I am not marrying the family. I am marrying Claudia.”