"Take Mr. Rodney's roses, unfasten them, and put them in vases about the room."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Now spray me, Marriner."
Marriner took up a silver bottle, pressed a minute bladder, and scattered a shower of tiny scented drops over the pretty face as pale as a Pierrot; then, carrying the burden of dull-red roses, she withdrew from the room as softly as a cat.
Mrs. Verulam lay back on the coloured cushions, and closed her eyes so tightly that her forehead was wrinkled in a frown. The Admiral who lived in the next house but one was just setting bravely forth in his ducks, on which the sun shone approvingly. At the doors of many houses stood carriages, and many pretty women were stepping into them dressed for dining, concerts, or drums. The Row was fairly full of crawlers, whose dull eyes—glazed with much staring—glanced eternally around in search of food for gossip. Flowers flamed along the Park railings from the Corner to the Marble Arch, and a few unfashionable people, who were fond of plants, examined the odorous pageant in botanical attitudes that seemed strangely out of place in London. And the concert of the town continued. Its music came faintly to the ears of Mrs. Verulam, as it had come now for so many seasons. For she was twenty-nine, and had not missed a London summer since she was eighteen, except that one, eight years ago, which followed the sudden death of a husband with whom she had never been really in love.
Lying there alone, Mrs. Verulam said to herself that she was utterly sick of this concert, which each succeeding year persistently encored. She heard the distant wheels, and thought of the parties to which they were rolling. She heard the very remote music of a band; and that reminded her of the quantities of cotillons she had led, and of the innumerable faces of men that she had wiped out of mirrors with her lace handkerchief. How curiously they flashed and faded on the calm surface of the imperturbable glass, their eyes full of gay or of languid enquiry, their mouths gleaming in set society smiles!
Was it a property of cotillon mirrors, she wondered, to make all men look alike, neat, vacuous, self-satisfied? Half unconsciously she fluttered her tiny handkerchief as if she passed it across an invisible mirror. And now the surface was clean and clear, empty of masks for a moment. Then there was borne on it a big and bearded countenance. It seemed too large almost to be called a face. Hair flourished upon that countenance as prickles upon the porcupine. Large and ox-like eyes of a reddish-brown hue stared heavily out beneath brows that seemed like thatched eaves. Mrs. Verulam, in fancy, gazed upon this apparition in the mirror and laid her handkerchief aside. She would not wipe the red-brown eyes, the thick lips, the intrusive hair away. And then, suddenly, she laughed to herself, thinking of the dancing sequel to her deed of the cotillon, and of what it would be like in reality.
"Poor fellow!" she thought. "He would die in a valse. That is why I will not, dare not, wipe him out of the mirror from which I long to eliminate for ever the other faces."
And she thought of a far-off cabbage-garden somewhere on the outskirts of Berkshire, where life was surely peaceful, contemplative, and more worthy than in London. Fruits ripened there. Pears hung upon the tree and cherries slept in the sun. And the bearded face was often bent wrathfully above the hapless snail or erring maggot. At least, so Mrs. Verulam supposed. For she had never yet visited this sweet Eden of vegetables and manly labours. Some day, perhaps, she would go there. Some day! Some day! She opened her eyes and glanced up. They fell upon a pet of hers, a ruddy squirrel with a bushy tail, which scrambled in a revolving cage such as squirrels are supposed to love. Persistently the squirrel scrambled and the golden cage went round. Mrs. Verulam watched it, and her mind sprang to the obvious comparison. She saw London, the cage, herself the squirrel turning in it and longing to be free. And how she pitied the squirrel! What woman has not bowels of mercy for herself? She had revolved through so many seasons. Would she revolve through many more? Suddenly an expression of stern resolve came into the pretty Pierrot face clouded by bright hair. Mrs. Verulam thrilled with a great determination. Her manner was almost Napoleonic as she sat upright and clasped her hands together in a gesture of negation. She swept the cards on the table into a heap. She flung the notes of invitation aside. She sprang up and went over to the squirrel. He peered at her with his bright and beady little eyes.
"Tommy," she said, "listen to me. Do you know that you are like me? Do you know that I, too, am in a cage—that I, too, am turning and turning in a prison that is monotonous as a circus, in which everyone and everything must go round and round and round? I am so tired of it, Tommy; so tired of my cage. And yet, do you know, half the world is trying to get into it—and can't! Isn't that absurd? To try to get into society! Oh, Tommy——"