“It is after George Bernard Shaw. It has been done before,” replied Miss H.
“Then it requires almost more courage,” I replied.
Here Mrs. W. moved the sad excerpt from the morgue to the center of the room that he of the green neckerchief might gaze at it.
“I like it,” he pronounced. “The note is somber, but it is excellent work.”
Then he took his departure with interesting abruptness. Soon the Lady R. was extending her hand in an almost pathetic farewell. Her voice was lofty, sad, sustained. I wish I could describe it. There was just a suggestion of Lady Macbeth in the sleep-walking scene. As she made her slow, graceful exit I wanted to applaud loudly.
Mrs. W. turned to me as the nearest source of interest and I realized with horror that she was going to fling her Piccasso at my head again and with as much haste as was decent I, too, took my leave.
CHAPTER IX
CALLS
It was one evening shortly after I had lunched with Mrs. W. that Barfleur and I dined with Miss E., the young actress who had come over on the steamer with us. It was interesting to find her in her own rather smart London quarters surrounded by maid and cook, and with male figures of the usual ornamental sort in the immediate background. One of them was a ruddy, handsome, slightly corpulent French count of manners the pink of perfection. He looked for all the world like the French counts introduced into American musical comedy,—just the right type of collar about his neck, the perfect shoe, the close-fitting, well-tailored suit, the mustachios and hair barbered to the last touch. He was charming, too, in his easy, gracious aloofness, saying only the few things that would be of momentary interest and pressing nothing.
Miss E. had prepared an appetizing luncheon. She had managed to collect a group of interesting people—a Mr. T., for instance, whose bête noire was clergymen and who stood prepared by collected newspaper clippings and court proceedings, gathered over a period of years, to prove that all ecclesiastics were scoundrels. He had, as he insisted, amazing data, showing that the most perverted of all English criminals were usually sons of bishops and that the higher you rose in the scale of hieratic authority the worse were the men in charge. The delightful part of it all was the man’s profound seriousness of manner, a thin, magnetic, albeit candle-waxy type of person of about sixty-five who had the force and enthusiasm of a boy.