“I thought you were an anti-imperialist and an anarchist?”
The tired woman laughed, “So I am.... It was tremendous fun being all the right things when I was young and anarchists were rather few. I expect you’re a cubist and a communist and agnostic and don’t believe in marriage. So many of them don’t. Then they get married to prove the soundness of their theory and get hurt; then they’re annoyed because they’re hurt and get interested in being married. Most amusing to watch.... The world’s got past me and I’m frightened by it.—We had such a good time railing at the Victorians and repression. And now all the clever young things tell their emotions to cab drivers and invent emotions if they haven’t any.—All the gestures have changed and I feel—You look rather like Mark. You know he was stopping at Winchester when he heard Margot’s father’d been killed. I tried to shock him. He.... Oh, do go and watch them rehearse, Gurdy!... I’ve just come from church.... The music’s made me silly. I don’t know what I’m saying....” The artifice smashed into a sob. Gurdy swung and hurried across the hall. Certainly, the woman’s illusion of pain was notably real.
He sat smoking on a window seat of the library and tried to follow the rehearsal at the other end of the wide room. The men and girls strode about talking loudly. A slender man in grey broke the chatter from time to time and gave directions in a level, pleasing voice. This must be Cosmo Rand, the husband of Cora Boyle. Gurdy looked at him with interested scorn but the amateurs took his orders in docile peace and only Margot answered him from a deep green chair, “Rot, Cossy! I’m supposed to be lost in thought, aren’t I? Then I shan’t look interested when Stella giggles. Go on, Stella.”
Gurdy became intent on her posture in the dark chair. She was smoking and her hair appeared through the vapour like solid, carved substance. She seemed fixed, a black and yellow figure on the green. A vaporous halo rose in the lamplight above her head. He stirred when she spoke again, shifting, and a silver buckle sent a spark of light flitting across the rug. He remembered that she had Italian blood from her grandmother. She looked Italian. Mark was right. She was beautiful in no common fashion. The other girls vibrating against the shelves were mere bodies, gurgling voices.—The butler stole down the room and spoke to Cosmo Rand who, in turn, spoke aloud.
“I say, Margot, Cora’s brought the motor around. Might I have her in? Chilly and she’s been feeling rather seedy.”
A tall woman in black velvet entered as if this were a stage and reposed herself in a chair. Gurdy had never seen Cora Boyle perform. She was familiar from pictures when she drew up a veil across an obvious beauty of profile and wide eyes. Presently she commenced a cigarette and the motion of lighting it was admirably effected. An expanding, heavy scent of maltreated tobacco welled from the burning roll between her fingers. The line of her brows was prolonged downward with paint. The whole mask was tinted to a false and gleaming pallor. Grey furs were arranged about the robustness of her upper body. She was older than Mark, Gurdy’s father said. She must be passing forty. She should be weary of tight slippers. A glance stopped Gurdy’s meditation. He looked away at Margot’s effortless stroll along the imagined footlights. Cora Boyle spoke to him in a flat and pinched whisper.
“Isn’t your name Bernamer?” He bowed. She came to sit with him on the window seat and dusted ash from her cigarette into the Chinese bowl. Her eyes explored his face with a civil amusement. “You look awfully like your father. You startled me. Let me see.... You and Miss Walling live with Mark, don’t you? Sweet, isn’t she? And how is Mark? I’ve played over here so long that I’ve rawther lost touch. Mr. Carlson’s still alive?”
“Oh, yes. He’s bedridden, you know? Lives with Mark.”
She inhaled smoke, nodding.
“That’s so characteristic of Mark, isn’t it? But of course, Carlson was kind to him. The dear old man’s bark was much worse than his bite. Good heavens how frightened I was of him! I see that Mark acted in a couple of Red Cross shows? I expect that all his old matinée girls turned out and cried for joy.... But I do think that Mark was something more than a flapper’s dream of heaven. Still, he must like management better. He never thought more of acting than that it was a job, did he?” She sighed, “One has to think more of it than that to get on.”