Voysey

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Part I I

M. Splevinski, the veteran pianist, was making his way apologetically to his instrument, bowing as he went a little elaborately to the ladies over whose skirts he stumbled in his short-sighted shuffling way. The tide of conversation ebbed ; laughter unexpectedly acquired a strangeness that was almost melancholy ; the words of late talkers travelled in the lull of the gathering silence. The people in the crowded rooms changed their attitudes, and made their faces appropriately vacant. For five minutes the only sounds were those due to the wonderful execution of M. Splevinski, and, in his easier moments, to the accompaniment of the rumbling in the road below.

Then the troubled piano was at rest again, and people’s faces recovered an expression. The volume of conversation swelled, and a higher note of cheerfulness, as from rising spirits, could be caught in the voices of the company. It was as if people were not merely glad to be released from the constraint this little tribute to genius had imposed upon their attention, but were anxious to efface the memory of it, as of an act of virtue performed in public of which they were slightly ashamed.

To the general change of expression, however, which the veteran pianist produced with his closing chords, there were two conspicuous exceptions. By the portiere of a door leading from the room in which the piano stood to a smaller and

B I less crowded chamber beyond it, were the figures of two young men. One was pale, and the other was sunburnt; one was of medium height, and the other was something below it ; the one had a full prominent moustache, and the other a moustache in a stage of promise : but they had this in common, that M. Splevinski had failed to move the grave impassivity of their faces by either going to the piano or leaving it. It was some moments since they had spoken, and the attention they gave to the groups about them was clearly indifferent and superficial ; and yet they had scarcely the appearance of being bored. It seemed as if they were engaged in keeping themselves in readiness in case they should be called upon for an observation.

By and by an opportunity for speech was offered them. A young man, a little older than they, who might be twentynine, or even perhaps have reached thirty, came to their door on his way from the larger room to the small r.

“ What a busy man you are, Voysey ! ” said the shorter of the two. “ Where are you off to now ? ”

“ Why don’t you contribute a little ? ”

“ Make ourselves useful, eh ? No need to,” said the taller, slightly raising his chin as he spoke to escape the edge of his collar.

“ Your exertions seem to have affected your tie,” suggested the first.

Voysey put up his hand and rescued his tie, and brought it gently back to the centre of his shirt-front. “ How’s that ? ” he asked.

“ Oh, that’s a credit to you.”

It was not merely in the irregularity of his tie, and a certain independence in the doing of his hair, which was more abundant than his friends’, and seemed less amenable, that this young man differed from the others. They belonged to the scene superficially — decoratively, as one of them had sought to convey ; he, if disposed to claim a little liberty for himself here and there, seemed to have part in the spirit of it. In his own way, however, he too had the look of a Londoner, and indeed the worn experience of his expression might have suggested that he was even more of a Londoner than they. But the vigour of his step, and the concentration in the keen eyes under the broad strength of his forehead told a different tale, and, clearly, if he had lived well, on the whole he had not lived unwisely. He was fair ; the colour of his eyes was dark; there was in them observation of the kind from which the yield in impressions is rich : he had a small, welltrimmed moustache, high cheek-bones, slightly hollow cheeks, a pleasant mouth, while the tone of his skin gave him the look of being very lightly, but durably, browned by the sun. It was a face that women had seldom gone so far as to call good-looking, though they had sometimes thought it interesting. For men ibwas a strong, alert, intelligent face of a type to which a man of business, if at least he had had an eye for capacity as well as achievement, would have been inclined to take. It was not the face of a man of action ; it was without the urgency, the assertiveness, the suggestion of a way to make, a point to be reached, a point to be held, that marks the man of importunate ambition. If he were in pursuit of a point at all, it was more probably a point of view. And it seemed likely that of such points he might manage to seize a good many. In any case it was the face of a man whose experience had been not inconsiderable, and in approaching whom you might feel an assurance that the meeting would not turn to an encounter.

“ It is uncommonly slow,” he said.

“You do too much; you shouldn’t let people introduce you,” said the young man in whose face there was colour. “ You can get through a thing like this if you keep quiet, and don’t talk. You don’t come to these things to talk.”

Oh, our poor hostesses ! ’’

“Brooks keeps his good things for the privacy of his domestic circle,” said Brooks’s friend, he who raised his chin to avoid his collar when he spoke. “By the way, Voysey,” he went on, “ I am going down to stay with Hunter for a day or two next week ; he has set up a motor, and wants me to go and try it. You know Mrs. Hunter, don’t you ? ”

“Yes — she is delightful.”

The young man looked uncertain. “ I heard she went in for orphan girls, or women’s settlements, or something or other. Doesn’t she go about lecturing ? ”

“ She used to, I believe.”

The look of uncertainty deepened. “ I shouldn’t have thought a woman of that kind was much in Hunter’s line.”

“ No : it is he who is in her line.”

“ He is a good fellow — and so is she.”

“ You like her ? ”

“ She is delightful.”

Voysey felt a light touch on his arm. “Who is delightful ? ” asked the owner of the fan that had touched him.

“ Mrs. Hunter.”

The lady, their hostess, a tall, pretty woman of about sevenand-thirty, with unnaturally innocent blue eyes, made the least possible little face. Voysey smiled. “ I want to speak to you,” she said, moving on into the smaller room.

“ I want to introduce you to some one who doesn’t know a soul here,” she went on, when they had reached a comparatively free space under a chandelier. “ Jack has picked her husband up in the City; he is doing business with his firm, his uncle, or something ; and made me call upon her. They live at Bedford Park. They have rather a nice little house. And that’s all I know about them. I was out when she called here. Do you mind ? Jack is very anxious I should look

S after her ; and I have asked you because most nice men are so horridly ill-natured — about making themselves agreeable, I mean. You won’t find her interesting, but she’s pretty.”

Voysey was amused. ‘‘ Oh, if she’s that ! ”

Mrs. Harrington, however, seemed to penetrate the young man’s amusement. “ Ah, it’s all very well ; your turn will come one of these days,” she told him.

“ I thought my turn had come,” he answered, humbly.

“ Don’t be stupid, Bertie. Come now, and I will introduce you to her.”

Voysey followed his hostess back into the larger room, past the two sentinels at the door, and a knot of animated middle-aged men that had gathered by the piano ; past tall men in awkward attitudes who were talking to women in low chairs, and young men sitting with their elbows on their knees, showing a good deal of white wristband, talking to women who were fanning themselves ; past unusual-looking people whose presence seemed a trifle difficult to account for, and girls with the colour of the country and the set features of the town ; past older ladies who showed an anxiety of expression and had a general air of being on guard, and older ladies still who appeared to be enjoying themselves ; past M. Splevinski, who was sitting between an attentive old lady with beautiful white hair and an even stranger man than himself who was a popular preacher: followed his hostess through the packed groups down the length of the hot, over-crowded room to a distant corner where, by an arrangement of silk and flowers, two ladies were sitting on a diminutive sofa. The younger, who was the daughter of his hostess, a girl of eighteen with older eyes than her mother’s, immediately got up, passing Voysey with a curious little look of recognition ; and, a moment or two later, he occupied the place she had left.

He was not without courage, and was not by any means without resources, but at the first glance at Mrs. Detmond — whose name, by the way, he had failed to catch — he suffered a presentiment of difficulty. She was not without personal advantages — Mrs. Harrington had not gone too far ; she had a pretty head, pretty hair, a pale smooth cheek, and eyes in which (this was how he himself put it) the feminine virtues were not too conspicuous : but he felt sure she was without conversation. She seemed to receive him with a mental drawing back, as it were, a kind of intimation that she wished him to understand she was in no way taking the field. If he came on, it must be upon his own responsibility. And he found it curious that a woman who had so much on her side, who had, so to speak, so good a right to be there, should suffer from this excessive diffidence. And the more curious because in spite of herself, in spite of her shyness, she had a little air of taking the field, she produced a definiteness of impression. She appeared to be tall, and though she was still in the early twenties, her person was developed and mature — mature indeed almost to the point of suggesting a hint at the approach of the matronly.

“ No, I don’t know many people here,” he was saying. “ I have been introduced to one or two — not many. But I know our hostess,” he added.

Mrs. Detmond looked surprised. “ Doesn’t everybody ? ”

“ Not by any means. And there are very few of us who are not a little afraid of having to talk to her.”

‘‘To Mrs. Harrington ? ”

“ Only because she is our hostess, not because she is Mrs. Harrington. Only to-night, I mean. Hosts and hostesses are mildly taboo.”

Mrs. Detmond’s surprise deepened. She had a look of drawing still further back, of a more complete rejection of responsibility. She held her black fan for a moment very still on the lap of her black dress. Her shyness was of the kind that makes people sit very still. Then, as the little pause began to drag, she took refuge in a change of question.

“ Are there any celebrities here ? ” she asked.

“Not many, I think — there is Splevinski.”

“Yesj I meant ”

“ Among us ? There is the big tall man with the hair Splevinski is talking to — Mr. Roden.”

“ Is that Mr. Roden ? What — what a strange-looking man ! ”

“ Ah, that’s the music. The music has got into his hair.”

“ I thought you meant Mr. Roden the popular preacher.”

“ Popular preacher, musician, lecturer, humourist, author, popular entertainer — all sorts of things. But it all comes under the head of either preaching or music. His entertainments are always connected — or are supposed to be connected — with one or the other. He always provides himself with a text. Or perhaps one should say with a pretext.”

She looked at him doubtingly, but this time he detected, or fancied he did, a first yielding of the shyness.

“ And is the lady with the white hair a celebrity ? ”

“ Ah, no — at least, she would be sorry to hear you call her one. She is something much better — a perfectly charming old gentlewoman.”

“You know her, of course? ”

“ She was an old friend of my father’s. She has been very nice to me.”

“ But she is somebody — really ? ”

“ She has been — though never just in the popular sense. She comes of an old Catholic family, and was a member once upon a time of a rather wonderful little circle. One of those little circles that have a great deal of influence, and pull a good many strings, and of which the world at large knows nothing at all. No, she doesn’t live in London. She lives at her place — a very dear old place it is — in Sussex. She is staying with the Harringtons. Mrs. Harrington happens to be her great-niece. I am surprised she has allowed herself to be captured for this.”

“ She doesn’t approve ”

Of our modern ways ? Oh, she lets us off lightly. She is very merciful, very tolerant : when we are especially modern, she just pretends she doesn’t understand. You see, she has extended her tolerance even to Mr. Roden ! ”

Fortunately, at that moment, the first notes of the accompaniment of a song came from the piano, and Voysey gained a small respite. And the respite was welcome to him, for on the whole his presentiment had been fulfilled ; the burden of conversation had rested too much upon his shoulders. Still, after all, this burden, when a woman has a little gift for producing a definite impression, is one most men will make some effort to sustain, and Voysey discovered, as the minutes went by, that he was beginning to wonder to what extent, in not doing better, she was doing injustice to her intentions. It had occurred to him that she was doing them injustice ; he had little doubt that they were innocent enough, her intentions, but they were of a kind, he fancied, to have made her not unwilling to help him, if she could, to extract whatever personal, or even perhaps emotional, interest a meeting like this may provide. He felt sure she would have had no objection to extracting this interest if she had possessed the experience for conversational adventures. And of her want of it the fact that she came, as Mrs. Harrington had told him, from Bedford Park seemed an insufficient explanation. There could be no reason why experience, at least of a kind, should not be gained at Bedford Park. And then he saw with an effect of sudden illumination that in the inner sense she did not come from Bedford Park, and he was beginning to wonder where as a matter of fact her opportunities had lain, when the music unexpectedly left off, and conversation had to be renewed.

He set the ball in motion again with a question about the song.

‘‘ No, I never go to concerts, ’’ she told him, presently. ‘‘My husband doesn’t care for music. We go to the theatre sometimes. But we live out of London — and it’s such a bother getting back at night. It’s so awkward, too, about dinner.”

This was the first allusion she had made to her husband, and it caught Voysey’s ear. He conceived a theory of the husband. He suggested that if she was fond of music, she should not acquiesce too readily in this disinclination of her husband’s.

Again for a moment she kept her fan very still, and there was a just perceptible change in her expression.

“ I think I prefer the theatre,” she said.

He named a piece of the lighter kind, and inquired whether she had seen it.

“No. It’s a farce, isn’t it ? I don’t care for that kind of thing.”

“ Nor your husband perhaps ? ”

She hesitated, and her hesitation, he saw, stood for a parting of the ways. She took the turning that led to a lessening of the distance.

“Yes, I rather think it’s the kind of thing he does care for,” she admitted.

He was for following his advantage up. “ And I fancy I know where your own preference lies,” he declared, becoming boldly direct. “You prefer the romantic ! ”

It looked for a moment as if she felt he was going just a little too fast ; he thought she was inclined to turn back : his manner, however, suggested a sort of good faith that tempered the personal in his speech — and there was a further yielding of the shyness.

“ What do you prefer ” she asked.

lO

“ I ? Oh, comedy. But I am not much of a theatre-goer. I get most of my comedy out of the private life.’’

“ You know a great many people ? ”

“Crowds — all London!” he laughed. “I expect,” he added, “ you read a good many novels.”

“ I suppose so. They fill up the time.”

“ Have you much time to fill up ? ”

His manner was acquiring a little air of protection, or rather of patronage : — and she felt it.

“ Don’t you read novels ? ” she inquired.

“Any amount I — I imagine, if your husband is in the City all day, you have a good deal of time to fill up.”

“ Do you know my husband ? ” she asked.

“ No •, but I have heard he is a friend of Mr. Harrington’s, and I gathered that he was in the City.”

The explanation seemed to satisfy her. “ Yes, I am a good deal alone,” she answered.

“ I envy you,” he said.

“ Do you ? Is your time then very much occupied ? ”

“Oh, chiefly with going the round, I suppose — chiefly with people, you know.”

She looked at him with an expression of uncertainty.

“ I shouldn’t have thought you would have wanted much to be alone,” she said, “ if people amuse you so.”

Voysey laughed. “ The comedy of the private life 1 ” he echoed. “ Ah, one can’t keep it up, you see. (To keep it up always one would have to be so uncommonly good 1 ’\

But he felt he had done his duty. If an occasion for escape should present itself, he thought he would be entitled to use it. And it so happened that fortune favoured him, for even then Mr. Harrington, their host, approached the sofa, and Voysey, knowing his interest in this particular guest, found it easy to resign his place to him.

It was getting late, and Voysey, who had tired of the enter-

1 1

tainment much earlier in the evening, decided that he v^^ould seek his hostess. He found her upon the landing, from the comparative emptiness of which he inferred that he would not be the first to leave, and made his excuses to her. “ How did you get on ? ’’ she asked.

“ Oh, rather well, I think.”

“ She is pretty, isn’t she ? ”

“ Decidedly.”

“ But not very interesting ? ”

“Well : possibly, if one knew her better ”

Mrs. Harrington looked at him with her innocent blue eyes, and smiled. “You saw possibilities,” she suggested.

“ Rather distant possibilities.”

The lady made a little gesture. “ Most women have that,” she said.

He had left Mrs. Harrington, and was bowing a cursory good-night to her daughter, who was talking to a man near the top of the stairs, when this last suddenly stepped forward and stopped him.

“ Isn’t your name Voysey ? ” he asked.

“ Certainly.”

“ I thought so ! I saw you some time back, but couldn’t get near you. You don’t remember me? ”

Voysey apologized.

“ My name’s Detmond. We used to meet in Rawlinson’s rooms at Oxford.”

A faint light of recognition dawned in Voysey’s eye, but the light at the same time threw a shadow across his face as if, admitting the fact, he were wondering how it justified the warmth of this greeting.

“ I knew you the moment I saw you,” Detmond went on. “ You have not changed much. But look here, we seem to be blocking the stairs. Come this way a moment.” And he led Voysey into the emptying room on their left.

The unnecessary cheerfulness of Mr. Detmond’s manner was sustained by his face and person. In height he stood slightly above the average, and in fulness of figure his genial proportions tended to pass beyond it. His face was clean shaven, and of that perfect smoothness in the dark places which clever shaving will give to a well-moulded chin and cheek. It was suffused with an infantine reddishness, or rather pinkness of hue : a hue that was curiously invariable, like the uniform pinkness of tone on the body of a child, or on the infant day at its birth. His nose was aquiline, dignified, impressive ; taken with the well-formed chin and cheek, it lent his tinted countenance a kind of mock classic dignity. His mouth was slightly puckered, as it might be with a readiness to receive the humour of other people, while the goodhumoured shrewdness in his eye made him seem to be ever on the watch for it. From the maturity of his figure, which he carried well, one might have inferred that he was some years older than Voysey ; as a matter of fact, they were of the same age.

‘‘ What have you been doing all these years ? ” he was asking. “ I suppose you’re in London, or you wouldn’t be here. I wonder I’ve never come across you.”

“ I have not done very much, I am afraid. I have been called to the Bar.”

“ Briefs — pretty plentiful, eh ? ”

“ I am not practising.”

“ Ah, got bread-and-butter without it ! Lucky man ! I am in the City. I was going into the Church when I was at Oxford. But an uncle of mine offered me a berth just before I took my degree, and I accepted it. And I am uncommonly glad I did. It has turned out a good thing. He has taken me into partnership ! ”

“ I congratulate you,” said Voysey.

“Thanks. Yes, when I look at the men who were up at

Oxford in our time, I feel I have been lucky. Not many of them seem to be doing much good. The Church, schoolmastering — poor businesses. Very well to begin with, while a man’s single — but don’t lead to anything. Give you position, society, that sort of thing — at least the Church does,” the genial face was momentarily shadowed, “ but if a man’s a gentleman, he can always get that, can’t he ? ”

‘‘ Generally, I suppose.”

“ Of course : that’s what I always say.” His face brightened again. “ But these things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it ? Are you married, by the way ? ”

“No, I am not married. You are? ” Voysey asked, feeling that these confidences called for some show of interest as an acknowledgment.

“ I have been married four years. We have one little boy. My wife is here to-night. I should like to introduce you to her.”

“ Thanks very much,” said Voysey, who, not having caught Mrs. Detmond’s name, was not aware that he had already enjoyed that privilege. “ If I hadn’t just said good-night to Mrs. Harrington, I should have been delighted.”

“ Well, I’ll come and look you up. And you must come and see us. I should like you to know my wife. Here’s where we live.” And Voysey received a card which he passed to his waistcoat pocket. At the same time he offered one of his own.

“Well, good-night, Voysey,” he said. “I shall come and look you up in a day or two. And you must come and see us.” Whereupon the plenteous figure moved away in the direction of the door that gave access to the larger drawing-room.

Voysey returned to the landing. As he paused a moment at the top of the stairs to allow some ladies who were leaving to go by, he heard a voice — a rather deep girl’s voice, which he recognized as Miss Harrington’s — say at his elbow.

H

“ Is Mr. Detmond an old friend of yours, Mr. Voysey ^ ”

Voysey laughed.

“ No : I used to meet him sometimes in the rooms of a friend of mine at Oxford. I can’t say I knew him. They used to call him Caesar.”

“ C^sar ? Why ? ”

‘‘ Oh, I don’t know : I suppose because he looked rather like a genial burlesque of a Roman hero. It’s odd he should have greeted me in that particular way.”

I think Mr. Detmond would be rather nice-looking, if he weren’t — weren’t that colour,” the girl said. “ At all events, he doesn’t forget people.”

Voysey smiled.

“ What is the matter. Cissy ? ” he asked.

The girl looked at him a moment with those old eyes of hers, and her expression changed a little.

“ Has it been very slow ? ” she inquired.

“ No ; I think it has gone off very well,” was the considerate assurance he gave her.

The old eyes were still looking at him, and he read, or fancied he read, the signs of an unexpressed wish in them.

“ I must be off,” he cried, a trifle abruptly. “ I said good-night to your mother about an hour ago.”

‘‘ Good-night,” she answered, simply, giving him her hand.

He left her, and went down the easy stairs, aware, as he turned on the small landing before the second flight, that the eyes of the girl were still following him.

II

The light from the small copper lamp on its iron pedestal fell upon the books and papers at which the girl was working, and lay upon the lower halves of two photographs which, together with the other ornaments on the table, had been put in disorder by the books; — but the shade on the lamp threw the girl’s face in shadow. The table stood in a recess by the fire-place, and the length of the room was behind her. The room was a drawing-room, — of to-day, yet furnished with a taste that was not too modern ; indeed two or three anachronisms had been permitted to survive in it, relics of an incorrigible past. The tall floor-lamp with the volumes of its shade had not been lighted, so that the medley of copper and silver and inlaid things, with the books and photographs and flowers, was covered by a grateful obscurity : at the end furthest from the girl the shadows had gathered ; the gas-lamp on the pavement outside made gleams upon the furthest blind. The books, most of them new books, some of them books with yellow labels on their covers, were many, and the note of to-day which they struck was repeated — could they have been discerned — in the delicate little water-colours on the walls. Two of the three high windows in the room were open, and with the cool of the deepening night came the endless murmur of the city, broken by the near sound of hoofs when a vehicle passed over the wood pavement below the windows, the noise of the wheels becoming audible with a kind of sudden little crash, upon the macadam, at a little distance down the road. The room was full of flowers, and, in its cool dimness, was wonderfully fresh and sweet.

i6

At the girl’s end of the room, on the other side of the fire-place, a lady of any age was reading by the light of two shaded candles. Her figure was slight and stiff, and the tension of her attitude, considering the comfort of her seat, appeared slightly unwarrantable. Her smooth hair was divided by a long, very definite parting, and was drawn just over the tips of her ears in the manner in which hair was apt to be drawn in the days when the room was first furnished. In a fanciful way her face revived this aspect of the room ; one was inclined to think her face had once been prim, though it now possessed a brightness, a cheerful look of alertness and interest, which showed that she lived in the present, and perhaps, in a quiet sense, even lived rather vividly. In her small, intelligent, wellbred features there was a curious expression of eagerness — the eagerness, it might be, of a person for whom life was still rich in discoveries ; together with an odd little look of determination as if she were bent upon making them. She wore a dress the quality of whose material atoned for any failure it might show in conformity to the passing fashion ; the two thin gold chains of her watch hung from the gold pin of her brooch. She was reading a sixpenny literary newspaper, and the enjoyment with which she read it kept her lips slightly parted with a smile. And for a reason it would not have been easy to define, any one — any one, that is, who had a gift in such matters — would have known the room was not hers.