Time and the woman: a novel

Chapter I

Mrs. Sandon, in an indolent and unaggressive sort of way, disapproved of her Indian cousin. But she was fond of her at the same time. Moreover, she was a mischievous old woman, who liked amusement herself, and as the Ruthvens were staying with her in Earl Street, she gave a series of small dinner-parties, at one of which she gave Mrs. Ruthven her best young man.

Very possibly it is unfortunate for a girl to have a mother who scarcely looks any older than herself. Mrs. Sandon, sitting in the stalls at the Panton, whither the party had adjourned because the play had the grace to begin at nine instead of eight, and the hostess had too much respect for her cook to hurry the courses, said something of the sort to her neighbor, Lady Murgatroyd.

The curtain had risen, and a rude person in the pit — the row in which the old lady was sitting 9 was somewhat far back — growled, and said “ Ssh ! Ssh ! ” very audibly. One or two other people turned their heads ; Mrs. Sandon felt that she ought not to have been talking, that the rebuke was deserved, and she lapsed into silence ; and wondered whether at her age a risky, frisky farce really amused her. Some one, a frolicsome wife, was hiding under a table ; an equally frolicsome husband had drenched a waiter with a garden hose. The house shook with merriment. Mrs. Ruthven laughed with the rest and displayed very pretty teeth. Gerald Ventnor noted their whiteness and their evenness, as she leant across him to speak to her daughter, who sat with a grave face.

“ Aren’t you amused ? ”

The girl looked round. Mrs. Ruthven repeated her question.

“Yes, at least I think so. Perhaps not very much ; I don’t know. If one thinks of it it is dreadful. It ought to be rather serious, and one is supposed to laugh ”

“ Oh, serious ! ” said Mrs. Ruthven.

Mrs. Sandon touched Lady Murgatroyd’s arm gently with her fan.

“Look at that,” she said.

“And then I don’t think I understand it all,” added Miss Ruthven.

“ What a loss it is to have so little imagination,” said her mother.

“ But this sort of thing requires a certain slang education,” said Gerald lightly.

“ Coupled with the sine qua non of having what you call well-dined,” put in another of Mrs. Sandon’s party.

“You speak as a man,” said Mrs. Ruthven, smiling.

“And I have what you call well-dined,” said Miss Ruthven.

At this the others laughed, and she wondered why as she hastened to add

“ So it must be as mother says, that I have no imagination.”

“ Araby is rather impossible,” Mrs. Ruthven said to Ventnor, as one who sums up a matter and dismisses it.

Miss Ruthven’s name for family reasons was Arabella. It was to her mother that she owed its conversion to the softer-sounding Araby.

When the curtain fell Mrs. Sandon resumed

“ This won’t get better. I am sorry for that girl, and I wonder myself how it will all end. Johnnie — ridiculous not to say vulgar name for a married woman, it sounds to me almost improper — Johnnie, I say, has had a high old time — isn’t that what they call it? — in India. Has kippled at dreadfully naughty and attractive places, about the Simla to her heart’s content, and at all those other goings-on at which we all know so much now. Well, she means to have as good a time as she can still. As it is, since she has been with me half a dozen of her young men have already been to look her up. Yes, isn’t she pretty? Of course I have known her all her life, and I declare she scarcely looks a day older than when she married Corbet. That must be nineteen years ago, and Johnnie Ruthven is, I suppose, in her thirty-eighth year.”

Lady Murgatroyd said that did not seem possible. She launched into a disquisition as to what makes or does not make a woman age. Mrs. Ruthven she thought could not have had many disappointments.

“ Well, no,” said Mrs. Sandon, t€ I do not know that she has. She takes things very quietly, and I do not think she worries herself over trifles.”

Mrs. Sandon looked at the lines on Lady Murgatroyd’s face as she spoke, and did not say, though she thought it, that one or two of these might have been spared her friend if she had gone upon a like principle.

There was a pause, which was filled by the hum of talk in the theatre. Lady Murgatroyd contemplated Miss Ruthven closely.

“ She is nearly as beautiful as her mother,” she said presently.

Mrs. Sandon looked from one to the other.

Joan Ruthven, or Johnnie, as she was known to her intimate friends and Mrs. Sandon’s more or less pretended disapproval, was in truth wonderfully well-preserved. Indeed so young did she appear, that to the casual observer her looks did not suggest that they owed anything to preservation at all. She had a slim tall figure, supple as a girl’s, with the lithe straightness of the good horsewoman. Her face had the most frank and open expression. It was innocent as a child’s, and there was much that was childish in the beautiful mouth ; but Mrs. Sandon, speaking of her eyes, said that you could see them across the street.

Araby resembled her mother only in outline. She too was tall and straight, but her slightness was more pronounced and her coloring was altogether different. While Mrs. Ruthven had brown hair, and eyes of the darkest blue, Araby was unusually fair. Her hair was of a shade of red which Mrs. Ruthven chose not to admire. It was soft, and dry, and feathery, and it blazed with golden lights. She reminded you at times of a Romney, at times of a Greuze. She had, it is true, the same childish mouth as her mother, but here all likeness ceased. Her nose called for no comment, good or bad, and her eyes, up to the time of which I write, she had only used to see with. Even thus it is probable that many things escaped her which to others were sufficiently obvious. She had a rose-leaf complexion of which she took great care, and a color that was ready in response to excitement, pleasure, interest, and the like. Her beauty was more prospective than actual.

Seated between the girl and the mother, Gerald Ventnor found himself as a matter of course talking to the mother. Miss Ruthven’s unobtrusiveness was somehow such as to cause her to be dismissed by a certain type of man as ingenue. When occasionally Gerald looked at her it was to wonder whether she knew her own beauty. He did not think that she did, and he thought once that it might be amusing to tell her. Unconsciously he thought of her as a little girl to whom it was good-natured to address an occasional remark, but who would not of course expect it. This, though he did not know it, was somehow contrived by Mrs. Ruthven. She had a way of influencing people without their knowledge.

“ Now look at that,” began Mrs. Sandon presently, but the rude and socialistic person in the pit said Ssh again, and she, turning round indignantly this time, waited nevertheless as before till the end of the act.

The house was full; not a gap was to be seen in the rows of stalls. The theatre had the brilliant and prosperous appearance that argues that the seats have been paid for, and that “ paper ” is unknown. The red silk handkerchief of distant Bayswater and the plush cloaks of the suburbs were absent. Smart, well-dined London was in evidence.

“ What I wanted to say,” said Mrs. Sandon, when the curtain fell upon the second act, “ what I wanted to say was, just note how Mrs. Ruthven takes possession of a man. Gerald Ventnor has spoken about six words to Araby since the beginning of the evening. By the bye, how furious his mother will be if she takes him up — Mrs. Ruthven I mean.” Mrs. Sandon chuckled at the mere thought Lady Ventnor’s alarms on Gerald’s account were a source of constant amusement to her.

“ And the husband ? ” asked Lady Murgatroyd.

“ Whose ? Oh, Mrs. Ruthven’s husband ? ”

Lady Murgatroyd nodded.

“ Well, that’s what I don’t understand — what I suppose no one ever will understand,” said Mrs. Sandon. “He doesn’t interfere; he lets her do exactly as she likes. No, we shall never get at the bottom of that story! Corbet Ruthven was madly in love with her when he married. My dear Lady Murgatroyd, you never saw a man more restlessly miserable after he met her at a Woolwich ball, nor more wildly elated when, after playing him like a fish, she accepted him. He wasn’t so well off then, you know, as he is now. His uncle was alive in those days. He made a confidante of me — Corbet and I were always good friends. I have seen him walk up and down my drawing-room in Earl Street, till I thought he would wear holes in the carpet. He talked to me of her for hours. Well, they were married, and he wrote me rapturous letters about his happiness. That lasted for about a year; then he began to say less about her; then she dropped out of his letters; then he stopped writing altogether, and I heard from every one that Corbet Ruthven was dropping his friends. His uncle died and left him the tea business, and Corbet left the service, which I always thought a pity. I found him greatly changed when I saw him last; that was about six years ago. Tie came home for a couple of months to see Araby, who was living with two Miss Woottons, aunts of his. He seemed to be absolutely indifferent to all that Johnnie did. They didn’t quarrel, you must understand, — she is a great deal too clever for that. — he just went his way and let her go hers.”

“ Did she come home with him ? ”

“ No, she was amusing herself in the hills with her pet young men. He laughed about it, and called them Johnnie’s Johnnies. Poor Corbet! ”

“ Why did she marry him ?. ”

“ He was a good match for her. The Linton girls hadn’t a penny of their own; their faces were their fortunes. Rose, the other one, married well too, but she died. Corbet had a little money, and the prospects which were afterwards realized; so Joan, after keeping him dangling on for two or three months, married him. Whether she ever really cared for him or not I cannot say. I dare say the attention she got turned her head a little. One thing, by the way, which Corbet said to me, struck me as significant. He was regretting the separation from Araby, and there were reasons why he could not leave the tea business. I said that in time Araby Would be able to go out to him, and he said never. Araby should not set her foot in India with his consent. I inferred not a little from this.”

There was a pause. Mrs. Sandon smiled to herself.

“ You must understand me,” she said then. “ I am really very fond of Johnnie, with all her faults, I always was, and she has been uniformly delightful to me. I love her pretty face. Just watch her mouth as she speaks. Have you ever seen anything more beguiling? Do you wonder that men fall in love with her? I have only to look at her to forgive her everything.”

Lady Murgatroyd, who was always thinking of her own plain face, and she had perhaps an exaggerated idea of its plainness, sighed.

“ What did you say?” asked Mrs. Sandon.

“ Nothing,” said Lady Murgatroyd, “ nothing. Look, I think Mr. Ventnor wants to catch your eye.” Gerald was leaning over the back of his stall. “ I want you all to come back to supper with me at the club. Mrs. Ruthven is good enough to say that she will come if you will, so you must not refuse me, Mrs. Sandon.”

“ My dear Gerald, I couldn’t think of it. I should be dead to-morrow. It is very nice of you all the same. But my not going need not prevent any one else. Lady Murgatroyd, you will go? ” Lady Murgatroyd shook her head. She was a little bit tired, she said. It was most good of Mr. Ventnor, but Lady Murgatroyd thought she would rather go home from the theatre.

“ I will drop you in Earl Street then,” said Mrs. Safidon, “and Mrs. Ruthven must chaperon the girls. Johnnie, I give Miss Norfolk into your care. Is Mr. Hartford going with you? Yes? And Mr. Vine and Mr. Le Marchant? ”

The two men she named last regretted that they were going on to a ball.

Ventnor went out to telegraph his orders to his club, and Mrs. Sandon said to her neighbor, “ I quite wish I was going with them, but it would not have been fair to spoil their fun, would it?”

Lady Murgatroyd set her teeth. She had an unhappy knack of imagining slights that were not intended. She was morbidly sensitive, and time had no power to blunt the quality.

When the play came to an end Mrs. Ruthven, fastening her cloak, a wonderful thing of silk and feathers, leant over towards Mrs. Sandon.

“ You will take Araby home,” she said, in her sweet voice.

“ But surely Araby is going with you,” Mrs. Sandon said, raising her eyebrows and speaking in a tone of mild expostulation.

Mrs. Ruthven shook her head.

" I am quite ready to go home,” said Araby, good-temperedly.

“ The best girl in the world,” whispered Mrs. Sandon to Lady Murgatroyd. u But I should rather like to shake Johnnie.”

It was not till the Earl Street party had driven off that Gerald saw what had happened. It chanced that it was Hartford, and not he, who put them into their carriage.

“ I am sorry,” he said, more than once in the hansom ; “ I hope Miss Ruthven knew she was asked. I thought it was quite understood that you were all coming.”

“ We should have made an odd number,” said Mrs. Ruthven.

“ I am sorry though,” said Ventnor.

Chapter II

Mrs. Ruthven and Ventnor had barely alighted when they were joined by Miss Norfolk and Hartford, whose hansom had been following closely in the track of their own. Gerald led the way to the room, where a table awaited the arrival of his supper-party.

Several others were occupied, and the candles with their red shades dotted the room like flowers with hearts of flame.

Ventnor exchanged nods with a man or two of his acquaintance. People looked up, and glancing casually first at the group focused thier gaze by degrees on to Mrs. Ruthven. Supper passed merrily enough. Some one said something about a survival of the fittest. Gerald made an admirable host. Mrs. Ruthven talked lightly and laughed often. She had an attractive laugh that made you wish to laugh too. Gerald sought a word to express her, and found it he thought in provocante.

Miss Norfolk, an old friend of Gerald’s, was of the type of girl that Mrs. Ruthven approved. She may be here described briefly as the child of her decade. She was very much on the spot, and she thoroughly understood that she was to talk to Hartford. She was nothing loth.

“A girl to make one’s useful friend,” Mrs. Ruthven said to herself; “I will see something of her later on.”

Afterwards she found an opportunity of admiring Miss Norfolk’s dress. Mrs. Ruthven was always as ready to annex a girl as to annex a man, though for different reasons.

Ventnor, whose regrets as to the absence of Miss Ruthven were half sincere and half conventional, had long since allowed them to sink to rest in the charm of the society of her mother. He congratulated himself upon the happy thought of supper in the ladies’ room at his club. Mrs. Ruthven had accepted with an absence of demur that was flattering.

It was easy to like Gerald Ventnor, and he was a man of many friends. Nature had dealt with him generously. He was not perhaps remarkable for any very special attributes, and his type is one common enough amongst the class to which he belonged. Eton and Oxford had produced him, or at least had aided in his development, and a sound constitution and a more or less healthy mode of life had contributed to make him what he was. His features were sufficiently good. His skin was clear and ruddy. His blue eyes looked straight at you, and had a certain baffling serenity. Something of the same nature was again suggested by his mouth. Miss Norfolk, who knew him well, said of him that you were never sure what he might or might not be thinking of you.

Mrs. Ruthven at this moment was feeling the perverse attraction of his placidity. She was accustomed to admiration and took it as her due. It was of course tiresome upon occasion, and she could have cited half a dozen instances of the truth of this amongst those of the young men whom from time to time she had annexed. There was Robin Wakefield, whom she had undertaken to cure of his attachment to a girl at home who had jilted him. He transferred his affection to her with alarming rapidity, and bored her beyond measure. There was Atty Carnac of the — th Lancers, who threatened to shoot himself, and ended by marrying the ugliest woman in Calcutta. There was young Kynaston, known in his regiment as Kitty, whose devotion took the form of a melancholy that began by being amusing, and became in time a weariness of the flesh. And there were several others. But Mrs. Ruthven was wishing that Gerald would appear a little less calm.

“ I am wondering/’ she said suddenly and irrelevantly to anything that had been said before,

“ I am wondering whether any one really knows you, Mr. Ventnor.”

Gerald smiled inscrutably, and said quietly that perhaps there was nothing to know.

On his part, in his somewhat indolent way, Ventnor thought that Mrs. Ruthven was a very charming woman, and pretty enough to turn strong heads; but he did not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Moreover, there is a point at which interest passes the border-line of pleasant sensation, and further than this he had no intention, just then at any rate, of allowing his feelings to go.

This he decided quietly, to the accompaniment of the dainty dishes, the ’8o champagne, and the sound of Mrs. Ruthven’s voice. Her voice pleased his ear.

In the light of the candles the diamond necklace which she wore sparkled upon her white neck. Miss Norfolk, as one of a large family, was thinking that it was easy for Mrs. Ruthven to look well. She admitted, however, frankly that fine feathers were not by any means necessary to make Mrs. Ruthven a fine bird. She knew, moreover, upon which side of her bread butter was to be expected, and she also was thinking that her new acquaintance might prove a useful friend.

Miss Norfolk, you see, was eminently a girl of London, and she had no illusions. The gifts of to-day were always acceptable to her, and she was prepared for more to-morrow. She was a good girl enough in its widest sense. She was not malicious. She was full of generous impulses, and if she valued people in proportion to the use which they might be to her, she was not alone in so doing.

Gerald, who knew her well enough to say pretty much what he liked, had said to her at the beginning of the evening,

“ You see Hartford ?”

“ Which do you call Hartford?” was Miss Norfolk’s question.

“ That smart-looking little chap talking to Le Marchant. He has three or four thousand a year — not so bad, you know, in hard times. He has no relations. He is a friend of mine. Talk to him.”

“ Impertinent ! ” said Miss Norfolk at the time, smiling. But she made a mental note of the information.

Her thoughts ran somewhat in this wise

“ Mr. Hartford is not a bad little chap. I wish he were a little bit more like — like Mr. Ventnor, for example. How unhappy Mr. Ventnor might make a woman who was foolish enough to fall in love with him. I think Mrs. Ruthven is prettier than any one I ever saw. I think I shall like her. I know this sort of woman. She will give small dinner-parties, and she will be glad of unencumbered girls.

Thank goodness, mamma doesn’t send us out in pairs. Mrs. Ruthven might be of the greatest use to me ! Her daughter is ten times as good-looking as I am, but I don’t fancy, somehow, that she would interfere much with any one.”

Mrs. Ruthven was talking of her plans, and Miss Norfolk ceased speculating in order to listen. She accomplished the double feat of hearing all that the others were saying, and keeping up a conversation at the same time with Hartford.

“ I am looking for a small furnished house, you know, or a flat, or something. Mrs. Sandon is very kindly putting me up till I get what I want. My husband’s plans are so unsettled, that for the present I shall have to make my own arrangements.”

“ A small house? ” said Ventnor.

“ A small house,” said Mrs. Ruthven. “ It must be small, because, as there are only Araby and myself, I don’t want the bother of a lot of servants.”

Gerald thought he knew of such a house, and so the mischief, such as it was, began. Mrs. Sandon A was unwittingly to blame for asking Gerald to dinner on this particular evening. Gerald’s mother never forgave her, and said all sorts of things about her, some of which were repeated. This of course was later on when the house was taken, and the annexation of Gerald appeared complete.

The immediate result of the night’s work which began in Mrs. Sandon’s dining-room in Earl Street, and was forwarded at the theatre and the club, was an appointment for the next day.

“ Let us say at Castanet’s in Bond Street,” said Gerald. “ My cousin’s house is in Primate Street, Berkeley Square, and we can have chocolate at Castanet’s before we go there.”

Mrs. Ruthven agreed.

“ You save me no end of trouble,” she said. “ I was dreading house-hunting.”

After a while the ladies rose to go.

“ Four o’clock to-morrow, then,” said Gerald, forgetting for the moment the time of year as he put them into a hansom.

“ Four o’clock,” said Mrs. Ruthven, with the smile that had lingered painfully ere then in more than one chained memory.

Ventnor and Hartford went back into the club, and made their way to the smoking-room. Gerald called for cigars.

“ What do you think of that for a pretty woman ? ” he said.

Now Mrs. Ruthven had taken small notice of Ventnor’s friend; but, curiously enough (or perhaps, since human nature is perverse, for this very reason), it was on him that she had made the greater impression. While Miss Norfolk had aired her advanced ideas, his eyes had wandered again and again to Mrs. Ruthven’ s face. He went home restless and Ventnor complacent.

Mrs. Ruthven, meanwhile, having left Miss Norfolk safely at home in Sloane Street, drove thence to Mrs. Sandon’s.

The one trick which her thirty-seven years played her was that, allowing her to look twenty-eight till midnight, by lurking in good-natured ambush, after a long evening they occasionally came out thence, and asserted the fact of their existence. When Mrs. Ruthven looked into her glass that night before undressing, she saw that which scarcely pleased her. She had sent home directions to her maid not to sit up for her, and she was alone. She stood for a long time looking at herself. Then she left her room, and crossed the landing to another door. She opened it without knocking, and went in.

It was a bedroom. A fire was burning brightly in the grate, and the light of it flickered on the walls, and glittered on the silver and glass of the equipments of the dressing-table. The glow of the leaping flames lit up Araby’s shining hair. Mrs. Ruthven approached the bed, and contemplated her daughter for some moments. The even fringe of the lashes outlined the curve of the closed eyelids; a delicate flush was on her face; the red lips were closed, and the gentle breath was drawn silently through the nostrils. A slender hand lay on the coverlet, which rose and fell with the even movement of the bosom.

Perhaps a passing admiration, or a sudden instinct of affection came to Araby’s mother as she stood there. She leant over the sleeping girl as if to kiss her, but at this moment Araby stirred. A flame leapt in the fire. The bright hair blazed with color. How smooth was the delicate skin, how smooth, and clear, and unworn, and young!

It was with a hand that expressed impatience that Mrs. Ruthven roused her daughter.

Araby gave a little cry, and woke.

“ Is anything the matter ? ” she asked in a startled voice.

The firelight was very bright, and made her blink. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles like a child.

“ What should be the matter? ” said her mother, shortly. “ Sit up, please, while I speak to you, and listen to what I say.”

Araby said, “ Yes, mother,” and obeyed. She pushed back the hair from her face.

“ How absurdly like your father you are sometimes,” said Mrs. Ruthven, — “ irritatingly like him. Your hair is redder than his though, and I hate red hair. Well, don’t look indignant.”

“ I didn’t look indignant — ” began Araby.

“ Pardon me,” said her mother, “ you did. And if you didn’t I choose to say you did, so don’t again. If you and I are to get on, you must learn not to contradict me.”

Araby was silent, and Mrs. Ruthven smiled quietly to herself.

“ Now you are cross,” she said next.

“ Indeed I am not,” protested Araby.

“ I say you are,” said Mrs. Ruthven. (“ Really,” she added in parenthesis, “ the color of your hair makes my eyes ache.) Well, I choose to say you are ; it pleases me to think you are cross.”

“ Very well, I am cross,” said Araby, with tears near her eyes.

“ Now you are impudent,” said her mother.

Mrs. Ruthven sat down on the edge of the bed. It was a curious thing perhaps, but a fact nevertheless, that she took a keen pleasure in teasing her daughter. Possibly the girl was easy to tease.

“ I didn’t mean — ” Araby began.

But happily for her at this moment a little traveling clock that stood upon the mantelpiece struck, and reminded Mrs. Ruthven of the lateness of the hour.

“ Never mind what you meant, dear, or did not mean,” she said. “ What I woke you to tell you was, that I don’t want to be called in the morning. You must stop Olympe on her way to my door, so don’t oversleep yourself.”

“ Very well, mother.”

“And tell them to send up my breakfast when I ring. Make any civil apology you like, and don’t be clumsy about it. Good-night.”

“ Good-night, mother.”

Araby was asleep again in a few minutes, but Mrs. Ruthven lay awake for two hours.

Chapter III

Araby woke early, and was in time to catch Olympe.

Olympe was not exactly a soubrette. There was a good deal of her, though it was very neat and trim in its way. She was proud of her waist, which was small if only by contrast with the very ample proportions of such parts of her as, in the physical economy of her figure, were above and below it, and she had a trick of resting her hands upon her round hips in a way that showed its curves freely. She had a certain affection for powder, and her complexion did her credit, since she made it for herself. Olympe in the morning and Olympe in the evening were two different people, and Olympe dressed to go out was described by Mrs. Sandon as a duchess.

She had been in the service of Mrs. Ruthven for a year. The lady who had taken her out to India, and from whom the home-returning Mrs. Ruthven engaged her, said

“ She has eyes in the back of her head, and at the ends of her eight fingers and her two thumbs, and she has ears that defy walls; but she is invaluable, and if she would only stay with me I would keep her for ever.”

To Araby’s recital of her mother’s orders Olympe said

“ All aright. Oh whatta bore ! I arise too soon. I get up at coq cro’. All in vain. Je ne ferai pas monter le dejeuner de madame avant neuf heures et demie. Voila encore une heure. I might ’ave slept again ’alf an hour. Ah whatta pity! Madame enjoyed her evening? and mademoiselle aussi? That’s right.”