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Page 33
"Shan't get into them," said Mrs. Bellmore, with a prettily suppressed
yawn; "too stiff and wrinkly. Is that you, Felice? Prepare my bath,
please. Do you dine at seven at Clifftop, Mrs. Kinsolving? So kind of
you to run in for a chat before dinner! I love those little touches of
informality with a guest. They give such a home flavour to a visit. So
sorry; I must be dressing. I am so indolent I always postpone it until
the last moment."
Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins had been the first large plum that the Kinsolvings
had drawn from the social pie. For a long time, the pie itself had been
out of reach on a top shelf. But the purse and the pursuit had at last
lowered it. Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins was the heliograph of the smart
society parading corps. The glitter of her wit and actions passed along
the line, transmitting whatever was latest and most daring in the game of
peep-show. Formerly, her fame and leadership had been secure enough not
to need the support of such artifices as handing around live frogs for
favours at a cotillon. But, now, these things were necessary to the
holding of her throne. Beside, middle age had come to preside,
incongruous, at her capers. The sensational papers had cut her space from
a page to two columns. Her wit developed a sting; her manners became more
rough and inconsiderate, as if she felt the royal necessity of
establishing her autocracy by scorning the conventionalities that bound
lesser potentates.
To some pressure at the command of the Kinsolvings, she had yielded so far
as to honour their house by her presence, for an evening and night. She
had her revenge upon her hostess by relating, with grim enjoyment and
sarcastic humour, her story of the vision carrying the hod. To that lady,
in raptures at having penetrated thus far toward the coveted inner circle,
the result came as a crushing disappointment. Everybody either
sympathized or laughed, and there was little to choose between the two
modes of expression.
But, later on, Mrs. Kinsolving's hopes and spirits were revived by the
capture of a second and greater prize.
Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore had accepted an invitation to visit at Clifftop, and
would remain for three days. Mrs. Bellmore was one of the younger
matrons, whose beauty, descent, and wealth gave her a reserved seat in the
holy of holies that required no strenuous bolstering. She was generous
enough thus to give Mrs. Kinsolving the accolade that was so poignantly
desired; and, at the same time, she thought how much it would please
Terence. Perhaps it would end by solving him.
Terence was Mrs. Kinsolving's son, aged twenty-nine, quite good-looking
enough, and with two or three attractive and mysterious traits. For one,
he was very devoted to his mother, and that was sufficiently odd to
deserve notice. For others, he talked so little that it was irritating,
and he seemed either very shy or very deep. Terence interested Mrs.
Bellmore, because she was not sure which it was. She intended to study
him a little longer, unless she forgot the matter. If he was only shy,
she would abandon him, for shyness is a bore. If he was deep, she would
also abandon him, for depth is precarious.
On the afternoon of the third day of her visit, Terence hunted up Mrs.
Bellmore, and found her in a nook actually looking at an album.
"It's so good of you," said he, "to come down here and retrieve the day
for us. I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins scuttled the
ship before she left. She knocked a whole plank out of the bottom with a
hod. My mother is grieving herself ill about it. Can't you manage to see
a ghost for us while you are here, Mrs. Bellmore -- a bang-up, swell
ghost, with a coronet on his head and a cheque book under his arm?"
"That was a naughty old lady, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, "to tell such
stories. Perhaps you gave her too much supper. Your mother doesn't
really take it seriously, does she?"
"I think she does," answered Terence. "One would think every brick in the
hod had dropped on her. It's a good mammy, and I don't like to see her
worried. It's to be hoped that the ghost belongs to the hod-carriers'
union, and will go out on a strike. If he doesn't, there will be no peace
in this family."
"I'm sleeping in the ghost-chamber," said Mrs. Bellmore, pensively. "But
it's so nice I wouldn't change it, even if I were afraid, which I'm not.
It wouldn't do for me to submit a counter story of a desirable,
aristocratic shade, would it? I would do so, with pleasure, but it seems
to me it would be too obviously an antidote for the other narrative to be
effective."
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