The Call of the Blood | Page 6

squeezed when I compare my poor little life with hers. But then she has such physical endurance. She breaks the ice, you know, in her bath in the winter--of course I mean when there is ice."
"It isn't only in her bath that she breaks the ice," said Mrs. Creswick.
"I perfectly understand," Miss Townly said, vaguely. "You mean--yes, you're right. Well, I prefer my bath warmed for me, but my circulation was never of the best."
"Hermione is extraordinary," said Mrs. Creswick, trying to look at her profile in the glass and making her face as Roman as she could, "I know all London, but I never met another Hermione. She can do things that other women can't dream of even, and nobody minds."
"Well, now she is going to do a thing we all dream of and a great many of us do. Will it answer? He's ten years younger than she is. Can it answer?"
"One can never tell whether a union of two human mysteries will answer," said Mrs. Creswick, judicially. "Maurice Delarey is wonderfully good-looking."
"Yes, and Hermione isn't."
"That has never mattered in the least."
"I know. I didn't say it had. But will it now?"
"Why should it?"
"Men care so much for looks. Do you think Hermione loves Mr. Delarey for his?"
"She dives deep."
"Yes, as a rule."
"Why not now? She ought to have dived deeper than ever this time."
"She ought, of course. I perfectly understand that. But it's very odd, I think we often marry the man we understand less than any one else in the world. Mystery is so very attractive."
Miss Townly sighed. She was emaciated, dark, and always dressed to look mysterious.
"Maurice Delarey is scarcely my idea of a mystery," said Mrs. Creswick, taking joyously a marron glacé. "In my opinion he's an ordinarily intelligent but an extraordinarily handsome man. Hermione is exactly the reverse, extraordinarily intelligent and almost ugly."
"Oh no, not ugly!" said Miss Townly, with unexpected warmth.
Though of a tepid personality, she was a worshipper at Hermione's shrine.
"Her eyes are beautiful," she added.
"Good eyes don't make a beauty," said Mrs. Creswick again, looking at her three-quarters face in the glass. "Hermione is too large, and her face is too square, and--but as I said before, it doesn't matter the least. Hermione's got a temperament that carries all before it."
"I do wish I had a temperament," said Miss Townly. "I try to cultivate one."
"You might as well try to cultivate a mustache," Mrs. Creswick rather brutally rejoined. "If it's there, it's there, but if it isn't one prays in vain."
"I used to think Hermione would do something," continued Miss Townly, finishing her second cup of tea with thirsty languor.
"Do something?"
"Something important, great, something that would make her famous, but of course now"--she paused--"now it's too late," she concluded. "Marriage destroys, not creates talent. Some celebrated man--I forget which--has said something like that."
"Perhaps he'd destroyed his wife's. I think Hermione might be a great mother."
Miss Townly blushed faintly. She did nearly everything faintly. That was partly why she admired Hermione.
"And a great mother is rare," continued Mrs. Creswick. "Good mothers are, thank God, quite common even in London, whatever those foolish people who rail at the society they can't get into may say. But great mothers are seldom met with. I don't know one."
"What do you mean by a great mother?" inquired Miss Townly.
"A mother who makes seeds grow. Hermione has a genius for friendship and a special gift for inspiring others. If she ever has a child, I can imagine that she will make of that child something wonderful."
"Do you mean an infant prodigy?" asked Miss Townly, innocently.
"No, dear, I don't!" said Mrs. Creswick; "I mean nothing of the sort. Never mind!"
When Mrs. Creswick said "Never mind!" Miss Townly usually got up to go. She got up to go now, and went forth into Sloane Street meditating, as she would have expressed it, "profoundly."
Meanwhile Artois went back to the Hans Crescent Hotel on foot. He walked slowly along the greasy pavement through the yellow November fog, trying to combat a sensation of dreariness which had floated round his spirit, as the fog floated round his body, directly he stepped into the street. He often felt depressed without a special cause, but this afternoon there was a special cause for his melancholy. Hermione was going to be married.
She often came to Paris, where she had many friends, and some years ago they had met at a dinner given by a brilliant Jewess, who delighted in clever people, not because she was stupid, but for the opposite reason. Artois was already famous, though not loved, as a novelist. He had published two books; works of art, cruel, piercing, brutal, true. Hermione had read them. Her intellect had revelled in them, but they had set ice about her heart, and when Madame