The Parts Men Play | Page 8

soundly beaten, but he was a bit
of a Quixote--and a lady's name was involved.
And no nurse ever tended a wounded hero more tenderly than the little
copper-haired creature of impulse who bathed the battered face of poor
Dick. Wilful and rebellious as she was, there was in Elise a deep well
of love for her brother that no other being could fathom. And it was not
his loyalty alone that had inspired it. Her solitary life had quickened her
perceptive powers, and intuitively she knew that, in the years before
him, her weak-willed, buoyant-natured brother would be unable to meet
the cross-currents of his destiny and maintain a steady course.
But he thought it was because of his swollen eyes that she cried.
CHAPTER III.
ABOUT A TOWN HOUSE.
I.
It was perhaps not inconsistent with the character of Lady Durwent that,

although she had striven to secure the guiding of Malcolm's
development, she should find herself totally devoid of any plan for the
training of a daughter.
Vaguely--and in this she mirrored thousands of other mothers--there
was a hope in her heart that Elise would grow up pretty, virtuous,
amiable, and would eventually marry well. It did not concern her that
the girl was permeated with individuality, that the temperament of an
artist lay behind the changing eyes in that restless, graceful figure. She
could not see that her daughter had a delicate, wilful personality, which
would rebel increasingly against the monotony of a social regime that
planned the careers of its sons before they were born, and offered its
daughters a mere incoherency of good intentions.
Full of the swift imaginativeness which makes the feminine
contribution to life so much a thing of charm and colour, Elise pursued
the paths which Youth has for its own--those wonderful streets of
fantasy that end with adolescence in Society's ugly fields of sign-posts.
Lacking the companionship of others of a similar age, she wove her
own conception of life, and dreamed of a world actuated by quick and
generous emotions. With every pulsing beat of the warm blood
coursing through her veins she demanded in her girl's mind that the
world in which her many-sided self had been placed should yield the
wines to satisfy the subtle shades of thirst produced by her insistent
individuality.
And the world offered her sign-posts. This must you do and thus must
you talk; hither shall you go and here remain: these are the Arts with
which you may enjoy a very slight acquaintance, but do not aspire to
genuine accomplishment--leave that to common people; be lady-like,
be calm and reserved; behold your brothers, how they swank!--but they
are men, and this is England; desire nought but the protected privileges
of your class, and in good season some youth of the same social
stratum as yourself will marry you, and, lo! in place of being a daughter
in a landed gentleman's house, you will be a wife.
Into this little world of a kind-hearted, chivalrous aristocracy (whose

greatest fault was their ignorance of the fact that the smallest upheaval
in humanitarianism, no matter what distance away, registers on the
seismograph of human destiny the world over) Elise Durwent found her
path laid. Increasingly resentful, she trod it until she was fourteen years
of age, when her mother, who had long been bored with country life,
made an important decision--and purchased a town house.
Having done this, Lady Durwent sent her daughter to a convent, a
move which enabled her to get rid of the governess discreetly, and left
her without family cares at all, as both boys were now at school.
Unencumbered, therefore, she said au revoir to Roselawn, and set her
compass for No. 8 Chelmsford Gardens, London.
II.
Chelmsford Gardens is a row of dignified houses on Oxford Street--yet
not on Oxford Street. A miniature park, some forty feet in depth, acts as
a buffer-state between the street itself and the little group of town
houses. It is an oasis in the great plains of London's dingy
dwelling-places, a spot where the owners are rarely seen unless the
season is at its height, when gaily cloaked women and stiff-bosomed
men emerge at theatre-hour and are driven to the opera. Throughout the
day the Gardens (probably so styled on account of the complete
absence of horticultural embellishments) are as silent as the tomb; there
is no sign of life except in the mornings, when a solemn butler or a
uniformed parlour-maid appears for a moment at the door like some
creature of the sea coming up for air, then unobtrusively retires.
No. 8 was exactly like its neighbours, consisting of an exterior boasting
a huge oak door, with cold, stone steps leading up to it, and an interior
composed of rooms with very high