The Parts Men Play | Page 9

ceilings, an insufficient and
uncomfortable supply of furniture, large pictures and small grates,
terrific beds and meagre chairs, and a general air of so much marble
and bare floor that one could almost imagine that house-cleaning could
be accomplished by turning on the hose.
After Lady Durwent had taken possession she sent for her husband, but
that gentleman reminded her that he was much happier at Roselawn,

though he would be glad if she would keep a room for him when
business at the 'House' or with his lawyers necessitated his presence in
town. Unhampered, therefore, by a husband, Lady Durwent prepared to
invade London Society, only to receive a shock at the very opening of
the campaign.
The Ironmonger had preceded her!
It is one of the tragedies of the _élite_ that even peers are not equal.
The law of class distinction, that amazing doctrine of timidity,
penetrated even the oak door of 8 Chelmsford Gardens. The
Ironmonger's daughter found that being the daughter of a man who had
made an honest living rendered her socially the unequal of the
daughters of men who, acting on a free translation of 'The earth is the
Lord's,' had done nothing but inherit unearned substance.
Then there was her cheerfulness, and the menacing voice!
Turning from the aloofness of the exclusive, Lady Durwent thought of
taking in famous performing Lions and feeding them. Unfortunately the
market was too brisk, and the only Lion she could get was an Italian
tenor from Covent Garden, who refused to roar, but left a poignant
memory of garlic.
It was then that a brilliant idea entered her brain. Lady Durwent
decided to cultivate unusual people.
No longer would she batter at oak doors that refused to open; no more
would she dangle morsels of food in front of overfed Lions. She would
create a little Kingdom of remarkable people--not those acclaimed great
by the mealy mob, but those whose genius was of so rare and subtle a
growth that ordinary eyes could not detect it at all. Her only fear was
that she might be unable to discover a sufficient number to create a
really satisfactory _clientèle_.
But she reckoned without her London.
For every composer in the Metropolis who is trying to translate the

music of the spheres, there are a dozen who can only voice the
discordant jumble of their minds or ask the world to listen to the hollow
echo of their creative vacuum. For every artist striving to catch some
beauty of nature that he may revisualise it on canvas, there are a score
whose eyes can only cling to the malformation of existence. For every
writer toiling in the quiet hours to touch some poor, dumb heart-strings,
or to open unseeing eyes to the joy of life, there are many whose gaze
is never lifted from the gutter, so that, when they write, it is of the slime
and the filth that they have smelt, crying to the world that the blue of
the skies and the beauty of a rose are things engendered of sentimental
minds unable to see the real, the vital things of life.
To this community of poseurs Lady Durwent jingled her town house
and her title--and the response was instantaneous. She became the
hostess of a series of dinner-parties which gradually made her the
subject of paragraphs in the chatty columns of the press, and of whole
chapters in the gossip of London's refined circles.
Her natural cheerfulness expanded like a sunflower, and when her son
Malcolm secured a commission in the --th Hussars, her triumph was
complete. Even the staggering news that Dick had been taken away
from Eton to avoid expulsion for drunkenness proved only a
momentary cloud on the broad horizon of her contentment.
When she was nineteen years of age Elise came to live with her mother,
and as the fiery beauty of the child had mellowed into a sort of
smouldering charm that owed something to the mystic atmosphere of
convent life, Lady Durwent felt that an ally of importance had entered
the arena.
Thus four years passed, and in 1913 (had peeresses been in the habit of
taking inventories) Lady Durwent could have issued a statement
somewhat as follows:
ASSETS.
1 Husband; a Peer. 1 Son; aged twenty-five; decently popular with his
regiment. 1 Daughter; marriageable; aged twenty-three. 1 Town House.

1 Country Estate. The goodwill of numerous unusual people, and the
envy of a lot of minor Peeresses.
LIABILITIES.
1 Son; aged twenty; at Cambridge; in perpetual trouble, and would
have been rusticated ere now had he not been the son of a lord. 1
Ironmonger.
* * * * * *
'My dear,' said Lady Durwent, glancing at her daughter, who was
reading a novel, 'hadn't you better go and dress?'