The Parts Men Play | Page 9

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?'
'Is there a dinner-party to-night?' asked the girl without looking up.
'Of course, Elise. Have you forgotten that Mr. Selwyn of New York will be here?'
'Is he as tedious as Stackton Dunckley?'
Lady Durwent frowned with vexation. 'My dear,' she said, 'you are very trying.'
CHAPTER IV.
PROLOGUE TO A DINNER-PARTY.
I.
Even unusual dinner-parties begin like ordinary ones. There is the discomfiture of the guest who arrives first, subjected to his hostess's reassurances that he is not really early. After what seems an interminable length of time, during which a score of conversational topics are broached, and both hostess and guest are reduced to a state bordering on mutual animosity, the remainder of the party arrive en masse, as if by collusion. The butler (who likes to chew the cud of reflection between the announcements) is openly pained, while the distracted hostess must manage the introductions, and, as friendships are begun or enmities renewed, endeavour to initiate the new-comer into the subject of conversation immediately preceding his or her entrance. As the good woman's subconscious mind is in the kitchen,