The Woman with the Fan | Page 8

Here am I playing Saul without a David. Many people there?"
"Several. Lady Cardington--"
"That white-haired enchantress! There's a Niobe--weeping not for her children, she never had any, but for her youth. She is the religion of half Mayfair, though I don't know whether she's got a religion. Men who wouldn't look at her when she was sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-six, worship her now she's sixty. And she weeps for her youth! Who else?"
"Mrs. Wolfstein."
"A daughter of Israel; coarse, intelligent, brutal to her reddened finger-tips. I'd trust her to judge a singer, actor, painter, writer. But I wouldn't trust her with my heart or half a crown."
"Lady Manby."
"Humour in petticoats. She's so infernally full of humour that there's no room in her for anything else. I doubt if she's got lungs. I'm sure she hasn't got a heart or a brain."
"But if she is so full of humour," said Sir Donald mildly, "how does she--?"
"How does a great writer fail over an addition sum? How does a man who speaks eight languages talk imbecility in them all? How is it that a bird isn't an angel? I wish to Heaven we knew. Well, Robin?"
"Of course, Mr. Bry."
Carey's violent face expressed disgust in every line.
"One of the most finished of London types," he exclaimed. "No other city supplies quite the same sort of man to take the colour out of things. He's enormously clever, enormously abominable, and should have been strangled at birth merely because of his feet. Why he's not Chinese I can't conceive; why he dines out every night I can. He's a human cruet-stand without the oil. He's so monstrously intelligent that he knows what a beast he is, and doesn't mind. Not a bad set of people to talk with, unless Lady Holme was in a temper and you were next to her, or you were left stranded with Holme when the women went out of the dining-room."
"You think Holme a poor talker?" asked Sir Donald.
"Precious poor. His brain is muscle-bound, I believe. Robin, you know I'm miserable to-night you offer me nothing to drink."
"I beg your pardon. Help yourself. And, Sir Donald, what will you--?"
"Nothing, thank you."
"Try one of those cigars."
Sir Donald took one and lit it quietly, looking at Carey, who seemed to interest him a good deal.
"Why are you miserable, Carey?" said Pierce, as the former buried his moustache in a tall whisky-and-soda.
"Because I'm alive and don't want to be dead. Reason enough."
"Because you're an unmitigated egoist," rejoined Pierce.
"Yes, I am an egoist. Introduce me to a man who is not, will you?"
"And what about women?"
"Many women are not egoists. But you have been dining with one of the most finished egoists in London to-night."
"Lady Holme?" said Sir Donald, shifting into the left-hand corner of the sofa.
"Yes, Viola Holme, once Lady Viola Grantoun; whom I mustn't know any more."
"I'm not sure that you are right, Carey," said Pierce, rather coldly.
"What!"
"Can a true and perfect egoist be in love?"
"Certainly. Is not even an egoist an animal?"
Pierce's lips tightened for a second, and his right hand strained itself round his knee, on which it was lying.
"And how much can she be in love?"
"Very much."
"Do you mean with her body?"
"Yes, I do; and with the spirit that lives in it. I don't believe there's any life but this. A church is more fantastic to me than the room in which Punch belabours Judy. But I say that there is spirit in lust, in hunger, in everything. When I want a drink my spirit wants it. Viola Holme's spirit--a flame that will be blown out at death--takes part in her love for that great brute Holme. And yet she's one of the most pronounced egoists in London."
"Do you care to tell us any reason you may have for saying so?" said Sir Donald.
As he spoke, his voice, brought into sharp contrast with the changeful and animated voice of Carey, sounded almost preposterously thin and worn out.
"She is always conscious of herself in every situation, in every relation of life. While she loves even she thinks to herself, 'How beautifully I am loving!' And she never forgets for a single moment that she is a fascinating woman. If she were being murdered she would be saying silently, while the knife went in, 'What an attractive creature, what an unreplaceable personage they are putting an end to!'"
"Rupert, you are really too absurd!" exclaimed Pierce, laughing reluctantly.
"I'm not absurd. I see straight. Lady Holme is an egoist--a magnificent, an adorable egoist, fine enough in her brilliant selfishness to stand quite alone."
"And you mean to tell us that any woman can do that?" exclaimed Pierce.
"Who am I that I should pronounce a verdict upon the great mystery? What do I know of women?"
"Far too much, I'm afraid," said Pierce.
"Nothing, I have never been married, and