Chapter I (1)

Lady Sellingworth belonged to a great English family, and had been brought up in healthy splendour, saved from the canker of too much luxury by the aristocratic love of sport which is a tradition in such English families as hers. As a girl she had been what a certain sporting earl described as “a leggy beauty.” Even then she had shown a decided inclination to run wild and had seldom checked the inclination. Unusually tall and athletic, rather boyish in appearance, and of the thin, greyhound type, she had excelled in games and held her own in sports. She had shot in an era when comparatively few women shot, and in the hunting-field she had shown a reckless courage which had fascinated the hard-riding men who frequented her father’s house. As she grew older her beauty had rapidly developed, and with it an insatiable love of admiration. Early she had realized that she was going to be a beauty, and had privately thanked the gods for her luck. She could scarcely have borne not to be a beauty; but, mercifully, it was all right. Woman’s greatest gift was to be hers. When she looked into the glass and knew that, when she looked into men’s eyes and knew it even more definitely, she felt merciless and eternal. In the dawn no end was in sight; in the dawn no end seemed possible.

From the age of sixteen onwards hers was the intimate joy, certainly one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all the joys of women, of knowing that all men looked at her with pleasure, that many men looked at her with longing, that she was incessantly desired.

From the time when she was sixteen she lived perpetually in that atmosphere which men throw round a daring and beautiful woman without even conscious intention, creating it irresistibly merely by their natural desire. And that atmosphere was the breath of life to her. Soon she could not imagine finding any real value in life without it. She often considered plain girls, dull girls, middle-aged women who had never had any beauty, any saving grace but that of freshness, and wondered how they managed to get along at all. What was the use of life to them? Nobody bothered about them, except, perhaps, a few relations, or what are called “old friends”--that is, people who, having always been accustomed to you, put up with you comfortably, and wear their carpet slippers in your presence without troubling whether you like slippers or would prefer them in high-heeled shoes.

As to old women, those from whom almost the last vestiges of what they once had been physically had fallen away, she was always charming to them; but she always wondered why they still seemed to cling on to life. They were done with. It was long ago all over for them. They did not matter any more, even if once they had mattered. Why did they still keep a hold on life with their skinny hands? Was it from fear of death, or what? Once she expressed her wonder about this to a man.

“Of course,” she said. “I know they can’t go just because they want to. But why do they _want_ to stay?”

“Oh,” he said, “I think lots of old ladies enjoy themselves immensely in their own way.”

“Well, I can’t understand it!” she said.

And she spoke the truth.

She flirted, of course. Her youthful years were complicated by a maze of flirtations, through which she wandered with apparently the greatest assurance, gaining knowledge of men.

Finally she married. She made what is called “a great match,” the sort of match in every way suitable to such an aristocratic, beautiful and daring girl.

Then began her real reign.

Although such a keen sportswoman, she was also a woman who had a good brain, a quick understanding, and a genuine love of the intellectual and artistic side of life, for its own sake, not for any reason of fashion. She was of the type that rather makes fashions than follows them. As a married woman she was not only Diana in the open country, she was Egeria elsewhere. She liked and she wanted all types of men; the hard-bitten, keen-eyed, lean-flanked men who could give her a lead or take a lead from her over difficult country, and the softer breed of men, whose more rounded bodies were informed by sharp spirits, who, many of them, could not have sat a horse over the easiest fence, or perhaps even have brought down a stag at twenty paces, but who would dominate thousands from their desks, or from the stages of opera houses, or from adjustable seats in front of pianos, or from studios hung with embroideries and strewn with carpets of the East.

These knew how to admire and long for a beautiful woman quite as well as the men of the moors and the hunting field, and they were often more subtle in their ways of showing their feelings.

Lady Sellingworth had horses named after her and books dedicated to her. She moved in all sets which were penetrated by the violent zest for the life of the big world, and in all sets she more than held her own. She was as much at home in Chelsea as she was at Newmarket. Her beautifully disguised search for admiration extended far and wide, and she found what she wanted sometimes in unexpected places, in sombre Oxford libraries, in time-worn deaneries, in East-End settlements, through which she flashed now and then like a bird of Paradise, darting across the murk of a strange black country on its way to golden regions, as well as in Mayfair, in the Shires, in foreign capitals, and on the moors of Scotland.

Her husband was no obstacle in her way. She completely dominated him, even though she gave him no child. He knew she was, as he expressed it, “worth fifty” of him. Emphatically he was the husband of his wife, and five years after their marriage he died still adoring her.

She was sorry; she was even very sorry. And she withdrew from the great world in which she had been a moving spirit now for over ten years for the period of mourning, a year. But she was not overwhelmed by sorrow. It is so very difficult for the woman who lives by, and for, her beauty and her charm for men to be overwhelmed. One man has gone and she mourns him; but there are so many men left, all of them with eyes in which lamps may be set and with hearts to be broken.

It was at this time that she became very familiar with Paris.

She wanted to be away from London, so she took an apartment in Paris, and began to live there very quietly. Friends, of course, came to see her, and she began to study Paris thoroughly, not the gay, social Paris, but a very interesting Paris. Presently her freedom from the ordinary social ties began to amuse her. She had now so much time for all sorts of things which women very much in society miss more often than not. Never going to parties, she was able to go elsewhere. She went elsewhere. Always there had dwelt caged in her a certain wildness which did not come from her English blood. There was a foreign strain in her from the borders of Asia mingled with a strong Celtic strain. This wildness which in her girlhood she had let loose happily in games and sports, in violent flirtations, and in much daring skating over thin ice, which in her married life had spent itself in the whirl of society, and in the energies necessary to the attainment of an unchallenged position at the top of things, in her widowhood began to seek an outlet in Bohemia.

Paris can be a very kind or a very cruel city, in its gaiety hiding velvet or the claws of a tiger. To Lady Sellingworth--then Lady Manham--it was kind. It gave her its velvet. She knew a fresh type of life there, with much for the intellect, with not a little for the senses, even with something for the heart. It was there that she visited out-of-the-way cafes, where clever men met and talked over every subject on earth. A place like the Cafe Royal in London had no attraction for the Lady Sellingworth over sixty. That sort of thing, raised to the _nth_ degree, had been familiar to her years and years ago, before Beryl Van Tuyn and Enid Blunt had been in their cradles.

And the freedom of her widowhood, with no tie at all, had become gradually very dear to her. She had felt free enough in her marriage. But this manner of life had more breathing space in it. There is no doubt that in that Paris year, especially in the second half of it, she allowed the wild strain in her to play as it had never played before, like a reckless child out of sight of parents and all relations.

When the mourning was over and she returned to London she was a woman who had progressed, but whether upon an upward or a downward path who shall decide? She had certainly become more fascinating. Her beauty was at its height. The year in Paris, lived almost wholly among clever and very unprejudiced French people, had given her a peculiar polish--one Frenchman who knew English slang called it “a shine”--which made her stand out among her English contemporaries. Many of them when girls had received a “finish” in Paris. But girls cannot go about as she had gone about. They had learnt French; she had learnt Paris. From that time onward she was probably the most truly cosmopolitan of all the aristocratic Englishwomen of her day. Distinguished foreigners who visited London generally paid their first private call on her. Her house was European rather than English. She kept, too, her apartment in Paris, and lived there almost as much as she lived in London. And, perhaps, her secret wildness was more at home there.

Scandal, of course, could not leave her untouched. But her position in society was never challenged. People said dreadful things about her, but everyone who did not know her wanted to know her, and no one who knew her wished not to know her. She “stood out” from all the other women in England of her day, not merely because of her beauty--she was not more beautiful than several of her contemporaries--but because of her gay distinction, a daring which was never, which could not be, ill bred, her extraordinary lack of all affectation, and a peculiar and delightful bonhomie which made her at home with everyone and everyone at home with her. Servants and dependents loved her. Everyone about her was fond of her. And yet she was certainly selfish. Invariably almost she was kind to people, but herself came first with her. She made few sacrifices, and many sacrificed themselves to her. There was seldom a moment when incense was not rising up before her altar, and the burnt offerings to her were innumerable.

And all through these years she was sinking more deeply into slavery, while she was ruling others. Her slavery was to herself. She was the captive of her own vanity. Her love of admiration had developed into an insatiable passion. She was ceaselessly in her tower spying out for fresh lovers. From afar off she perceived them, and when they drew near to her castle she stopped them on their way. She did not love them and cast them to death like Tamara of the Caucasus. No; but she required of them the pause on their travels, which was a tribute to her power. No one must pass her by as if she were an ordinary woman.

Probably there is no weed in all the human garden which grows so fast as vanity. Lady Sellingworth’s vanity grew and grew with the years until it almost devoured her. It became an idee fixe in her. A few people no doubt knew this--a few women. But she was saved from all vulgarity of vanity by an inherent distinction, not only of manner but of something more intimate, which never quite abandoned her, which her vanity was never able to destroy. Although her vanity was colossal, she usually either concealed it, or if she showed it showed it subtly. She was not of the type which cannot pass a mirror in a restaurant without staring into it. She only looked into mirrors in private. Nor was she one of those women who powder their faces and rouge their lips before men in public places. It was impossible for her to be blatant. Nevertheless, her moral disease led her gradually to fall from her own secret standard of what a woman of her world should be. Craven had once said to himself that Lady Sellingworth could never seek the backstairs. He was not wholly right in this surmise about her. There was a time in her life--the time when she was, or was called, a professional beauty--when she could scarcely see a man’s face without watching it for admiration. Although she preserved her delightfully unselfconscious manner she was almost ceaselessly conscious of self. Her own beauty was the idol which she worshipped and which she presented to the world expectant of the worship of others. There have been many women like her, but few who have been so clever in hiding their disease. But always seated in her brain there was an imp who understood, was contemptuous and mocked, an imp who knew what was coming to her, what comes to all the daughters of men who outlive youth and its shadowy triumphs. Her brain was ironic, while her temperament was passionate, and greedy in its pursuit of the food it clamoured for; her brain watched the unceasing chase with almost a bitterness of sarcasm, merging sometimes into a bitterness of pity. In some women there seems at times to be a dual personality, a woman of the blood at odds with a woman of the grey matter. It was so in Lady Sellingworth’s case, but for a long time the former woman dominated the latter, whose empire was to come later with white hair and a ravaged face.

At the age of thirty-five, after some years of brilliant and even of despotic widowhood, she married again--Lord Sellingworth.

He was twenty-five years older than she was, ruggedly handsome, huge, lean, self-possessed, very clever, very worldly, and that unusual phenomenon, a genuine atheist. There was no doubt that he had a keen passion for her, one of those passions which sometimes flare up in a man of a strong and impetuous nature, who has lived too much, who is worn out, haunted at times by physical weariness, yet still fiercely determined to keep a tight grip on life and life’s few real pleasures, the greatest of which is perhaps the indulgence of love.

Like her first marriage this marriage was apparently a success. Lord Sellingworth’s cleverness fascinated his wife’s brain, and led her to value the pursuits of the intellect more than she had ever done before. She was proud of his knowledge and wit, proud of being loved by a man of obvious value. After this marriage her house became more than ever the resort of the brilliant men of the day. But though Lord Sellingworth undoubtedly improved his wife’s mental capacities, enlarged the horizon of her mind, and gave her new interests, without specially intending it he injured her soul. For he increased her worldliness and infected her with his atheism. She had always been devoted to the world. He continually suggested to her that there was nothing else, nothing beyond. All sense of mysticism had been left out of his nature. What he called “priestcraft” was abhorrent to him. The various religions seemed to him merely different forms of superstition, the assertions of their leaders only varying forms of humbug. He was greedy in searching for food to content the passions of the body, and was restless in pursuit of nutriment for the mind. But not believing in the soul he took no trouble about it.

Lady Sellingworth had this man at her feet. Nevertheless, in a certain way he dominated her. In hard mental power he was much her superior, and her mind became gradually subservient to his in many subtle ways. It was in his day that she developed that noticeable and almost reckless egoism which is summed up by the laconic saying, “after me the deluge.” For Lord Sellingworth’s atheism was not of the type which leads to active humanitarianism, but of the opposite type which leads to an exquisite selfishness. And he led his wife with him. He taught her the whole art of self-culture, and with it the whole art of self-worship, subtly extending to her mind that which for long had been concerned mainly with the body. They were two of the most selfish and two of the most charming people in London. For they were both thorough bred and naturally kind-hearted, and so there were always showers of crumbs falling from their well-spread table for the benefit of those about them. Their friends had a magnificent time with them and so did their servants. They liked others to be pleased with them and satisfied because of them. For they must live in a warm atmosphere. And nothing makes the atmosphere so cold about a man or woman as the egoism which shows itself in miserliness, or in the unwillingness that others should have a good time.

When Lady Sellingworth was thirty-nine Lord Sellingworth died abruptly. The doctors said that his heart was worn out; others said something different, something less kind.

For the second time Lady Sellingworth was a widow; for the second time she spent the period of mourning in Paris. And when it was over she went for a tour round the world with a small party of friends; Sir Guy Letchworth and his plain, but gay and clever wife, and Roger Brand, a millionaire and a famous Edwardian.

Brand was a bachelor, and had long been a devoted adherent of Lady Sellingworth’s, and people, of course, said that he was going to marry her. But they eventually came back from their long tour comfortably disengaged. Brand went back to his enormous home in Park Lane, and Lady Sellingworth settled down in number 18A Berkeley Square.

She was now forty-one. She had arrived at a very difficult period in the life of a beauty. The freshness and bloom of youth had inevitably left her. The adjectives applied to her were changing. The word “lovely” was dropped. Its place was taken by such epithets as “handsome,” “splendid looking,” “brilliant,” “striking,” “alluring.” People spoke of Lady Sellingworth’s “good days”; and said of her, “Isn’t she astonishing?” The word “zenith” was occasionally used in reference to her. A verb which began to be mixed up with her a good deal was the verb “to last.” It was said of her that she “lasted” wonderfully. Women put the question, “Isn’t it miraculous how Adela Sellingworth lasts?”

All this might, perhaps, be called complimentary. But women are not as a rule specially fond of such compliments. When kind friends speak of a woman’s “good days” there is an implication that some of her days are bad. Lady Sellingworth knew as well as any woman which compliments are left-handed and which are not. On one occasion soon after she returned to London from her tour round the world a woman friend said to her:

“Adela, you have never looked better than you do now. Do you know what you remind me of?”

The woman was an American. Lady Sellingworth replied carelessly:

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“You remind me of our wonderful Indian summers that come in October. How do you manage it?”

That come in October?

These words struck a chill through Lady Sellingworth. Suddenly she felt the autumn in her. She had been in America: she had known the glory of its Indian summer; she had also known that Indian summer’s startling sudden collapse. Winter comes swiftly after those almost unnaturally golden days. And what is there left in winter for a woman who has lived for her beauty since she was sixteen years old? The freedom of a second widowhood would be only chill loneliness in winter. She saw herself like a figure in the distance, sitting over a fire alone. But little warmth would come from that fire. The warmth that was necessary to her came from quite other sources than coal or wood kindled and giving out flames.

Her vanity shuddered. She realized strongly, perhaps, for the first time, that people were just beginning to think of her as a woman inevitably on the wane. She looked into her mirror, stared into it, and tried to consider herself impartially. She was certainly very good-looking. Her tall figure had never been made ugly by fatness. She was not the victim of what is sometimes called “the elderly spread.” But although she was slim, considering her great height, she thought that she discerned signs of a thickening tendency. She must take that in time. Her figure must not be allowed to degenerate. And her face?

She was so accustomed to her face, and so accustomed to its being a beautiful face, that it was difficult to her to regard it with cold impartiality. But she tried to; tried to look at it as she might have looked at the face of another woman, of say, a rival beauty.

What age did the face seem to be? If she had seen it passing by in the street what age would she have guessed its owner to be? Something in the thirties; but perhaps in the late thirties? She wasn’t quite certain about it. Really it is so difficult to look at yourself quite impartially. And she did not wish to fall into exaggeration, to be hypercritical. She wished to be strictly reasonable, to see herself exactly as she was. The eyes were brilliant, but did they look like young eyes?

No, they didn’t. And yet they were full of light. There was nothing faded about them. But somehow at that moment they looked terribly experienced. With a conscious effort she tried to change their expression, to make them look less full of knowledge. But it seemed to her that she failed utterly. No, they were not young eyes; they never could be young eyes. The long accustomed woman of the world was mirrored in them with her many experiences. They were beautiful in their way, but their way had nothing to do with youth. And near the eyes, very near, there were definite traces of maturity. A few, as yet very faint, lines showed; and there were shadows; and there was--she could only call it to herself “a slightly hollow look,” which she had never observed in any girl, or, so far as she remembered, in any young woman.

She gazed at her mouth and then at her throat. Both showed signs of age; the throat especially, she thought. The lips were fine, finely curved, voluptuous. But they were somehow not fresh lips. In some mysterious way, which really she could not define, life had marked them as mature. There were a couple of little furrows in the throat and there was also a slightly “drawn” look on each side just below the line of the jaw. By the temples also, close to the hair, there was something which did not look young.

Lady Sellingworth felt very cold. At that moment she probably exaggerated in her mind the effect of her appearance. She plunged down into pessimism about herself. A sort of desperation came upon her. Underneath all her conquering charm, hidden away like a trembling bird under depths of green leaves, there was a secret diffidence of which she had occasionally been conscious during her life. It had no doubt been born with her, had lived in her as long as she had lived. Very few people knew of its existence. But she knew, had known of it as long as she remembered. Now that diffidence seemed to hold her with talons, to press its beak into her heart.

She felt that she could not face the world with any assurance if she lost her beauty. She had charm, cleverness, rank, position, money. She knew all her advantages. But at that moment she seemed to be confronting penury. And as she continued to look into the mirror ugliness seemed to grow in the woman she saw like a spreading disease till she felt that she would be frightened to show herself to anyone, and wished she could hide from everyone who knew her.

That absurdly morbid fit passed, of course. It could not continue, except in a woman who was physically ill, and Lady Sellingworth was quite well. But it left its mark in her mind. From that day she began to take intense trouble with herself. Hitherto she had been inclined to trust her own beauty. She had relied on it almost instinctively. And that strange, hidden diffidence, when it had manifested itself, had manifested itself in connexion with social things, the success of a dinner, or with things of the mind, the success or non-success of a conversation with a clever man. She had never spoken of it to anyone, for she had always been more or less ashamed of it, and had brought silence to her aid in the endeavour to stamp it out lest it should impair her power over others. But now it was quickened within her. It grew, and in its growth tortured her.

“How do you manage it?”

That not very kind question of the friend who had compared her to an Indian summer remained with Lady Sellingworth. Since she had considered herself in the mirror she had realized that she had attained that critical period in a beauty’s life when she must begin incessantly to manage to continue a beauty. Hitherto, beyond always dressing perfectly and taking care to be properly “turned out,” she had done less to herself than many women habitually do. Now she swung to the opposite extreme. There is no need to describe what she did. She did, or had done to her, all that she considered necessary, and she considered that a very great deal was necessary.

A certain Greek, who was a marvellous expert in his line, helped her at a very high figure. And she helped herself by much rigid abstinence, by denying natural appetites, by patient physical discipline. Her fight against the years was tremendous, and was conducted with extraordinary courage.

But nevertheless it seemed to her that a curse was put upon her; in that she was surely one of those women who, once they take the first step upon the downward slope, are compelled to go forward with a damnable rapidity.

The more she “managed it” the more there seemed to be to manage. From the time when she frankly gave herself into the clutches of artificiality the natural physical merit of her seemed to her to deteriorate at a speed which was headlong.

A hideous leap in the downward course took place presently. She began to dye her hair. She was not such a fool as to change its natural colour. She merely concealed the fact that white hairs were beginning to grow on her head at an age when many simple people, who don’t care particularly what they look like--sensible clergymen’s wives in the provinces, and others unknown to fashion--remain as brown as a berry, or as pleasantly auburn as the rind of a chestnut.

The knowledge of those hidden white hairs haunted her. She felt horribly ashamed of them. She hated them with an intense, and almost despairing, hatred. For they stamped the terrific difference between her body and her nature.

It seemed to her that in her nature she retained all the passions of youth. This was not strictly true, for no woman over forty has precisely the same passions as an ardent girl, however ardent she may be. But the “wild heart,” spoken of by Lady Sellingworth to Craven, still beat in her breast, and the vanity of the girl, enormously increased by the passage of the years, still lived intensely in the middle-aged woman. It was perhaps this natural wildness combined with her vanity which tortured Lady Sellingworth most at this period of her life. She still desired happiness and pleasure greedily, indeed with almost unnatural greediness; she still felt that life robbed of the admiration and the longing of men would not be worth living.

Beryl Van Tuyn had spoken of a photograph of Lady Sellingworth taken when she was about forty-nine, and had said that, though very handsome, it showed a _fausse jeunesse_, and revealed a woman looking vain and imperious, a woman with the expression of one always on the watch for new lovers. And there had been a cruel truth in her words. For, from the time when she had given herself to artificiality until the time, some nine years later, when she had plunged into what had seemed to her, and to many others, something very like old age, Lady Sellingworth had definitely and continuously deteriorated, as all those do who try to defy any natural process. Carrying on a fight in which there is a possibility of winning may not do serious harm to a character, but carrying on a fight which must inevitably be lost always hardens and embitters the combatant. During those years of her _fausse jeunesse_ Lady Sellingworth was at her worst.

For one thing she became the victim of jealousy. She was secretly jealous of good-looking young women, and, spreading her evil wide like a cloud, she was even jealous of youth. To be young was to possess a gift which she had lost, and a gift which men love as they love but few things. She could not help secretly hating the possessors of it.

She had now become enrolled in the “old guard,” and had adopted as her device their motto, “Never give up.” She was one of the more or less mysterious fighters of London. She fought youth incessantly, and she fought Time. And sometimes the weariness and the nausea of battle lay heavy upon her. Her expression began to change. She never lost, she never could lose, her distinction, but it was slightly blurred, slightly tarnished. She preserved the appearance of bonhomie, but her cordiality, her good nature, were not what they had been. Formerly she had had marvellous spirits; now she was often accompanied into the world by the black dog. And when she was alone he sat by the hearth with her.

She began to hate being a widow. Sometimes she thought that she wished she had had children. But then it occurred to her that they might have been daughters, lovely girls now perhaps, showing to society what she had once been. With such daughters she would surely have been forced into abdication. For she knew that she could never have entered into a contest with her own children. Perhaps it was best as it was, best that she was childless.

She might no doubt have married a third time. Sir Seymour Portman, a bachelor for her sake, would have asked nothing better than to become her husband. And there were other middle-aged and old men who would gladly have linked themselves with her, and who did not scruple to tell her so. But now she could not bear the idea of making a “suitable” match. Lord Sellingworth had been old, and she had been happy with him. But she had felt, and had considered herself to be, young when she had married him. The contrast between him and herself had been flattering to her vanity. It would be different now. And besides, with the coming of middle age, and the fatal fading of physical attraction, there had come into her a painful obsession.

As much as she hated youth in women she was attracted by it in men. She began secretly to worship youth as it showed itself in the other sex. Something in her clamoured for the admiration and the longing of the young men who were amorous of life, who were comparatively new to the fray, who had the ardour and the freshness which could have mated with hers when she was a girl, but which now contrasted violently with her terribly complete experience and growing morbidity. She felt that now she could never marry a man of her own age or older than herself, not simply because she could not love such a man, but because she would be perpetually in danger of loving a man of quite another type.

She entered upon a very ugly period, perhaps the ugliest there can be in the secret life of a woman. And it was then that there came definitely into her face, and was fixed there, the expression noted by Miss Van Tuyn in the photograph in Mrs. Ackroyd’s drawing-room, the expression of a woman on the pounce.

There is no food so satisfying to the vanity of a middle-aged woman as the admiration and desire of young men. Lady Sellingworth longed for, and sought for, that food, but not without inward shame, and occasionally something that approached inward horror. For she had, and never was able to lose, a sense of what was due not merely to herself but to her better self. Here the woman of the blood was at grips with the woman of the grey matter. And the imp enthroned somewhere within her watched, marked, remembered, condemned.

That imp began to persecute Lady Sellingworth. She would have slain him if she could, for he was horribly critical, and remained cold through all her intensities. In Paris he had often been useful to her, for irony is appreciated in Paris, and he was strongly ironical. Often she felt as if he had eyes fixed upon her sardonically, when she was giving way to the woman in her blood. In Paris it had been different. For there, at any rate in all the earlier years, he had been criticizing and laughing at others. Now his attention was always on her. There were moments when she could almost hear his ugly, whispering voice telling her all he thought about her, about her appearance, her conduct, her future, about her connexions with others now, about the loneliness that was coming upon her. She saw many other women who were evidently content in, and unconscious of, their follies. Why was she not like them? Why had she been singled out for this persecution of the brain. It is terrible to have a brain which mocks at you instead of happily mocking at others. And that was her case. Later she was to understand herself better; she was to understand that her secret diffidence was connected with the imp, was the imp’s child in her as it were; later, too, she was to learn that the imp was working for her eventual salvation, in the moral sense.

But she had not yet reached that turning in the path of her life.

During all this period her existence was apparently as successful and brilliant as ever. She was still a leader in London, knowing and known to everyone, going to all interesting functions, receiving at her house all the famous men and women of the day. To an observer it would have seemed that she occupied an impregnable position and that she was having a wonderful time. But she was really a very unhappy woman at violent odds with herself.

On one occasion when she was giving a dinner in her house a discussion broke out on the question of happiness. It was asked by someone, “If you could demand of the gods one gift, with the certainty of receiving it, what gift would you demand?” Various answers were given. One said, “Youth for as long as I lived”; another “Perfect health”; another “Supreme beauty”; another “The most brilliant intellect of my time”; another “The love and admiration of all I came in contact with.” Finally a sad-looking elderly man, poet, philosopher, and the former administrator of a great province in India, was appealed to. His answer was, “Complete peace of mind.” And on his answer followed the general discussion about happiness.

When the party broke up and Lady Sellingworth was alone she thought almost desperately about that discussion and about the last answer to the question which had been put.

Complete peace of mind! How extraordinary it would be to possess that! She could scarcely conceive of it, and it seemed to her that even in her most wonderful days, in her radiant and careless youth, when she had had almost everything, she had never had that. But then she had not even wanted to have it. Complete peace seems but a chilly sort of thing to youth in its quick-silver time. But later on in life we love combat less.

Suddenly Lady Sellingworth realized the age of her mind, and it seemed to her that she was a horrible mixture of incongruities. She was physically aging slowly but surely. She had appetites which were in direct conflict with age. She had desires all of which turned towards youth. And her mind was quite old. It must be, she said to herself, because now she was sitting still and longing to know that complete peace of mind which an old man had talked of that evening at her dinner table.

A sort of panic shook her as she thought of all the antagonists which at a certain period of life gather together to attack and slay youth, all vestiges of youth, in the human being; the unsatisfied appetites, the revolts of the body, the wearinesses of soul, and the subtle and contradictory desires which lie hidden deep in the mind.

She was now intensely careful about her body, had brought its care almost to the level of a finely finished art. But she had not troubled about the disciplining of her mind. Yet the undisciplined mind can work havoc in the tissues of the body. Youth of the mind, if preserved, helps the body to continue apparently young. It may not be able to cause the body actually to look young, but in some mysterious way it throws round the body a youthful atmosphere which deceives many people, which creates an illusion. And the strange thing is that the more intimate people are with one possessing that mental youthfulness, the more strong is the illusion upon them. Atmosphere has a spell which increases upon us the longer we remain bathed in it. Lady Sellingworth said all this to herself that night, and rebuked herself for letting her mind go towards old age. She rebelled against the longing for complete peace of mind because she now connected such a longing with stagnation. And men, especially young men, love vivacity, restlessness, the swift flying temperament. Such a temperament suggests to them youth. It is old age which sits still. Youth is for ever on the move.

“I must not long for peace or anything of that kind!” she said to herself.

Nevertheless the lack of all mental peace ravages the body.

She scarcely knew what to do for the best. But eventually she tried to take her mind in hand, for she was afraid of it, afraid of its age, afraid of the effect its age might eventually have upon her appearance. So she strove to train it backwards towards youthfulness. For now she was sure that she was not one of those fortunate women who have naturally young minds which refuse to grow old. She knew a few such women. She envied them almost bitterly. There was no need for them to strive. She watched them surreptitiously, studied them, tried to master their secret.

Presently a tragic episode occurred in her life.

She fell in love with a man of about twenty-three. He was the son of people whom she knew very well in Paris, French people who were almost her contemporaries, and was the sporting type of Frenchman, very good-looking, lively, satirical and strong. He was a famous lawn tennis player and came over to London for the tournament at Wimbledon. She had already seen him in Paris, and had known him when he was little more than a boy. But she had never thought much about him in those days. For in those days she had not been haunted by the passion for youth which possessed her now.

Louis de Rocheouart visited at her house as a matter of course, was agreeable and gallant to her because she was a charming and influential woman and an old friend of his family. But he did not think of her as a woman to whom it was possible that a man of his age could make love. He looked upon her as one who had been a famous beauty, but who was now merely a clever, well-preserved and extremely successful member of the “old guard” of society in London. Her “day” as a beauty was in his humble opinion quite over. She belonged to his mother’s day. He knew that. And his mother happened to be one of those delightful Frenchwomen who are spirituelle at all ages, but who never pretend to be anything they are not. His mother’s hair was already grey, and she had two married daughters, one of whom had been trusting enough to make her a grandmother.

While Rocheouart was in London a number of popular middle-aged women banded together and gave a very smart ball at Prince’s. Lady Sellingworth was one of the hostesses, all of whom danced merrily and appeared to be in excellent spirits and health. It was certainly one of the very best balls of the season, and young men turned up at it in large numbers. Among them was young Rocheouart.

Lady Sellingworth danced with him more than once. That night she had almost managed to deceive herself as to the real truth of life. The ball was being such a success; the scramble for invitations had been so great; the young men evidently found things so lively, and seemed to be in such exuberant spirits, that she was carried away, and really felt as if youth were once more dancing through her veins and shining out of her eyes.

The “old guard” were _in excelsis_ that night; the Edwardians were in their glory on the top of the world. Probably more than one of them thought, “They can say what they like but we can cut out the girls when we choose.” Their savoir faire was immense. Many of them still possessed an amazing amount of the joie de vivre. And some of them were thoroughly sensible women, saved from absurdity by the blessed sense of humour.

But Lady Sellingworth was by this time desperately in love with Louis de Rocheouart, and her sense of humour was in abeyance that night. In consequence, she was the victim of a mortification which she was never to forget as long as she lived.

Towards the end of the evening she happened to be standing with Sir Seymour Portman near the entrance to the ballroom, and overheard a scrap of conversation between two people just behind them.

A girl’s light voice said:

“Have you heard the name Cora Wellingborough has given to this ball?”

(The Duchess of Wellingborough was one of the hostesses.)

“No,” replied a voice, which Lady Sellingworth recognized as the voice of young Rocheouart. “What is it?”

“She calls it ‘The Hags’ Hop’! Isn’t it delicious of her? It will be all over London to-morrow. The name will stick. In the annuals of London festivities to-night will always be remembered as the night of the famous Hags’ Hop.”

Lady Sellingworth heard Rocheouart’s strong, manly young laugh.

“That’s just like the duchess!” he said. “She’s simply made of humour and always hits the nail on the head. And how clever of her to give the right name to the ball herself instead of leaving it for some pretty girl to do. The Hags’ Hop! It’s perfect! If she hadn’t said that, you would have before the evening was out, and then all the charming hags would have been furious with you.”

The girl laughed, and she and Rocheouart passed Lady Sellingworth without noticing her and went into the ballroom.

She looked at them as they began to dance; then she looked at the Duchess of Wellingborough, who was also dancing.

The duchess was frankly middle-aged. She was very good-looking, but she had let her figure go. She was quite obviously the victim of the “elderly spread.” Her health was excellent, her sense of humour unfailing. She never pretended to anything, but was as natural almost as a big child. Although a widow, she wanted no lover. She often said that she had “got beyond all that sort of thing.” Another of her laughingly frank sayings was: “No young man need be afraid of me.” In consequence of her gaiety, humour, frankness and hospitality she was universally popular.

But that night Lady Sellingworth almost hated her.

The Hags’ Hop!

That terrible name stuck in Lady Sellingworth’s mind and seemed to fasten there like a wound in a body.

As Rocheouart’s partner had foretold, the name went all over London. The duchess’s _mot_ even got into a picture paper, and everyone laughed about it. The duchess was delighted. Nobody seemed to mind. Even Lady Sellingworth forced herself to quote the saying and to make merry over it. But from that day she gave up dancing entirely. Nothing would induce her even to join in a formal royal quadrille.

Before his return to Paris, Rocheouart came to bid her good-bye. Although she was still, as she supposed, madly in love with him, she concealed it, or, if she showed it, did so only by being rather unnaturally cold with him. When he was gone she felt desperate.

Her imp had perhaps controlled her during the short time of Rocheouart’s final visit, had mocked and made her fear him. When she was alone, however, he vanished for the moment.

From that time the hidden diffidence in Lady Sellingworth was her deadly enemy, because it fought perpetually with her vanity and with her almost uncontrollable desires. Sometimes she was tempted to give way to it entirely and to retire from the fray. But she asked herself what she had to retire to. The thought of a life lived in the shade, or of a definitely middle-aged life, prolonged in such sunshine as falls upon grey-haired heads, was terrible to her. She was not like the Duchess of Wellingborough. She was cursed with what was called in her set “a temperament,” and she did not know how to conquer it, did not dare, even, to try to conquer it.

She soon forgot Louis de Rocheouart, but his place was not long left empty. She fell in love with another young man.

Eventually--by this time she had almost ceased to struggle, was not far from being a complete victim to her temperament--she seriously considered the possibility of marrying again, and of marrying a man many years younger than herself. Several women whom she knew had done this. Why should not she do it? Such marriages seldom turned out well, seldom lasted very long. But there were exceptions to every rule. Her marriage, if she made it, might be an exception. She was now only forty-eight. (She had reached the age when that qualifying word is applied to the years.) Women older, much older, than herself, had married mere boys. She did not intend to do that. But why should she not take a charming man of, say, thirty into her life?

The mere thought of having such a husband, such a companion in Number 18A, Berkeley Square, sent a glow through her mind and body. What a flood of virility, anticipation, new strength, new interests he would bring with him! She imagined his loud, careless step on the stairs, his strong bass or baritone voice resounding in the rooms; she heard the doors banged by his reckless hand; she saw his raincoats, his caps, his golf clubs, his gun cases littering the hall. When she motored he would be at the wheel instead of a detached and rigid-faced chauffeur, and he would whirl her along, taking risk, all the time.

But would he be able to love her?

Her diffidence and her vanity fought over that question; fought furiously, and with an ugly tenacity. It seemed that the vanity conquered. For she resolved to make the trial.

Many striking advantages were on her side. She could give any man a magnificent social position, could take him into the heart of the great world. Her husband, unless he were absolutely impossible--and of course he would not be--would be welcomed everywhere because of her. She was rich. She had unusual charm. She was quick witted, intelligent, well read, full of tact and knowledge of the world. Surely she could be a splendid companion, even a great aid, to any man of the least ambition. And she was still very handsome--with difficulty.

She and her Greek alone knew exactly how much trouble had to be taken to keep her as she was when she went among people.

She had not been able to do much with her mind. It seemed uncontrollable by her. There was no harmony in her inner life. The diversities within her were sharp, intense. In her kingdom of self there was perpetual rebellion. And the disorder in her moral life had hastened the aging process more even than she was aware of. Underneath the artificial beauty of her appearance she was now older than her years.

But she was still very handsome--with difficulty.

She hardened herself after the fight and resolved that, if she chose, she could still make almost any man love her. That she could easily fascinate she knew. Most people were subject to her easy charm and to the delightfully unaffected manner which no amount of vanity had ever been able to rid her of. Surely the temporarily fascinated man might easily be changed into the permanent lover! Fear assailed her certainly when she thought of the danger of deliberately contrasting with her maturity the vividness of youth. To do what she thought of doing would be to run a great risk. When she had married Lord Sellingworth she had provided herself with a foil to her beauty and to her comparative youth. To marry a young man would be to make herself the foil. He would emphasize her age by his lack of years. Could she dare it?

Again she hardened herself and resolved that she would dare it. The wildness in her came uppermost, rose to recklessness. After me the deluge! She might not be happy long if she married a young husband, but she might be happy for a time. The mere marriage would surely be a triumph for her. And if she had three years, two years, even one year of happiness, she would sing a _Laus Deo_ and let the deluge close over her head.

She began, in woman’s quiet but penetrating way, to look about her. She met many young men in the world, in fact nearly all the young eligible men of the time. Many of them came to her house, for she often gave parties to which she asked not only the “old guard” and the well-known men of the day, but also the young married women. Now she began to give small dances to which she asked pretty young girls. There was a ballroom built out at the back of her house. It was often in use. The pretty young girls began to say she was “a dear” to bother so much about them. Dancing men voted her a thundering good hostess and a most good-natured woman. In popularity she almost cut out the Duchess of Wellingborough, who sometimes gave dances, too, for young people.

Really through it all she was on the watch, was seeking the possible husband.

Presently she found the man with whom she could imagine being almost desperately happy if he would only fall in with her hidden views. They were so carefully hidden that not one of her friends, not one of the “old guard,” suspected that she had made up her mind to marry again and to make what is universally called “a foolish marriage.”