The next morning Clementina put off a sitter, a thing which she had never done before, and, letting work go hang, made an unprecedented irruption into Russell Square. “It’s about this dinner of yours,” she said as soon as Quixtus appeared. “I telephoned you yesterday that I was coming.”
“And I said, my dear Clementina, that I was more than delighted.”
“It was the morose wart-hog inside me that made me decline,” she said frankly. “But there’s a woman of sense also inside me that can cut the throat of the wart-hog when it likes. So here I am, a woman of sense. Now will you let a woman of sense run this dinner-party for you? Oh—I know what you may be thinking,” she went on hastily without giving him time to reply. “I’m not going to suggest liver and bacon and a boiled potato. I know how things should be done, better than you.”
“I’m afraid I’m inexperienced in entertainments of this kind,” said Quixtus, with a smile. “Spriggs generally attends to such matters.”
“Spriggs and I will put our heads together,” said Clementina. “I want you to give rather a wonderful dinner-party. What kind of table decorations have you?”
Spriggs was summoned. He loaded the dining-room table with family plate and table-centres and solid cut glass. His pride lay in a mid-Victorian épergne that at every banquet in the house proudly took the place of honour with a fat load of grapes and oranges and apples. Clementina set apart a few articles of silver and condemned the rest including the épergne as horrors.
“You’ll let me have the pleasure, Ephraim,” she said, “of providing all the flowers and making out a scheme of decoration. Anything I want I’ll get myself and make you a present of it. I’m by way of being an artist, you know, so it will be all right.”
“Could any one doubt it?” said Quixtus. “I am very much indebted to you, Clementina.”
“A woman comes in useful now and then. I’ve never done a hand’s turn for you and it’s time I began. You’ll want a hostess, won’t you?”
“Dear me,” said Quixtus, somewhat taken aback. “I suppose I shall. I never thought of it.”
“I’ll be hostess,” said Clementina. “I’m a kind of aunt to Tommy and Etta for whom you’re giving the party. I’m a kind of connection of yours—and you and I are kind of father and mother to Sheila. So it will be quite correct. Let me have your list of guests and don’t you worry your head about anything.”
Clementina in her sweeping mood was irresistible. Quixtus, mild man, could do no more than acquiesce gratefully. It was most gracious of Clementina to undertake these perplexing arrangements. New sides of her character exhibited themselves every day. There was only one flaw in the newly revealed Clementina—her unaccountable disparagement of Mrs. Fontaine. But even this defect she remedied of her own accord.
“I take back what I said about Mrs. Fontaine,” she said abruptly. “I was in a wart-hoggy humour. She’s a charming woman, with brilliant social gifts.”
Quixtus beamed, whereat Clementina felt more wart-hoggy than ever; but she beamed also, with a mansuetude that would have deceived Mrs. Fontaine herself.
Clementina, after an intimate interview with a first resentful, then obfuscated and finally boneless and submissive Spriggs, went her way, a sparkle of triumph in her eyes. And then began laborious days, during which she sacrificed many glorious hours of daylight to the arrangements for the dinner-party. She spent an incredible time in antique shops and schools of art needlework, and even haunted places near the London docks hunting for the glass and embroideries and other things she needed. She ordered rare flowers from florists. She wasted her evenings over a water-colour design for the table decoration, and over designs for the menu and name-cards.
“It’s going to be a dinner that people shall remember,” she said to Etta.
“It’s going to be splendid,” said Etta. “You think of everything, darling, except the one thing—the most important.”
“What’s that, child?”
“Have you got a dress to wear, darling?”
“Dress?” echoed Clementina, staring at the child. “Why, of course. I’ve got my black.”
Etta stood aghast. “That old thing you took with you packed anyhow on the motor trip?”
“Naturally. Isn’t it good enough for you?”
“It’s not for me,” said Etta, growing bold. “I love you in anything. It’s for the other people. Do go and get yourself a nice frock. There’s still time. I’ve never liked to tell you before, dear, but the old one gapes at the back——“—she paused dramatically—“gapes dreadfully.”
“Oh, Lord, let it gape,” cried Clementina impatiently. “Don’t worry me.”
But Etta continued to worry, with partial success. Clementina obstinately refused to buy new raiment, but consented to call in Miss Pugsley, the little dressmaker round the corner in the King’s Road, who fashioned such homely garments as Clementina deigned to wear, and to hand over the old black dress to her for alterations and repairs. Etta sighed and spent anxious hours with Miss Pugsley and forced a grumbling and sarcastic Clementina to stand half clad while the frumpy rag attained something resembling a fit.
“At any rate there are no seams burst and it does hook together,” said Etta, dismally surveying the horror at the final fitting.
“Humph!” said Clementina, contemplating herself wryly in the mirror. “I suppose I look like a lady. Now I hope you’re satisfied.”
Meanwhile such painting as she did in the intervals of her daily excursions abroad, progressed exceedingly. Tommy coming into the studio one evening caught sight of the picture of the lady in the grey dress standing on its easel.
“Stunning!” he cried. “Stunning! You can almost hear the stuff rustle. How the dickens do you get your texture? You’re a holy mystery. By Jove, you are! All this”—he ran his thumb parallel with a fold in the drapery—“all this is a miracle.” He turned and faced her with worshipping eyes in which the tears were ready to spring. “By God, you’re great!”
The artist was thrilled by the homage; the woman laughed inwardly. She had dashed at the task triumphantly and as if by magic the thing had come out right. She was living, these days, intensely. There was no miracle that she could not work.
A morning or two afterwards she issued a ukase to Tommy and Etta that they were to accompany her on an automobile excursion. Tommy to whom she had constituted herself taskmistress, boyishly glad of the holiday, flew down Romney Place, and found a great luxurious hired motor standing at her door. Presently Etta arrived, and then Clementina and Sheila and the young lovers started. Where were they going? Clementina explained. As she could not keep Sheila in London during August, she had decided on taking a furnished cottage in the country. Estate agents had highly recommended one at Moleham-on-Thames. She was going down to have a look at it, and wanted their advice. The motor ploughed through the squalor of Brentford and then sped along the Bath Road, through Colnbrook and Slough and Maidenhead and through the glorious greenery in which Henley is embowered, and on and on by winding shady roads, with here and there a flashing glimpse of river, by fields lush in golden pasture, up and down the gentle hills, through riverside villages where sleeping gaiety brings a smile to the eyes, between the high hedges of Oxfordshire lanes, through the cool verdant mystery of beech woods, until it entered through a great gateway and proceeded up a long avenue of elms and stopped before a slumbering red-brick manor-house.
“This the cottage?” asked Tommy.
“Do you think it’s a waterfall?” asked Clementina.
They alighted. A caretaker took the order-to-view given by the estate agents and conducted the party over the place. The more Tommy saw the more amazed did he grow. There was a park; a garden; a pergola of roses; a couple of tennis courts; a lawn reaching to the river. The house, richly furnished throughout, contained rooms innumerable; four or five sitting-rooms, large dining-room, billiard room, countless bedrooms, a magnificent studio; in the grounds another studio.
“I’ll take it,” said Clementina.
“But, my dear,” gasped Tommy, “have you considered? I don’t want to be impertinent—but the rent of this place must be a thousand pounds a minute.”
She drew him apart from Etta and Sheila.
“My dear boy,” she said. “For no reason that I can see, I’ve lived all my life on tuppence a year. It’s only quite lately that I’ve realised that I’m a very rich woman and can do anything more or less I please. I’m going to take this place for August and September and hire a motor-car, and you and Etta are going to stay with me, and you can each bring as many idiot boys and girls as you choose, and I shall paint and you can paint and Sheila can run about the garden, and we’re all going to enjoy ourselves.”
Tommy thrust his hands into the pockets of his grey flannels and declared she was a wonder. Whereupon they proceeded to Moleham and after lunch at “The Black Boy,” motored back to Chelsea.
These were days filled with a myriad activities. The dinner-party engaged her curious attention. She sent back proofs of the menu and name cards time after time to the firm of art printers before she was satisfied. Then she took them to Quixtus. He was delighted.
“But, my dear Clementina, why are you taking all this ridiculous trouble?”
She laughed in her gruff way, and summoned Spriggs to another dark and awful interview.
A day or two before the dinner, Mrs. Fontaine who, although she had suggested the idea, did not view a dinner-party as a world-shaking phenomenon, bethought her of the matter. A pretty little note had summoned Quixtus to tea. They were alone.
“I have been wondering, my dear Dr. Quixtus,” she said, sweetly, her soft eyes on his, as soon as she had heard of the acceptances of the people in whom she was interested—“I have been wondering whether we are good enough friends for me to be audacious.”
He smiled an assurance.
“If I brought you a few flowers for the table would you accept them? And if you did, would you let me come and arrange them for you? It would be such a pleasure. Even the best trained servants can’t give the little touch that a woman can.”
Quixtus blushed. It was difficult to be ungracious to the flower of womanhood; yet the flower of womanhood had come too late in the day with her gracious proposal. He explained, wishing to soften the necessary refusal, that he had already called in the help of his artistic friends, Miss Clementina Wing and Tommy Burgrave.
“Why didn’t you send for me? Didn’t you think of me?”
“I did not venture,” said he.
“I have been deluding myself with the fancy that we were friends.” She sighed and looked at him with feminine significance. “Nothing venture nothing win.”
But Quixtus, simple soul, was too genuinely distressed by obvious happenings to follow the insidious scent. With great wisdom Clementina had shown him her water-colour design, and he knew that Mrs. Fontaine, with all her daintiness, could not compete with the faultless taste and poetic imagination of a great artist. He wondered why so finely sensitive a nature as the flower of womanhood did not divine this. Her insistence jarred on him ever so little. And yet he shrank from wounding susceptibilities.
“I never thought you would be interested in such trivial domestic matters,” said he.
“It is the little things that count.”
For the first time in his intercourse with her, he felt uncomfortable. Here was the lady maintaining her reproach of neglect. If she took so much interest in this wretched dinner-party, why had she not offered her services at once? Unwittingly he contrasted her inaction with Clementina’s irresistible energy. In answer to her remark he said, smiling:
“I’m not so sure about that, although it’s often asserted. We lawyers have an axiom: De minimis non curat lex.”
“Pity a poor woman. What on earth does that mean?”
He translated.
“The law is one thing and human sentiment another.”
With all her rough contradiction and violent assertion, Clementina never pinned him down to a fine point of sentimental argument. There was a spaciousness about Clementina wherein he could breathe freely. This close atmosphere began to grow distasteful. There was a slight pause, which Mrs. Fontaine filled in by handing him his second cup of tea.
“Miss Clementina Wing,” said he, dashing for the open, “is so intimately associated not only with the object of our little entertainment, but also with myself in other matters, that I could do no less than consult her.”
Lena Fontaine bent forward, sugar-tongs in hand, ready to drop a lump into his cup—a charmingly intimate pose.
“Of course, I understand, dear Dr. Quixtus. And is she really coming to the dinner?”
“Why not?”
“She’s so—so unconventional. I thought she never went into society.”
“She is honouring me by making an exception in my case,” replied Quixtus, a little stiffly.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” she said sweetly; but in her heart she bitterly resented Clementina’s interference. She would get even with the fishfag for this.
On the morning of the dinner-party Clementina sent for Tommy. He found her, as usual, at work. She laid down her brush and handed him the water-colour design.
“I’m too busy to-day to fool about with this silly nonsense. I can’t spare any more time for it. You can carry out the scheme quite as well as I can. You’ll find everything there. Do you mind?”
Tommy did not mind. In fact, he was delighted at the task. The artist in him loved to deal with things of beauty and exquisite colours.
“Shall I give an eye to the wines?”
“Everything’s quite settled. I saw to it yesterday. Now clear out. I’m busy. And look here,” she cried, as he was mounting the staircase, “I’m not going to have you or Etta fooling round the place to-day. I’m going to paint till the very last minute.”
She resumed her painting. A short while afterwards, a note and parcel came from Etta. From the parcel she drew a long pair of black gloves. She threw them to the maid, Eliza.
“What shall I do with them, ma’am?”
“Wear ’em at your funeral,” said Clementina.
A few minutes before eight Quixtus stood in the great drawing-room waiting to receive his guests. On the stroke came Admiral Concannon, scrupulously punctual, and Etta followed by Tommy, who, having given the last touches to the table, waylaid her on the stairs. Then came Lady Louisa Malling and Lena Fontaine demure in pale heliotrope. After them Lord and Lady Radfield, he, tall and distinguished, with white moustache and imperial, she, much younger than he, dumpy, expensively dressed, wearing a false air of vivacity. Then came in quick succession General and Lady Barnes, Griffiths (Quixtus’s colleague in the Anthropological Society), and his wife, John Powersfoot (the Royal Academician), Mr. and Mrs. Wilmour-Jackson, physically polished, vacant, opulent, friends of Mrs. Fontaine. Gradually the party assembled and the hum of talk filled the room. During an interval Quixtus turned to Tommy. What had become of Clementina, who had promised to play hostess? Tommy could give no information. All he knew about her was that he had stopped at her door and offered a lift in his cab, and Eliza had come down with a verbal message to the effect that he was to go away and that Miss Wing was not coming in his cab. Tommy opined that Clementina was in one of her crotchety humours. Possibly she would not turn up at all. Etta took Tommy aside.
“I’m sure that old black frock has split down the back and Eliza is mending it with black thread.”
Only the Quinns and Clementina to arrive; and at ten minutes past the Quinns, Sir Edward, Member of Parliament, and Lady, genial, flustered folk with many apologies for lateness. The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece marked the quarter. Still no Clementina. Quixtus grew uneasy. What could have happened? Lena Fontaine turned from him and whispered to Lord Radfield.
“She has forgotten to put on her boots and is driving back for them.”
Then Spriggs appeared at the door and announced:
“Miss Clementina Wing.”
And Clementina sailed into the room.
For the first and only time in his life did Quixtus lose his courtliness of manner. For a perceptible instant he stood stock still and stared open-mouthed. It was a Clementina that he had never seen before; a Clementina that no one had ever seen before. It was Clementina in a hundred-guinea gown, gold silk gleaming through ambergris net, Clementina exquisitely corseted and revealing a beautifully curved and rounded figure; Clementina with a smooth, clear olive skin, with her fine black hair coiled by a miracle of the hairdresser’s art, majestically on her head, and set off with a great diamond comb; Clementina wearing diamonds at her throa............