CHAPTER IV

John called twice upon Hermione in London. On each occasion he was told that the Princess was extremely sorry but she was too ill to receive visitors. However, Elise assured him that Hermione had been “perfectly lovely” about their marriage.

Everything was “perfectly lovely.” Mr. Brett cracked jokes all day long; John had never looked so radiant; the neighbourhood rejoiced openly that it was to keep Elise, suitably attached to an Englishman who understood and respected the game laws; the servants showed a well bred toleration for John. John’s relations (he turned out to have very few and they all lived in Yorkshire) wrote charming letters; but in spite of all these advantages there was a slight hitch somewhere.

It took John some time to discover, in all the flutter of delight around him, where the hitch was. Mr. Brett was unchanged. He moved as usual very slowly and carefully about the house and garden, reposed in long chairs, took the points in or out of schemes, and smiled more benevolently than usual at his secretary.

Elise continued to declare with obvious evasiveness that she was “too happy for words,” but John, who had a persistent nature and was clear sighted where he loved, asked why, if she was too happy for words, her eyelids should be red?

Elise confessed at last, with tears, that there was just one thing she wanted most dreadfully and couldn’t get.

Hermione wished to spend the last few weeks before their marriage at Mambles, and Papa wouldn’t allow it. He was quite adamant, he had said: “After you’re married this house is yours, you can have whom you like to it—including me—but until I hand you over to John, Hermione stays away. If she’s tired of London she can hire in the country. England ain’t full.”

If Elise wanted, she could go to London and see Hermione; but that, Elise explained to John, wasn’t what Hermione meant. Hermione was too sick to enjoy London. She had a feeling that if she could lie on a long chair in the garden and just watch Elise’s happiness, it would make up for the loss of her own.

Hermione had been perfectly lovely about it.

Couldn’t John make Papa change his mind?

It was awkward for John to try, for on that very morning Mr. Brett had presented him with Mambles.

“I shall settle Mambles on you, with an income on Elise,” Mr. Brett had explained, with his eyes half shut, “and then if you and Elise want me to stay on as she says, I’ll decline here. I may have years to decline in, I may only have months, or, according to one doctor, I may not decline at all, but go out splashless. But I want you and Elise to live in your own home here at Mambles, not mine—it don’t do to start living in other people’s homes. Dying can be done anywhere, it’s not as important as it looks.”

After this renunciation on the part of Mr. Brett it seemed ungracious to present him with a speedy request for another.

But Elise’s tears overcame John’s scruples. He found Mr. Brett in the library by the open door which led on to the south terrace. He was watching the birds fluttering about the edge of a stone bath.

“They’re having the deuce of a time,” he explained to John, without turning his eyes, “step quiet so as not to disturb them. A whole raft get round the rim together and shove—just like humans.”

“Mr. Brett,” said John resolutely, “I’ve been talking to Elise.”

“Sure,” agreed his father-in-law reassuringly. “As long as she don’t fire you, let her talk: the great point with a woman is to have everything out on the carpet. Whatever she thinks you don’t want her to say, she’s got to say anyway; but if she puts it off, she gets cold-blooded about it, the way Jael felt to Sisera when she planted that nail, and palmed off the butter. If Jael had been encouraged to speak right out and tell Sisera what she thought of him when he first arrived, she wouldn’t have driven in that nail, she’d have put it away for the first Hoodoo that made her keep things back.”

“Elise and I haven’t quarrelled,” explained John, ignoring this unpleasant analogy, “but I have found her upset. It seems she wants Hermione to stay here before our marriage, and if you’ll forgive me saying so, Sir, I don’t see why she shouldn’t have her.”

“I’ll forgive you right along, John,” said Mr. Brett with a chuckle. “I’m prepared to forgive anybody anything once it’s happened, but I’m not prepared to let things happen that I don’t want to have to forgive. And I’m damned if I’ll have Hermione inside this house before your marriage.”

“I don’t quite see why—” said John a little resentfully.

Mr. Brett pulled his lean slanting limbs together and sat up straight; he even stopped watching the birds. He looked at John attentively.

“Now, see here my son,” he observed, “marriage is tough. It takes a lot of what you might call hand to hand breaking, with the law against you, to spoil a marriage. Engagements is just the opposite, they break as easily as a grasshopper’s hind leg—I guess that’s about the thinnest thing in nature. You just keep calm and wait. You’ll have Mambles and Hermione too, soon enough.”

“But Elise says,” urged John, faithful but faint-hearted, “that her sister’s been wonderful about our engagement. She’s awfully keen for Elise to be happy, and she thinks—from what Elise has said—that I’m the man to make her so.”

“John,” said Mr. Brett grimly, “you’re so innocent a white owl would get you! I’ve watched white owls, they show up in the dark, and that’s against them, and they squeak before they’ve got their mouse, and that’s against them too. I should reckon a white owl loses ten to one on each mouse, every doggone evening of its life; but you’d be the time it got home with the bacon.

“Of course Hermione is perfectly lovely about your marriage. She’d be perfectly lovely about your engagement, when she’d broken it. Perfect loveliness is Hermione’s line. I’ve never once seen that girl get riled, and I’ve said things to her that’d make a lizard get on to its hind legs and roar.

“All she ever said back was, ‘Dear Papa, I guess you’ve got the indigestion I had.’ She’d given it to me.”

“But are you quite sure,” said John reflectively, “that you do full justice to her? Sometimes you sound to me as if you were prejudiced against Hermione.”

Mr. Brett did not laugh at this ingenuous suggestion of John’s. He remained silent for a moment or two, then he said gently,

“John, do you in general think I know what I’m about?”

“I’ve never known you wrong, Sir,” said John with conviction. “You know I have implicit confidence in your judgment—only—”

“Only,” interrupted Mr. Brett, holding up a warning forefinger and shooting a glance at John that was as sharp as the edge of a knife, “when it’s about the happiness of the one creature in the world I care more for than one of those sparrows—you think I’m liable to judge wrong?”

John had never seen Mr. Brett roused before. In a flash he saw what his employer was like, and understood why, when he spoke even in his flattest voice, his committees and employees jumped to obey him. John was conscious that he was confronted by the power of a dynamic mind.

It was a benevolent power, but it was not the kind of power to gainsay. John felt suddenly convinced that Mr. Brett was right even if Elise thought he wasn’t.

“I see I’ve made a mistake in pressing the matter, Sir,” he muttered.

Mr. Brett nodded. “Never you mind, John,” he said kindly, “a man who isn’t liable to be made a fool of by the woman he’s in love with would make a very bad husband. Maybe he’d remain a bachelor. I don’t like to upset Elise any more than you like to see her upset—that’s why I mean to keep the upsets down to a good limit. It’s strain enough on a young girl getting married; she don’t want to add not getting married on to the top of it.”

Mr. Brett dismissed the subject and transferred his attention to the bird bath.

“There—” he said, “now those sparrows have had all the bath they want, but they sit on just the same: they’re going to prevent any of the other birds having a dip—and they’ll do it too—unless I shy a stone at ’em. They’re the most high-strung birds I know. Hand me over a round pebble before you go, John.”

The controversy ended in Elise and Mr. Brett going to Claridge’s Hotel for a flying visit. London never suited Mr. Brett, and on this occasion it suited him less than usual. His long heavy-jawed face turned as grey as his light summer suit; but it was a great convenience for dressmakers and Hermione had been perfectly lovely about it, though she was afraid she was too ill to see John.

The Bretts had a large private sitting-room in which their meals were always served. Mr. Brett said he could never get over the feeling that it was unfriendly not to know people in public dining-rooms and pay for their food. It made him feel uncomfortable to think of their separate bills.

John had come to dine after a long day in the City. The table was beautifully set, and decorated with blue and purple sweet peas. He saw with a slight feeling of surprise that it was laid for four. No one was in the room when he entered, but after a few minutes the door opened softly behind him, and he turned to greet an unknown guest.

A woman stood quite still in the open doorway. A long white, chiffon velvet cloak hung over her shoulders and a white gauze wrap framed her head and face—out of its softness shone the hard glitter of diamonds. Her eyes were fixed on John. They were luminous grey eyes with exquisitely chiselled eyelids, and very long fair lashes.

Her features were cut as clear as the features on a coin; she had no colour in her face except for her lips, which were the deepest carmine. They looked as if they were painted, but they were not painted. Hermione sometimes bit her lips before she came into a room, but she never used artificial aids, unless they looked perfectly natural.

As she glided forward into the room, her gauze wrap fell on to her shoulders, and revealed a crown of thick fair hair, as vivid as a sunbeam. She held out both her hands, and murmured softly:

“John, it _is_ John?”

John had an absurd moment of sheer panic. Who was this lovely and perfectly strange woman who called him John?

He was a good young man, but for one awful moment he wondered if this lady had any previous right to his Christian name?

She held his hands, and it appeared as if she might be intending to kiss him. John looked as non-committal as only a man of his race and class can look in a moment of danger. Hermione did not kiss him: she pressed his hands, sighed deeply and sank gracefully into the easiest chair in the room.

“To think I have not seen you till to-night,” she murmured. “I am Hermione.”

John felt relieved, but guilty. He forgot that he had been twice turned away from the Princess Girla’s door—and apologised.

Hermione smiled wistfully and forgivingly up at him.

“Oh, I know! I know!” she said, “I have been through it all. I have come out the other side now! But I can make allowances for lovers. Isn’t it all too wonderful! And now I have seen you I can be glad. My dear little Elise! You won’t take her wholly away from me, will you?”

John murmured that he shouldn’t think of such a thing, and sought refuge by looking at his boots. There was a peculiarly thrilling tone to Hermione’s voice which made him feel as if he were in church having his better feelings appealed to, and John always looked at his boots in an emotional crisis.

“Let us be quite frank with each other,” Hermione said with great gentleness.

“The word marriage is hateful to me. It has the sound of death in it. Believe me, John—marriage can be as cruel as the grave.”

John cleared his throat and prayed that Elise might come in. He had no idea that any one could speak so intimately to him in so short a time.

“Just at first,” said Hermione, “I faltered—Elise is dearer to me than any other creature. I had hoped to spare her the bitterness of experience. I did not want to see her as other women are—forgive my speaking in French—_une femme initiée_. But now I have seen you I feel a weight off my heart. You are a loyal, faithful Englishman—I think I can trust that dear child to you, John—I think I can say with an easy mind—‘Take my child—’”

Hermione’s voice quivered, but she kept her grave, controlled eyes on John. John felt profoundly uncomfortable, but he was also deeply touched. No one who listened to Hermione ever measured the sense of her words—her low silvery voice entrapped them like a magic flute. John forgot that Elise happened to be Mr. Brett’s daughter—and that as Hermione had married very young and was considerably older than Elise, she had, as a matter of fact, seen very little of her. It seemed to him that he was receiving a sacred charge—and though he could not be eloquent in reply, the quick responsive look he gave his future sister-in-law was one of the finest tributes to her power which Hermione had ever received.

Before she had time to fix this impression any deeper the door opened again and Mr. Brett came in.

“Well, Hermione,” he said, without a change of countenance, “your resurrections contradict the hymn—they don’t come off in the morning.”

Hermione said nothing: she waited until her father had walked the length of the room towards them, then with a little movement of grace and affection she threw herself into his arms.

“Dear, dear Papa,” she murmured.

There was an instant of complete unresponsiveness on her parent’s part before Hermione with equal grace disengaged herself and retook the easiest chair in the room.

“Dear Papa,” she murmured, “how terribly aged and different you look. I must speak to darling Elise about it—these young people are perhaps a little blind in their great happiness. Suffering gives one eyes!”

Hermione spoke perfect English and when she said Papa she laid the stress on the last syllable.

“I must beg you not to worry your sister, Hermione,” said Mr. Brett quietly. “If you think I look ill, I’d be obliged if you’d grieve in secret. I don’t happen to be specially ill, so you don’t need to grieve unless you want to.”

“I shall have to depend on John, then,” said Hermione, turning her beautiful magnetic gaze upon her future brother-in-law. “He must tell me everything—since I am exiled. I feel already as if I could depend on John!”

Mr. Brett’s half closed eyes met his brilliant daughter’s. Something passed between them as vivid and as antagonistic as the report of a pistol, but there was no explosion.

They looked at each other until Elise, flushed with excitement, came in to greet them. She gave a little cry of joy as she caught sight of her sister.

“How too perfectly sweet of you, Hermione!” she cried. “I hardly dared hope you’d come. I told them to set for you, but I was so afraid you’d be too sick—I didn’t even warn John!”

Hermione closed the sentence with a kiss.

“Why, honey,” she said, “did you suppose I wouldn’t just be _alive_ to please you?”

Hermione said this beautifully, with an exquisite maternal gentleness which hung about her like a sunny atmosphere.

John was unable to say afterwards what Hermione did with the situation, but she certainly transformed rather an awkward little family dinner party into a successful pageant.

All her challenges were soft as gossamer, but they made John sit up. He felt himself growing brilliant to meet them. He said some really neat things about the war, sound, sensible things with a flavour to them. He revised the Cabinet and explained the subtle points of allied diplomacy.

He saw that Elise was proud of him.

Elise was transformed also; she had more colour in her, and more life, and she was, strangely enough, more American. She sat up, very straight and slim, with a little triumphant flush on her cheeks. Her pink pearls were twisted round her throat and she wore a rest gown of pink and silver brocade. Nothing ever made Elise feel so sure of herself as the sight of those she loved appearing to their advantage.

Hermione leaned back in her easy chair, and every now and then the light caught the diamonds round her throat and in her hair; but they were the only things that shone about her.

A less clever woman than Hermione might have tried to impress John with her own personality and she would have failed. John was too deeply in love to notice any personality that did not contribute to the credit of his beloved.

Mr. Brett sat in impenetrable silence. He poured out their wine and handed cigarettes, and he ate with his usual indifference the small and regulated dishes which kept him alive.

When Elise tried to make him talk (and even in her finest flights Elise never forgot him) he responded to her with unvarying gentleness, but he never started a subject, and neither illustration nor analysis escaped him.

His silence made him look a little churlish, and Hermione added just the least edge to his churlishness by the careful manner in which she avoided rubbing it in. It was as if she silently conveyed to her companions, “Just see how careful I am not to show him up! I could, you know, by a turn of the wrist, make him look sulky, and even say something to me which would sound downright rude. But I sha’n’t. I let him off. He _is_ a bear with a sore head, but I won’t even let you know how thoroughly I understand that the sore head is levelled solely at me.”

The evening passed like a draught of southern wine. At last Hermione rose slowly to her feet, holding on to the armchair with her white, emaciated hand. John’s eyes fell on it, and he realised with a shock of pity how thin Hermione was, and, as his eyes met hers, how suffering. She smiled an heroic, unflinching smile back at him.

“Honey,” she said to Elise, “it’s time your little old sister ran away.”

In an instant Elise was by her side; the two sisters left the room with their arms round each other’s waists. John held the door open for them to pass. He was about to accompany them to see if he could help Hermione, when Mr. Brett called him back.

“Well?” said Mr. Brett. He lifted a grey face in which the humour seemed curiously overlaid by pain. “Well, John Sterling,” he said, “you’ve seen Hermione. What do you make of her?”

John hesitated. Mr. Brett’s face was in shadow, he did not notice that Mr. Brett looked ill, because that was the way he usually looked. People were so accustomed to seeing Mr. Brett ill that they sometimes thought he must be accustomed to the sensation.

“Surely,” John said at last a little uncomfortably, “she’s very fond of her sister?”

“No she ain’t,” said Mr. Brett positively, “she’s only fond of one person on God’s earth, and that person is Hermione; and she’s just a little mite, not as much as I should like, afraid of me.”

Elise re-entered, exultant with happiness. She did not notice her father, who was half concealed by a heavy curtain. She threw her arms around her lover’s neck.

“Oh, John,” she cried breathlessly, “isn’t Hermione perfect? Isn’t she just too sweet? She says you’re the _only_ man in the world she could have trusted me with.”

“God help you John,” said Mr. Brett under his breath. Neither of them heard him. He got up softly and crept out of the room.