“And is your heart doing the singing-bird business?” asked Ronnie.
“That depends,” said Cicely, “if I may choose the bird. A missel-thrush would do, perhaps; it sings loudest in stormy weather, I believe.”
Ronnie disposed of two or three stems of asparagus before making any comment on this remark.
“Is there going to be stormy weather?” he asked.
“The domestic barometer is set rather that way,” said Cicely. “You see, Murrey has been away for ever so long, and, of course, there will be lots of things he won’t be used to, and I’m afraid matters may be rather strained and uncomfortable for a time.”
“Do you mean that he will object to me?” asked Ronnie.
“Not in the least,” said Cicely, “he’s quite broad-minded on most subjects, and he realises that this is an age in which sensible people know thoroughly well what they want, and are determined to get what they want. It pleases me to see a lot of you, and to spoil you and pay you extravagant compliments about your good looks and your music, and to imagine at times that I’m in danger of getting fond of you; I don’t see any harm in it, and I don’t suppose Murrey will either—in fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if he takes rather a liking to you. No, it’s the general situation that will trouble and exasperate him; he’s not had time to get accustomed to the fait accompli like we have. It will break on him with horrible suddenness.”
“He was somewhere in Russia when the war broke out, wasn’t he?” said Ronnie.
“Somewhere in the wilds of Eastern Siberia, shooting and bird collecting, miles away from a railway or telegraph line, and it was all over before he knew anything about it; it didn’t last very long, when you come to think of it. He was due home somewhere about that time, and when the weeks slipped by without my hearing from him, I quite thought he’d been captured in the Baltic or somewhere on the way back. It turned out that he was down with marsh fever in some out-of-the-way spot, and everything was over and finished with before he got back to civilisation and newspapers.”
“It must have been a bit of a shock,” said Ronnie, busy with a well-devised salad; “still, I don’t see why there should be domestic storms when he comes back. You are hardly responsible for the catastrophe that has happened.”
“No,” said Cicely, “but he’ll come back naturally feeling sore and savage with everything he sees around him, and he won’t realise just at once that we’ve been through all that ourselves, and have reached the stage of sullen acquiescence in what can’t be helped. He won’t understand, for instance, how we can be enthusiastic and excited over Gorla Mustelford’s début, and things of that sort; he’ll think we are a set of callous revellers, fiddling while Rome is burning.”
“In this case,” said Ronnie, “Rome isn’t burning, it’s burnt. All that remains to be done is to rebuild it—when possible.”
“Exactly, and he’ll say we’re not doing much towards helping at that.”
“But,” protested Ronnie, “the whole thing has only just happened; ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ and we can’t rebuild our Rome in a day.”
“I know,” said Cicely, “but so many of our friends, and especially Murrey’s friends, have taken the thing in a tragical fashion, and cleared off to the Colonies, or shut themselves up in their country houses, as though there was a sort of moral leprosy infecting London.”
“I don’t see what good that does,” said Ronnie.
“It doesn’t do any good, but it’s what a lot of them have done because they felt like doing it, and Murrey will feel like doing it too. That is where I foresee trouble and disagreement.”
Ronnie shrugged his shoulders.
“I would take things tragically if I saw the good of it,” he said; “as matters stand it’s too late in the day and too early to be anything but philosophical about what one can’t help. For the present we’ve just got to make the best of things. Besides, you can’t very well turn down Gorla at the last moment.”
“I’m not going to turn down Gorla, or anybody,” said Cicely with decision. “I think it would be silly, and silliness doesn’t appeal to me. That is why I foresee storms on the domestic horizon. After all, Gorla has her career to think of. Do you know,” she added, with a change of tone, “I rather wish you would fall in love with Gorla; it would make me horribly jealous, and a little jealousy is such a good tonic for any woman who knows how to dress well. Also, Ronnie, it would prove that you are capable of falling in love with some one, of which I’ve grave doubts up to the present.”
“Love is one of the few things in which the make-believe is superior to the genuine,” said Ronnie, “it lasts longer, and you get more fun out of it, and it’s easier to replace when you’ve done with it.”
“Still, it’s rather like playing with coloured paper instead of playing with fire,” objected Cicely.
A footman came round the corner with the trained silence that tactfully contrives to make itself felt.
“Mr. Luton to see you, Madam,” he announced, “shall I say you are in?”
“Mr. Luton? Oh, yes,” said Cicely, “he’ll probably have something to tell us about Gorla’s concert,” she added, turning to Ronnie.
Tony Luton was a young man who had sprung from the people, and had taken care that there should be no recoil. He was scarcely twenty years of age, but a tightly packed chronicle of vicissitudes lay behind his sprightly insouciant appearance. Since his fifteenth year he had lived, Heaven knew how, getting sometimes a minor engagement at some minor music-hall, sometimes a temporary job as secretary-valet-companion to a roving invalid, dining now and then on plovers’ eggs and asparagus at one of the smarter West End restaurants, at other times devouring a kipper or a sausage in some stuffy Edgware Road eating-house; always seemingly amused by life, and always amusing. It is possible that somewhere in such heart as he possessed there lurked a rankling bitterness against the hard things of life, or a scrap of gratitude towards the one or two friends who had helped him disinterestedly, but his most intimate associates could not have guessed at the existence of such feelings. Tony Luton was just a merry-eyed dancing faun, whom Fate had surrounded with streets instead of woods, and it would have been in the highest degree inartistic to have sounded him for a heart or a heartache.
The dancing of the faun took one day a livelier and more assured turn, the joyousness became more real, and the worst of the vicissitudes seemed suddenly over. A musical friend, gifted with mediocre but marketable abilities, supplied Tony with a song, for which he obtained a trial performance at an East End hall. Dressed as a jockey, for no particular reason except that the costume suited him, he sang, “They quaff the gay bubbly in Eccleston Square” to an appreciative audience, which included the manager of a famous West End theatre of varieties. Tony and his song won the managerial favour, and were immediately transplanted to the West End house, where they scored a success of which the drooping music-hall industry was at the moment badly in need.
It was just after the great catastrophe, and men of the London world were in no humour to think; they had witnessed the inconceivable befall them, they had nothing but political ruin to stare at, and they were anxious to look the other way. The words of Tony’s song were more or less meaningless, though he sang them remarkably well, but the tune, with its air of slyness and furtive joyousness, appealed in some unaccountable manner to people who were furtively unhappy, and who were trying to appear stoically cheerful.
“What must be, must be,” and “It’s a poor heart that never rejoices,” were the popular expressions of the London public at that moment, and the men who had to cater for that public were thankful when they were able to stumble across anything that fitted in with