V: L’art D’etre Cousine
Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty. She cultivated a jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had once aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a puffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on her mother’s side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle of disconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing, which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and other accommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow.
“I felt I simply had to come to-day,” she chuckled at Yeovil; “I was just dying to see the returned traveller. Of course, I know perfectly well that neither of you want me, when you haven’t seen each other for so long and must have heaps and heaps to say to one another, but I thought I would risk the odium of being the third person on an occasion when two are company and three are a nuisance. Wasn’t it brave of me?”
She spoke in full knowledge of the fact that the luncheon party would not in any case have been restricted to Yeovil and his wife, having seen Ronnie arrive in the hall as she was being shown upstairs.
“Ronnie Storre is coming, I believe,” said Cicely, “so you’re not breaking into a tête-à-tête.”
“Ronnie, oh I don’t count him,” said Joan gaily; “he’s just a boy who looks nice and eats asparagus. I hear he’s getting to play the piano really well. Such a pity. He will grow fat; musicians always do, and it will ruin him. I speak feelingly because I’m gravitating towards plumpness myself. The Divine Architect turns us out fearfully and wonderfully built, and the result is charming to the eye, and then He adds another chin and two or three extra inches round the waist, and the effect is ruined. Fortunately you can always find another Ronnie when this one grows fat and uninteresting; the supply of boys who look nice and eat asparagus is unlimited. Hullo, Mr. Storre, we were all talking about you.”
“Nothing very damaging, I hope?” said Ronnie, who had just entered the room.
“No, we were merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life, your chin must remain single. When one’s chin begins to lead a double life one’s own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed. You needn’t tell me that you haven’t any hankerings after depravity; people with your coloured eyes and hair are always depraved.”
“Let me introduce you to my husband, Ronnie,” said Cicely, “and then let’s go and begin lunch.”
“You two must almost feel as if you were honeymooning again,” said Joan as they sat down; “you must have quite forgotten each other’s tastes and peculiarities since you last met. Old Emily Fronding was talking about you yesterday, when I mentioned that Murrey was expected home; ‘curious sort of marriage tie,’ she said, in that stupid staring way of hers, ‘when husband and wife spend most of their time in different continents. I don’t call it marriage at all.’ ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘it’s the best way of doing things. The Yeovils will be a united and devoted couple long after heaps of their married contemporaries have trundled through the Divorce Court.’ I forgot at the moment that her youngest girl had divorced her husband last year, and that her second girl is rumoured to be contemplating a similar step. One can’t remember everything.”
Joan Mardle was remarkable for being able to remember the smallest details in the family lives of two or three hundred acquaintances.
From personal matters she went with a bound to the political small talk of the moment.
“The Official Declaration as to the House of Lords is out at last,” she said; “I bought a paper just before coming here, but I left it in the Tube. All existing titles are to lapse if three successive holders, including the present ones, fail to take the oath of allegiance.”
“Have any taken it up to the present?” asked Yeovil.
“Only about nineteen, so far, and none of them representing very leading families; of course others will come in gradually, as the change of Dynasty becomes more and more an accepted fact, and of course there will be lots of new creations to fill up the gaps. I hear for certain that Pitherby is to get a title of some sort, in recognition of his literary labours. He has written a short history of the House of Hohenzollern, for use in schools you know, and he’s bringing out a popular Life of Frederick the Great—at least he hopes it will be popular.”
“I didn’t know that writing was much in his line,” said Yeovil, “beyond the occasional editing of a company prospectus.”
“I understand his historical researches have given every satisfaction in exalted quarters,” said Joan; “something may be lacking in the style, perhaps, but the august approval can make good that defect with the style of Baron. Pitherby has such a kind heart; ‘kind hearts are more than coronets,’ we all know, but the two go quite well together. And the dear man is not content with his services to literature, he’s blossoming forth as a liberal patron of the arts. He’s taken quite a lot of tickets for dear Gorla’s début; half the second row of the dress-circle.”
“Do you mean Gorla Mustelford?” asked Yeovil, catching at the name; “what on earth is she having a début about?”
“What?” cried Joan, in loud-voiced amazement; “haven’t you heard? Hasn’t Cicely told you? How funny that you shouldn’t have heard. Why, it’s going to be one of the events of the season. Everybody’s talking about it. She’s going to do suggestion dancing at the Caravansery Theatre.”
“Good Heavens, what is suggestion dancing?” asked Yeovil.
“Oh, something quite new,” explained Joan; “at any rate the name is quite new and Gorla is new as far as the public are concerned, and that is enough to establish the novelty of the thing. Among other things she does a dance suggesting the life of a fern; I saw one of the rehearsals, and to me it would have equally well suggested the life of John Wesley. However, that is probably the fault of my imagination—I’ve either got too much or too little. Anyhow it is an understood thing that she is to take London by storm.”
“When I last saw Gorla Mustelford,” observed Yeovil, “she was a rather serious flapper who thought the world was in urgent need of regeneration and was not certain whether she would regenerate it or take up miniature painting. I forget which she attempted ultimately.”
“She is quite serious about her art,” put in Cicely; “she’s studied a good deal abroad and worked hard at mastering the technique of her profession. She’s not a mere amateur with a hankering after the footlights. I fancy she will do well.”