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The Woman With The Fan

R >> Robert Hichens >> The Woman With The Fan




And now Lord Holme had gone out in the dead of the night to thrash Carey.

She began to think about Carey.

How disgusting he had been. A drunken man must be one of two
things--either terrible or absurd. Carey had been absurd--disgusting and
absurd. It had been better for him if he had been terrible. But mumblings
and tears! She remembered what she had said of Carey to Robin
Pierce--that something in his eyes, one of those expressions which are
the children of the eyes, or of the lines about the eyes, told her that
he was capable of doing something great. What an irony that her remark to
Robin had been succeeded by such a scene! And she heard again the ugly
sound of Carey's incoherent exclamations, and felt again the limp clasp
of his hot, weak hand, and saw again the tears running over his flushed,
damp face. It was all very nauseous. And yet--had she been wrong in what
she had said of him? Did she even think that she had been wrong now,
after what had passed?

What kind of great action had she thought he would be capable of if a
chance to do something great were thrown in his way? She said to herself
that she had spoken at random, as one perpetually speaks in Society. And
then she remembered Carey's eyes. They were ugly eyes. She had always
thought them ugly. Yet, now and then, there was something in them,
something to hold a woman--no, perhaps not that--but something to startle
a woman, to make her think, wonder, even to make her trust. And the scene
which had just occurred, with all its weakness, its fatuity, its
maundering display of degradation and the inability of any
self-government, had not somehow destroyed the impression made upon Lady
Holme by that something in Carey's eyes. What she had said to Robin
Pierce she might not choose ever to say again. She would not choose ever
to say it again--of that she was certain--but she had not ceased to think
it.

A conviction based upon no evidence that could be brought forward to
convince anyone is the last thing that can be destroyed in a woman's
heart.

It was nearly six o'clock when Lady Holme heard a step coming up the
stairs. She was still sitting in the deep chair, and had scarcely moved.
The step startled her. She put her hands on the arms of the chair and
leaned forward. The step passed her bedroom. She heard the door of the
dressing-room opened and then someone moving about.

"Fritz!" she called. "Fritz!"

There was no answer. She got up and went quickly to the dressing-room.
Her husband was there in his shirt sleeves. His evening coat and
waistcoat were lying half on a chair, half on the floor, and he was in
the act of unfastening his collar. She looked into his face, trying to
read it.

"Well?" she said. "Well?"

"Go to bed!" he said brutally.

"What have you done?"

"That's my business. Go to bed. D'you hear?"

She hesitated. Then she said:

"How dare you speak to me like that? Have you seen Mr. Carey?"

Lord Holme suddenly took his wife by the shoulders; pushed her out of the
room, shut the door, and locked it.

They always slept in the same bedroom. Was he not going to bed at all?
What had happened? Lady Holme could not tell from his face or manner
anything of what had occurred. She looked at her clock and saw her
husband had been out of the house for two hours. Indignation and
curiosity fought within her; and she became conscious of an excitement
such as she had never felt before. Sleep was impossible, but she got into
bed and lay there listening to the noises made by her husband in his
dressing-room. She could just hear them faintly through the door.
Presently they ceased. A profound silence reigned. There was a sofa in
the dressing-room. Could he be trying to sleep on it? Such a thing seemed
incredible to her. For Lord Holme, although he could rough it when he was
shooting or hunting, at home or abroad, and cared little for
inconvenience when there was anything to kill, was devoted to comfort in
ordinary life, and extremely exigent in his own houses. For nothing, for
nobody, had Lady Holme ever known him to allow himself to be put out.

She strained her ears as she lay in bed. For a long time the silence
lasted. She began to think her husband must have left the dressing-room,
when she heard a noise as if something--some piece of furniture--had been
kicked, and then a stentorian "Damn!"

Suddenly she burst out laughing. She shook against the pillows. She
laughed and laughed weakly; helplessly, till the tears ran down her
cheeks. And with those tears ran away her anger, the hot, strained
sensation that had been within her even since the scene at Arkell House.
If she had womanly pride it melted ignominiously. If she had feminine
dignity--that pure and sacred panoply which man ignores at his own proper
peril--it disappeared. The "poor old Fritz" feeling, which was the most
human, simple, happy thing in her heart, started into vivacity as she
realised the long legs flowing into air over the edge of the short sofa,
the pent-up fury--fury of the too large body on the too small
resting-place--which found a partial vent in the hallowed objurgation of
the British Philistine.

With every moment that she lay in the big bed she was punishing Fritz.
She nestled down among the pillows. She stretched out her limbs
luxuriously. How easy it was to punish a man! Lying there she recalled
her husband's words, each detail of his treatment of her since she had
spoken to Carey. He had called her "a damned shameful woman." That was of
all the worst offence. She told herself that she ought to, that she must,
for that expression alone, hate Fritz for ever. And then, immediately,
she knew that she had forgiven it already, without effort, without
thought.

She understood the type with which she had to deal, the absurd boyishness
that was linked with the brutality of it, the lack of mind to give words
their true, their inmost meaning. Words are instruments of torture, or
the pattering confetti of a carnival, not by themselves but by the mind
that sends them forth. Fritz's exclamation might have roused eternal
enmity in her if it had been uttered by another man. Coming from Fritz it
won its pardon easily by having a brother, "Damn."

She wondered how long her husband would be ruled by his sense of outrage.

Towards seven she heard another movement; another indignant exclamation,
then the creak of furniture, a step, a rattling at the door. She turned
on her side towards the wall, shut her eyes and breathed lightly and
regularly. The key revolved, the door opened and closed, and she heard
feet shuffling cautiously over the carpet. A moment and Fritz was in bed.
Another moment, a long sigh, and he was asleep.

Lady Holme still lay awake. Now that her attention was no longer fixed
upon her husband's immediate proceedings she began to wonder again what
had happened between him and Rupert Carey. She would find out in the
morning.

And presently she too slept.



CHAPTER IX

IN the morning Lord Holme woke very late and in a different humour. Lady
Holme was already up, sitting by a little table and pouring out tea, when
he stretched himself, yawned, turned over, uttered two or three booming,
incohorent exclamations, and finally raised himself on one arm,
exhibiting a touzled head and a pair of blinking eyes, stared solemnly at
his wife's white figure and at the tea-table, and ejaculated:

"Eh?"

"Tea?" she returned, lifting up the silver teapot and holding it towards
him with an encouraging, half-playful gesture.

Lord Holme yawned again, put up his hands to his hair, and then looked
steadily at the teapot, which his wife was moving about in the sunbeams
that were shining in at the window. The morning was fine.

"Tea, Fritz?"

He smiled and began to roll out of bed. But the action woke up his
memory, and when he was on his feet he looked at his wife again more
doubtfully. She saw that he was beginning, sleepily but definitely, to
consider whether he should go on being absolutely furious about the
events of the preceding night, and acted with promptitude.

"Don't be frightened," she said quickly. "I've made up my mind to forgive
you. You're only a great schoolboy after all. Come along."

She began to pour out the tea. It made a pleasant little noise falling
into the cup. The sun was wonderfully bright in the pretty room, almost
Italian in its golden warmth. Lady Holme's black Pomeranian, Pixie, stood
on its hind legs to greet him. He came up to the sofa, still looking
undecided, but with a wavering light of dawning satisfaction in his eyes.

"You behaved damned badly last night," he growled.

He sat down beside his wife with a bump. She put up her hand to his
rough, brown cheek.

"We both behaved atrociously," she answered. "There's your tea."

She poured in the cream and buttered a thin piece of toast. Lord Holme
sipped. As he put the cup down she held the piece of toast up to his
mouth. He took a bite.

"And we both do the Christian act and forgive each other," she added.

He leaned back. Sleep was flowing away from him, full consciousness of
life and events returning to him.

"What made you speak to that feller?" he said.

"Drink your tea. I don't know. He looked miserable at being avoided,
and--"

"Miserable! He was drunk. He's done for himself in London, and pretty
near done for you too."

As he thought about it all a cloud began to settle over his face. Lady
Holme saw it and said:

"That depends on you, Fritz."

She nestled against him, put her hand over his, and kept on lifting his
hand softly and then letting it fall on his knee, as she went on:

"That all depends on you."

"How?"

He began to look at her hand and his, following their movements almost
like a child.

"If we are all right together, obviously all right, very, very
par-ti-cu-lar-ly all right--voyez vous, mon petit chou?--they will think
nothing of it. 'Poor Mr. Carey! What a pity the Duke's champagne is so
good!' That's what they'll say. But if we--you and I--are not on perfect
terms, if you behave like a bear that's been sitting on a wasps'
nest--why then they'll say--they'll say--"

"What'll they say?"

"They'll say, 'That was really a most painful scene at the Duke's. She's
evidently been behaving quite abominably. Those yellow women always bring
about all the tragedies--'"

"Yellow women!" Lord Holme ejaculated.

He looked hard at his wife. It was evident that his mind was tacking.

"Miss Schley heard what you said to the feller," he added.

"People who never speak hear everything--naturally."

"How d'you mean--never speak? Why, she's full of talk."

"How well she listened to him!" was Lady Holme's mental comment.

"If half the world heard it doesn't matter if you and I choose it
shouldn't. Unless--"

"Unless what?"

"Unless you did anything last night--afterwards--that will make a
scandal?"

"Ah!"

"Did you?"

"That's all right."

He applied himself with energy to the toast. Lady Holme recognised, with
a chagrin which she concealed, that Lord Holme was not going to allow
himself to be "managed" into any revelation. She recognised it so
thoroughly that she left the subject at once.

"We'd better forgive and forget," she said. "After all, we are married
and I suppose we must stick together."

There was a clever note of regret in her voice.

"Are you sorry?" Lord Holme said, with a manner that suggested a
readiness to be surly.

"For what?"

"That we're married?"

She sat calmly considering.

"Am I? Well, I must think. It's so difficult to be sure. I must compare
you with other men--"

"If it comes to that, I might do a bit of comparin' too."

"I should be the last to prevent you, old boy. But I'm sure you've often
done it already and always made up your mind afterwards that she wasn't
quite up to the marrying mark."

"Who wasn't?"

"The other--horrid creature."

He could not repress a chuckle.

"You're deuced conceited," he said.

"You've made me so."

"I--how?"

"By marrying me first and adoring me afterwards."

They had finished tea and were no longer preoccupied with cups and
saucers. It was very bright in the room, very silent. Lord Holme looked
at his wife and remembered how much she was admired by other men, how
many men would give--whatever men are ready to give--to see her as she
was just then. It occurred to him that he would have been rather a fool
if he had yielded to his violent impulse and shut her out of the house
the previous night.

"You're never to speak to that cad again," he said. "D'you hear?"

"Whisper it close in my ear and I'll try to hear. Your voice is
so--what's your expression--so infernally soft."

He put his great arm round her.

"D'you hear?"

"I'm trying."

"I'll make you."

Whether Lord Holme succeeded or not, Lady Holme had no opportunity--even
if she desired it--of speaking to Rupert Carey for some time. He left
London and went up to the North to stay with his mother. The only person
he saw before he went was Robin Pierce. He came round to Half Moon Street
early on the afternoon of the day after the Arkell House Ball. Robin was
at home and Carey walked in with his usual decision. He was very pale,
and his face looked very hard. Robin received him coldly and did not ask
him to sit down. That was not necessary, of course. But Robin was
standing by the door and did not move back into the room.

"I'm going North to-night," said Carey.

"Are you?"

"Yes. If you don't mind I'll sit down."

Robin said nothing. Carey threw himself into an armchair.

"Going to see the mater. A funny thing--but she's always glad to see me."

"Why not?"

"Mothers have a knack that way. Lucky for sons like me."

There was intense bitterness in his voice, but there was a sound of
tenderness too. Robin shut the door but did not sit down.

"Are you going to be in the country long?"

"Don't know. What time did you leave Arkell House last night?"

"Not till after Lady Holme left."

"Oh!"

He was silent for a moment, biting his red moustache.

"Were you in the hall after the last lancers?"

"No."

"You weren't?"

He spoke quickly, with a sort of relief, hesitated then added
sardonically:

"But of course you know--and much worse than the worst. The art of
conversation isn't dead yet, whatever the--perhaps you saw me being got
out?"

"No, I didn't."

"But you do know?"

"Naturally."

"I say, I wish you'd let me have--"

He checked himself abruptly, and muttered:

"Good God! What a brute I am."

He sprang up and walked about the room. Presently he stopped in front of
the statuette of the "/Danseuse de Tunisie/."

"Is it the woman that does it all, or the fan?" he said. "I don't know.
Sometimes I think it's one, and sometimes the other. Without the fan
there's purity, what's meant from the beginning--"

"By whom?" said Robin. "I thought you were an atheist?"

"Oh, God! I don't know what I am."

He turned away from the statuette.

"With the fan there's so much more than purity, than what was meant to
complete us--as devils--men. But--mothers don't carry the fan. And I'm
going North to-night."

"Do you mean to say that Lady Holme--?"

Robin's voice was stern.

"Why did she say that to me?"

"What did she say?"

"That she wished to speak to me, to dance with me."

"She said that? How can you know?"

"Oh, I wasn't so drunk that I couldn't hear the voice from Eden. Pierce,
you know her. She likes you. Tell her to forgive as much as she can. Will
you? And tell her not to carry the fan again when fools like me are
about."

And then, without more words, he went out of the room and left Robin
standing alone.

Robin looked at the statuette, and remembered what Sir Donald Ulford had
said directly he saw it--"Forgive me, that fan makes that statuette
wicked."

"Poor old Carey!" he murmured.

His indignation at Carey's conduct, which had been hot, had nearly died
away.

"If I had told him what she said about him at supper!" he thought.

And then he began to wonder whether Lady Holme had changed her mind on
that subject. Surely she must have changed it. But one never knew--with
women. He took up his hat and gloves and went out. If Lady Holme was in
he meant to give her Carey's message. It was impossible to be jealous of
Carey now.

Lady Holme was not in.

As Robin walked away from Cadogan Square he was not sure whether he was
glad or sorry that he had not been able to see her.

After his cup of early morning tea Lord Holme had seemed to be "dear old
Fritz" again, and Lady Holme felt satisfied with herself despite the
wagging tongues of London. She knew she had done an incautious thing. She
knew, too, that Carey had failed her. Her impulse had been to use him as
a weapon. He had proved a broken reed. And this failure on his part was
likely to correct for ever her incautious tendencies. That was what she
told herself, with some contempt for men. She did not tell herself that
the use to which she had intended to put Carey was an unworthy one. Women
as beautiful, and as successful in their beauty, as she was seldom tell
themselves these medicinal truths.

She went about as usual, and on several occasions took Lord Holme with
her. And though she saw a light of curiosity in many eyes, and saw lips
almost forced open by the silent questions lurking within many minds, it
was as she had said it would be. The immediate future had been in Fritz's
hands, and he had made it safe enough.

He had made it safe. Even the Duchess of Arkell was quite charming, and
laid the whole burden of blame--where it always ought to be laid, of
course--upon the man's shoulders. Rupert Carey was quite done for
socially. Everyone said so. Even Upper Bohemia thought blatant
intemperance--in a Duke's house--an unnecessary defiance flung at the
Blue Ribbon Army. Only Amalia Wolfstein, who had never succeeded in
getting an invitation to Arkell House, remarked that "It was probably the
champagne's fault. She had always noticed that where the host and hostess
were dry the champagne was apt to be sweet."

Yes, Fritz had made it safe, but:

Circumstances presently woke in Lady Holme's mind a rather disagreeable
suspicion that though Fritz had "come round" with such an admirable
promptitude he had reserved to himself a right to retaliate, that he
perhaps presumed to fancy that her defiant action, and its very public
and unpleasant result, gave to him a greater license than he had
possessed before.

Some days after the early morning tea Lord Holme said to his wife:

"I say, Vi, we've got nothing on the first, have we?"

There was a perceptible pause before she replied.

"Yes, we have. We've accepted a dinner at Brayley House."

Lord Holme looked exceedingly put out.

"Brayley House. What rot!" he exclaimed. "I hate those hind-leg affairs.
Why on earth did you accept it?"

"Dear boy, you told me to. But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you so anxious to be free for the first?"

"Well, it's Miss Schley's /debut/ at the British. Everyone's goin' and
Laycock says--"

"I'm not very interested in Mr. Laycock's aphorisms, Fritz. I prefer
yours, I truly do."

"Oh, well, I'm as good as Laycock, I know. Still--"

"You're a thousand times better. And so everybody's going, on Miss
Schley's first night? I only wish we could, but we can't. Let's put up
with number two. We're free on the second."

Lord Holme did not look at all appeased.

"That's not the same thing," he said.

"What's the difference? She doesn't change the play, I suppose?"

"No. But naturally on the first night she wants all her friends to come
up to the scratch, muster round--don't you know?--and give her a hand."

"And she thinks your hand, being enormous, would be valuable? But we
can't throw over Brayley House."

Lord Holme's square jaw began to work, a sure sign of acute irritation.

"If there's a dull, dreary house in London, it's Brayley House," he
grumbled. "The cookin's awful--poison--and the wine's worse. Why, last
time Laycock was there they actually gave him--"

"Poor dear Mr. Laycock! Did they really? But what can we do? I'm sure I
don't want to be poisoned either. I love life."

She was looking brilliant. Lord Holme began to straddle his legs.

"And there's the box!" he said. "A box next the stage that holds six in a
row can't stand empty on a first night, eh? It'd throw a damper on the
whole house."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand. What box?"

"Hang it all!--ours."

"I didn't know we had a box for this important social function."

Lady Holme really made a great effort to keep the ice out of her voice,
but one or two fragments floated in nevertheless.

"Well, I tell you I've taken a box and asked Laycock--"

The reiterated mention of this hallowed name was a little too much for
Lady Holme's equanimity.

"If Mr. Laycock's going the box won't be empty. So that's all right," she
rejoined. "Mr. Laycock will make enough noise to give the critics a lead.
And I suppose that's all Miss Schley wants."

"But it isn't!" said Lord Holme, violently letting himself down at the
knees and shooting himself up again.

"What does she want?"

"She wants you to be there."

"Me! Why?"

"Because she's taken a deuce of a fancy to you."

"Really!"

An iceberg had entered the voice now.

"Yes, thinks you the smartest woman in London, and all that. So you are."

"I'm very sorry, but even the smartest woman in London can't throw over
the Brayley's. Take another box for the second."

Lord Holme looked fearfully sulky and lounged out of the room.

On the following morning he strode into Lady Holme's boudoir about twelve
with a radiant face.

"It's all right!" he exclaimed. "Talk of diplomatists! I ought to be an
ambassador."

He flung himself into a chair, grinning with satisfaction like a
schoolboy.

"What is it?" asked Lady Holme, looking up from her writing-table.

"I've been to Lady Brayley, explained the whole thing, and got us both
off. After all, she was a friend of my mother's, and knew me in kilts and
all that, so she ought to be ready to do me a favour. She looked a bit
grim, but she's done it. You've--only got to tip her a note of thanks."

"You're mad then, Fritz!"

Lady Holme stood up suddenly.

"Never saner."

He put one hand into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out an
envelope.

"Here's what she says to you."

Lady Holme tore the note open.


"BRAYLEY HOUSE, W.

"DEAR VIOLA,--Holme tells me you made a mistake when you accepted
my invitation for the first, and that you have long been pledged
to be present on that date at some theatrical performance or other.
I am sorry I did not know sooner, but of course I release you with
pleasure from your engagement with me, and I have already filled up
your places.--Believe me, yours always sincerely,

"MARTHA BRAYLEY."


Lady Holme read this note carefully, folded it up, laid it quietly on the
writing-table and repeated:

"You're mad, Fritz."

"What d'you mean--mad?"

"You've made Martha Brayley my enemy for life."

"Rubbish!"

"I beg your pardon. And for--for--"

She stopped. It was wiser not to go on. Perhaps her face spoke for her,
even to so dull an observer as Lord Holme, for he suddenly said, with a
complete change of tone:

"I forgave you about Carey."

"Oh, I see! You want a /quid pro quo/. Thank you, Fritz."

"Don't forget to tip Lady Brayley a note of thanks," he said rather
loudly, getting up from his chair.

"Oh, thanks! You certainly ought to be an ambassador--at the court of
some savage monarch."

He said nothing, but walked out of the room whistling the refrain about
Ina.

When he had gone Lady Holme sat down and wrote two notes. One was to Lady
Brayley and was charmingly apologetic, saying that the confusion was
entirely owing to Fritz's muddle-headedness, and that she was in despair
at her misfortune--which was almost literally true. The other was to Sir
Donald Ulford, begging him to join them in their box on the first, and
asking whether it was possible to persuade Mr. and Mrs. Leo Ulford to
come with him. If he thought so she would go at once and leave cards on
Mrs. Ulford, whom she was longing to know.

Both notes went off by hand before lunch.



CHAPTER X

THE Ulfords accepted for the first. Lady Holme left cards on Mrs. Leo and
told her husband that the box was filled up. He received the information
with indifference. So long as his wife was there to please Miss Schley,
and Mr. Laycock to "give her a hand and show 'em all whether she was
popular," he was satisfied. Having gained his point, he was once again in
excellent humour. Possibly Lady Holme would have appreciated his large
gaieties more if she had not divined their cause. But she expressed no
dissatisfaction with them, and indeed increased them by her own brilliant
serenity during the days that intervened between the Martha Brayley
incident and the first night.

Lord Holme had no suspicion that during these days she was inwardly
debating whether she would go to the theatre or not.

It would be very easy to be unwell. She was going out incessantly and
could be over-fatigued. She could have woman's great stand-by in moments
of crisis--a bad attack of neuralgia. It was the simplest matter in the
world. The only question was--all things considered, was it worth while?
By "all things considered" she meant Leo Ulford. The touch of Fritz in
him made him a valuable ally at this moment. Fritz and Miss Schley were
not going to have things quite all their own way. And then Mrs. Leo! She
would put Fritz next the ear-trumpet. She had enough sense of humour to
smile to herself at the thought of him there. On the whole, she fancied
the neuralgia would not attack her at the critical instant.

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