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On this Friday night of November in the year 1918, Lady Durwent sat by the fire in the drawing-room and discussed music with Norton Pyford. Having sacrificed his watch on the altar of art, he had been compelled to rely on appetite, with the result that he arrived just as eight was striking.
It was perhaps not inconsistent with the character of Lady Durwent that, although she had striven to secure the guiding of Malcolm's development, she should find herself totally devoid of any plan for the training of a daughter.
The sense of solitude at Roselawn made the outside world something so remote and apart that there was genuine curiosity to discover what the deuce it had been doing with itself during the house-party's retreat. Lord Durwent read the Morning Post as a sort of 'prairie oyster' or 'bromo-seltzer. It settled him.
Austin Selwyn rose from his bed and looked at Berners Street glistening in a sunlight that must have warmed the heart of Madame Carlotti herself. With a lazy pleasure in the process, he recalled the picture of Elise Durwent sitting in the dim shadows of the firelit room; he felt again the fragrance of her person as he leaned over her with the lighted match.
There was one woman's voice that was rasping and sustained with an abandon of vulgarity released by the potency of champagne. Elise Durwent looked across the table at her companion. 'Are you bored with all my talk? she said. 'You Americans aren't nearly so candid about such things as Englishmen. 'On the contrary, Miss Durwent, I am deeply interested.
The tenants gave her a silver plate; Lord Durwent gave them a garden fête; and he and his wife gave the girl the name of Elise. Three years later a second son appeared. There was a presentation, followed by a garden fête and a christening. The name was Richard. In course of time the elder son grew to that mental stature when the English parent feels the time is ripe to send him away to school.
As there was no immediate suitor on the horizon, what more was there to be said of the daughter of the house? Next morning Lady Durwent was still amiable, but rather dull. The following day she was frankly bored. On Sunday, during the sermon, she planned a house-party; and so, in due course, invitations were issued, and accepted or regretfully declined.
Almost as if she desired to eradicate the memory of her emotional admission, she gave her vivacity full play. For a few minutes he tried to bring back the close intimacy of their souls, but she fenced him off, and met his heart-hungry glances with the gayest of smiles. Roselawn, she told him, had been transformed into a convalescent home, and Lord and Lady Durwent were living in one of the wings.
He handed Durwent a sandwich, which the young man devoured ravenously, washing it down with some cold tea. Mathews also munched at a sandwich, and through the cornstalks they watched the two currents of war-traffic eddying past each other. There was a roar of engines behind them, and, flying low, a formation of sixteen British aeroplanes made in a straight line for the battle area.
'I haven't anything with me, said the American; 'but I can give you a whisky and something to eat at my rooms. 'Right! Thanks very much. Tucking the cape under his arm, and shaking his waterproof cap to clear it of water, Dick Durwent followed the American on to the Embankment, where the two sphinxes of Egypt squatted, silent sentinels.
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