Lady Holme

“ Lady Holme was not an affected woman, but, like all women of the world who are greatly admired and much talked about, she had certain little ways of looking, moving, speaking, being quiet, certain little habits of laughter, of gravity, that were her own property. ”

“ Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mr. Bry, Sally Perceval had one by one appeared, and Robin Pierce’s dark head was visible mounting slowly amid a throng of other heads of all shapes, sizes and tints.
Lady Holme was looking particularly well. She was dressed in black. Of course black suits everybody. It suited her even better than most people, and her gown was a triumph. She was going on to the Arkell House ball, and wore the Holme diamonds, which were superb, and which she had recently had reset. She was in perfect health, and felt unusually young and unusually defiant. ”

“ The fierce change which Lady Holme had longed for was a reality. One life, the life of the siren, had come to an end. But the eyes of the woman must still see light. The heart of the woman must still beat on. ”

“ Mrs. Wolfstein was by this time in violent conversation with a pale young man, who always looked as if he were on the point of fainting, but who went literally everywhere. Miss Schley glanced up into Lady Holme’s eyes.
“I hoped to make the acquaintance of Lord Holme to-night,” she murmured. “Folks tell me he’s a most beautiful man. Isn’t he anywhere around?”
She looked away into vacancy, ardently. Lady Holme felt a slight tingling sensation in her cool skin. For a moment it seemed to her as if she watched herself in caricature, distorted perhaps by a mirror with a slight flaw in it. ”

“ The extraordinary thing was the marvellous resemblance this acute and unscrupulous womanhood bore to Lady Holme’s, even through all its obvious difference from hers. All her little mannerisms of voice, look, manner and movement, were there but turned towards commonness, even towards a naive but very self-conscious impropriety. Had she been a public performer instead of merely a woman of the world, the whole audience must have at once recognised the imitation. ”

“ At the moment she felt inclined to be alone. She had even just refused Sir Donald’s earnest request to accompany her to her carriage. Had any other woman made her this offer she would certainly have refused it. But few people refused any request of Lady Cardington’s. Lady Holme, like the rest of the world, felt the powerful influence that lay in her gentleness as a nerve lies in a body. And then had she not wept when Lady Holme sang a tender song to her? In a moment they were driving up the Haymarket together in Lady Cardington’s barouche. ”

“ Lord Holme stared at her, put his hand into his trousers pocket and pulled out his cigarette-case. Lady Holme knew that he had been in a good humour when he came home, and that the sight of her sitting up in the drawing-room had displeased him. She had seen a change come into his face. He had been looking gay. He began to look glum and turned his eyes away from her.
“What have you been up to?” she asked, with a sudden light gaiety and air of comradeship. ”

“ She was sitting perfectly upright on her chair, and noticed that her companion’s eyes travelled calmly and critically over her figure with an unveiled deliberation that was exceptionally brazen even in a modern London man. Lady Holme did not mind it. Indeed, she rather liked it. She knew at once, by that look, the type of man with whom she had to deal. In Leo Ulford there was something of Lord Holme, as in Pimpernel Schley there was perhaps a touch of herself. Having finished his stare, Leo Ulford continued:
“Jolly out there. No rot. Do as you like and no one to bother you. ”

“ Then, hearing the thin rustle of a dress, she turned sharply and cast an unfriendly glance at a mild young woman with a very pointed nose, on which a pair of eyeglasses sat astride, who came meekly forward, looking self-conscious, and smiling with one side of her mouth. The man with the protruding jaw, who was Lord Holme, said to her, in a loud bass voice:
“Thanks, Miss Filberte, thanks.”
“Oh, not at all, Lord Holme,” replied the accompanist with a sudden air of rather foolish delight. “I consider it an honour to accompany an amateur who sings like Lady Holme.” ”

“ Lord Holme and Leo Ulford were of a similar type. Both were strong, healthy, sensual, slangy, audacious in a dull kind of fashion—Lady Holme did not call it dull—serenely and perpetually intent upon having everything their own way in life. Both lived for the body and ignored the soul, as they would have ignored a man with a fine brain, a passionate heart, a narrow chest and undeveloped muscles. Such a man they would have summed up as “a rotter.” If they ever thought of the soul at all, it was probably under some such comprehensive name. ”

“ She laughed anxiously and looked at Lady Holme.
“Didn’t you think I was older?”
“I don’t know that I ever thought about it,” replied Lady Holme, with the rather careless frankness she often used towards women.
“Of course not. Why should you, or anyone? When a woman’s once over fifty it really doesn’t matter much whether she’s fifty-one or seventy-one. Does it?”
Lady Holme thought for a moment. Then she said:
“I really don’t know. You see, I’m not a man.”
Lady Cardington’s forehead puckered and her mouth drooped piteously.
“A woman’s real life is very short,” she said. ”

“ Her husband had accompanied Mrs. Wolfstein downstairs, and Lady Holme could hear his big, booming voice below, interrupted now and then by her impudent soprano. She spoke English with a slight foreign accent which men generally liked and women loathed. Lady Holme loathed it. But she was not fond of her own sex. She believed that all women were untrustworthy. She often said that she had never met a woman who was not a liar, and when she said it she had no doubt that, for once, a woman was speaking the truth. ”

“ The believers in the angel naturally welcomed the development in Lady Holme and the unbelievers laughed at it, especially those who had been at Arkell House and those who had been influenced by Pimpernel Schley’s clever imitation. ”

“ He had mistaken the relations existing between her and her husband, and imagined that such a woman as she was must be unhappily mated with such a man as Lord Holme. The passionate desire to console a perfectly-contented woman had caused him to go too far, and bring down upon himself a fiat of exile, which he could not defy since Lady Holme permitted it to go forth, and evidently was not rendered miserable by it. So the acquaintance with Rupert Carey had ceased, and life had slipped along once more on wheels covered with india-rubber tyres. ”

“ For as Lady Holme lay under the car she had been badly burnt. The raw, red tinge would no doubt fade away with time, but the face must always remain unsightly, even a little grotesque, must always show to the casual passer-by a woman who had been the victim of a dreadful accident. ”

“ Wolfstein, with her strongest accent, while Miss Schley put out a limp hand to meet Lady Holme’s and very slightly accentuated her smile.
“Your mother? I shall be delighted to meet her. I hope you’ll bring her one day,” said Lady Holme; thinking more emphatically than ever that for a woman with a complexion as perfect as hers it was a mistake to wear many jewels. ”

“ Perhaps he would have been more sorry if Leo Ulford had not come into Lady Holme’s life, and if the defiance within her had not driven her into an intimacy that distressed Mrs. Leo and puzzled Sir Donald.
Robin’s time in London was very nearly at an end. The season was at its height. Every day was crowded with engagements. It was almost impossible to find a quiet moment even to give to a loved one. But Robin was determined to have at least one hour with Lady Holme before he started for Italy. ”

“ Lady Holme looked definitely dubious.
“I’ll tell you who’ll be there—Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mrs. Trent—do you know her? Spanish looking, and’s divorced two husbands, and’s called the scarlet woman because she always dresses in red—Sally Perceval, Miss Burns and Pimpernel Schley.”
“Pimpernel Schley! Who is she?”
“The American actress who plays all the improper modern parts. Directly a piece is produced in Paris that we run over to see—you know the sort! the Grand Duke and foreign Royalty species—she has it adapted for her. ”

“ Their backs were towards the room, and Lady Holme and Robin drew near to them without being perceived. Mrs. Wolfstein had a loud voice and did not control it in a crowd. On the contrary, she generally raised it, as if she wished to be heard by those whom she was not addressing.
“Sargent invariably brings out the secret of his sitters,” she was saying to Ashley Greaves as Lady Holme and Robin came near and stood for an instant wedged in by people, unable to move forward or backward. “You’ve brought out the similarities between Pimpernel and Lady Holme. I never saw anything so clever. ”

“ But at this point she recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair—that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things—opposites, even—in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would be worse than useless for her to imitate Miss Schley’s imitation of her. ”

“ It had become known that Rupert Carey, whose unfortunate vice had been common talk ever since the Arkell House ball, was a perpetual visitor to Casa Felice, and presently it was whispered that he was actually living there with Lady Holme, and that Lord Holme was going to apply to the Courts for a divorce. Thereupon many successful ladies began to wag bitter tongues. It seemed to be generally agreed that the affair was rendered peculiarly disgraceful by the fact that Lady Holme was no longer a beautiful woman. ”

“ Lady Holme knew that his verdict must be final. If he could do nothing to restore her vanished loveliness nothing could be done. After being closeted with her for a long time he came out of her room. There were tears in his eyes. To the footman who opened the hall door, and who stared in surprise, he explained his emotion thus.
“Poor lady,” he said. “It’s a hopeless case.”
“Ah!” said the man, who was the pale footman Lady Holme had sent with the latch-key to Leo Ulford.
“Hopeless. It’s a hard thing to have to tell a lady she’ll always be—be—”
“What, sir?” said the footman. ”

“ Sometimes Lady Pollexfen would lie awake for two or three hours in the middle of the night with wide-open eyes fixed solemnly on the canopy over her head, requiring no attendance, and never speaking except when she perceived signs of drowsiness in Janet, who was stationed where she could be seen by a mere turn of the eyes. Then would her ladyship's voice ring out clear and sharp: "Miss Holme! Miss Holme the devil is behind you, about to cut off your hair with a pair of shears." Or perhaps, "Miss Holme! Miss Holme! there is a large grey rat staring at you out of the corner. ”

“ I don’t know as she’ll take to it just at first—being a lady and all that; but there, I reckon she knows her own business best.... She isn’t as young as she was, neither, and folks as works over hard wear out ter’ble fast. Ay, she’ll get t’ house, will Ann Clapham; there’s no doubt about that.”
There was another uncomfortable pause when she had finished, and Mrs. Clapham cast an uneasy glance at her over her shoulder. What Emma was saying sounded all right—at least, for Emma—so she was at a loss to understand why it should fill her with apprehension. ”

“ But always he came back doggedly to his first impression of her in the Lane. She was not of his world—the world of the soul, where it walks alone until the silver fingers of its eternal mate make music on the thrilling door. She did not speak his language, or love his loves; and sometimes he would leave the beauty of Watters with a queer relief, to talk shop with Harriet under a shippon wall.
The latter drove in now, in her smart, new milk-float, affecting the farmer’s jog-trot which would soon ruin the brisk little cob he had bought for her, he reflected, with a shrug. ”

“ Thomas thought it was time that somebody said a word.... So after his last trip he halted and spoke....
“Yon’ll be an old fiddle, I doubt, by now?” “Nay. Fiddles is always young.”
“Old as time gangs, I mean, yon’s all.” He looked at the shining thing that he had known so well, and Agnes came to the inner door and listened, drying a pot. “It’s sung Bob an’ me to sleep many a time when we were barns. There’s whiles I wake even yet, hearing music somewheres in the dark.”
“I’ll be bound Marget’s barns isn’t fiddled to sleep!” the young wife scoffed behind their backs. ”

“ A fresh spasm, evidenced by pursed lips, went round the shocked throng, exactly as if they had been drilled by some rapped-out word of command. Mrs. James looked at Mrs. Tanner, and Mrs. Airey at Mrs. Dunn. Martha Jane went furiously red, and tossed her head so violently that a hairpin flew out. Only in the background Emma went on smiling her Mona Lisa smile.... “Lordships and suchlike have their own way o’ doing things,” said her expressionless voice. “Seems to me calling on such as you is more a parson’s job than a lord’s.... But there, no doubt he knows his own business best....” ”