Grace, Lady Shalem, was a woman who had blossomed into sudden importance by constituting herself a sort of foster-mother to the fait accompli. At a moment when London was denuded of most of its aforetime social leaders she had seen her opportunity, and made the most of it. She had not contented herself with bowing to the inevitable, she had stretched out her hand to it, and forced herself to smile graciously at it, and her polite attentions had been reciprocated. Lady Shalem, without being a beauty or a wit, or a grand lady in the traditional sense of the word, was in a fair way to becoming a power in the land; others, more capable and with stronger claims to social recognition, would doubtless overshadow her and displace her in due course, but for the moment she was a person whose good graces counted for something, and Cicely was quite alive to the advantage of being in those good graces.
“It would be rather fun,” she said, running over in her mind the possibilities of the suggested supper-party.
“It would be jolly useful,” put in Ronnie eagerly; “you could get all sorts of interesting people together, and it would be an excellent advertisement for Gorla.”
Ronnie approved of supper-parties on principle, but he was also thinking of the advantage which might accrue to the drawing-room concert which Cicely had projected (with himself as the chief performer), if he could be brought into contact with a wider circle of music patrons.
“I know it would be useful,” said Cicely, “it would be almost historical; there’s no knowing who might not come to it—and things are dreadfully slack in the entertaining line just now.”
The ambitious note in her character was making itself felt at that moment.
“Let’s go down to the library, and work out a list of people to invite,” said Ronnie.
A servant entered the room and made a brief announcement.
“Mr. Yeovil has arrived, madam.”
“Bother,” said Ronnie sulkily. “Now you’ll cool off about that supper party, and turn down Gorla and the rest of us.”
It was certainly true that the supper already seemed a more difficult proposition in Cicely’s eyes than it had a moment or two ago.
“‘You’ll not forget my only daughter,
E’en though Saphia has crossed the sea,’”
quoted Tony, with mocking laughter in his voice and eyes.
Cicely went down to greet her husband. She felt that she was probably very glad that he was home once more; she was angry with herself for not feeling greater certainty on the point. Even the well-beloved, however, can select the wrong moment for return. If Cicely Yeovil’s heart was like a singing-bird, it was of a kind that has frequent lapses into silence.
II: The Homecoming
Murrey Yeovil got out of the boat-train at Victoria Station, and stood waiting, in an attitude something between listlessness and impatience, while a porter dragged his light travelling kit out of the railway carriage and went in search of his heavier baggage with a hand-truck. Yeovil was a grey-faced young man, with restless eyes, and a rather wistful mouth, and an air of lassitude that was evidently only a temporary characteristic. The hot dusty station, with its blended crowds of dawdling and scurrying people, its little streams of suburban passengers pouring out every now and then from this or that platform, like ants swarming across a garden path, made a wearisome climax to what had been a rather wearisome journey. Yeovil glanced quickly, almost furtively, around him in all directions, with the air of a man who is constrained by morbid curiosity to look for things that he would rather not see. The announcements placed in German alternatively with English over the booking office, left-luggage office, refreshment buffets, and so forth, the crowned eagle and monogram displayed on the post boxes, caught his eye in quick succession.
He turned to help the porter to shepherd his belongings on to the truck, and followed him to the outer yard of the station, where a string of taxi-cabs was being slowly absorbed by an outpouring crowd of travellers.
Portmanteaux, wraps, and a trunk or two, much be-labelled and travel-worn, were stowed into a taxi, and Yeovil turned to give the direction to the driver.
“Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street.”
“Berkschirestrasse, acht-und-zwanzig,” echoed the man, a bulky spectacled individual of unmistakable Teuton type.
“Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street,” repeated Yeovil, and got into the cab, leaving the driver to re-translate the direction into his own language.
A succession of cabs leaving the station blocked the roadway for a moment or two, and Yeovil had leisure to observe the fact that Viktoria Strasse was lettered side by side with the familiar English name of the street. A notice directing the public to the neighbouring swimming baths was also written up in both languages. London had become a bi-lingual city, even as Warsaw.
The cab threaded its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road towards the Mall. As they passed the long front of the Palace the traveller turned his head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien uniforms at the gates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight. The taxi driver, who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down as he was turning into the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of memorial statuary in front of the palace gates.
“Grossmutter Denkmal, yes,” he announced, and resumed his journey.
Arrived at his destination, Yeovil stood on the steps of his house and pressed the bell with an odd sense of forlornness, as though he were a stranger drifting from nowhere into a land that had no cognisance of him; a moment later he was standing in his own hall, the object of respectful solicitude and attention. Sprucely garbed and groomed lackeys busied themselves with his battered travel-soiled baggage; the door closed on the guttural-voiced taxi driver, and the glaring July sunshine. The wearisome journey was over.
“Poor dear, how dreadfully pulled-down you look,” said Cicely, when the first greetings had been exchanged.
“It’s been a slow business, getting well,” said Yeovil. “I’m only three-quarter way there yet.”
He looked at his reflection in a mirror and laughed ruefully.
“You should have seen what I looked like five or six weeks ago,” he added.
“You ought to have let me come out and nurse you,” said Cicely; “you know I wanted to.”
“Oh, they nursed me well enough,” said Yeovil, “and it would have been a shame dragging you out there; a small Finnish health resort, out of the season, is not a very amusing place, and it would have been worse for any one who didn’t talk Russian.”
“You must have been buried alive there,” said Cicely, with commiseration in her voice.
“I wanted to be buried alive,” said Yeovil. “The news from the outer world was not of a kind that helped a despondent invalid towards convalescence. They spoke to me as little as possible about what was happening, and I was grateful for your letters because they also told me very little. When one is abroad, among foreigners, one’s country’s misfortunes cause one an acuter, more personal distress, than they would at home even.”
“Well, you are at home now, anyway,” said Cicely, “and you can jog along the road to complete recovery at your own pace. A little quiet shooting this autumn and a little hunting, just enough to keep you fit and not to overtire you; you mustn’t overtax your strength.”
“I’m getting my strength back all right,” said Yeovil. “This journey hasn’t tired me half as much as one might have expected. It’s the awful drag of listlessness, mental and physical, that is the worst after-effect of these marsh fevers; they drain the energy out of you in bucketfuls, and it trickles back again in teaspoonfuls. And just now untiring energy is what I shall need, even more than strength; I don’t want to degenerate into a slacker.”