The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman/Chapter 6
VI
LADY ANN SPENWORTH HOLDS THE Corps Diplomatique to its duty
LADY ANN (to a friend of proved discretion): I feel—don’t you?—that, if the embassies can give no enlightenment, they might just as well not be there. Paris is different, of course; nowadays it is hardly more than a suburb of London; with that vast cosmopolitan army always coming and going, one is hardly expected to be one’s brother’s keeper. And Washington is unlike any other capital; one goes there en poste—or not at all. But in Vienna or Rome. . . Goodness me, in the old days when my father was ambassador, it was a matter of course. When a new star swam into your ken, you made enquiries in the English colony; if not known there or at the embassy, a wise woman stayed her hand until she had a little something to go on.
In London the corps diplomatique is more diplomatique than corps. Just a swarm of warring atoms, some of them very charming, all of them invaluable if a man fails you at the last moment—a word by telephone to the Chancery: “Two men; I must have them; golf and bridge; the 4.20 from Waterloo; not to bring a servant.” . . . And so on and so forth. Indispensable for entertaining on Connie Maitland’s lines. They are so nice and tractable; but worse than useless if you go officially, as it were, for a whispered word of guidance. As witness Mrs. Sawyer. . .
I cannot remember where I first met her; probably at Lady Maitland’s. . . Sooner or later one meets everybody there; and, with all respect to dear Connie, I, personally, should not mind if some of her protégés came a little later and left a little sooner . . . before I had time to be involved, I mean. It is all this craze for collecting money and, incidentally, carving a niche for oneself as the great organizer. One pictures Connie standing blindfold over a map of England and spearing it ruthlessly with a knitting-needle. “I, Constance Maitland,” you can hear her saying, “ordain that here and here and here I will erect hospitals, libraries and wash-houses.” . . .
Whether the locality likes it or not, as it were. If the needle pierces Grasmere, so much the worse for Grasmere. It shall have its hospital—in mid-lake, regardless of the needless additional expense. I am serious about that, because I feel that, if Connie spent more judiciously, she would not have to appeal so persistently; some of us did contrive to keep the machine running even before my Lady Maitland descended upon us. . . It does not affect me much, because I am never able to contribute more than a trifle; one cannot undertake her new charities indiscriminately without doing an injustice to the old. Others are more happily placed, and my only quarrel with Connie is that I must either drop her or else consent to embrace all her new friends. This Mrs. Sawyer, for instance. . .
I forget whether you were in London at the time. . . No, of course not. Well, I can testify to you that her arrival created quite a stir. The rastaquouère type is not unknown to me by any means, but I thought Mrs. Sawyer a very favourable specimen. Not more than two or three and twenty, though these South American women reach their prime very early—and pass it; jet-black hair and eyes, dead-white face, scarlet lips, really beautiful teeth; altogether a very striking young woman, with just enough of a foreign accent to give an added charm—for those who like that sort of thing. She had a wistful, mysterious manner which accorded well with the ensemble . . . and with the story they told about her. I never heard her maiden name, but I was told at once that she was one of the greatest heiresses in Peru—or it may have been Argentina. This Sawyer was a ne’er-do-well Irishman who had been sent to South America . . . as one does have to send these people sometimes; he fascinated her, married her, beat her (I should think) and drank himself to death, leaving her utterly broken-hearted and disillusionized—not with him alone, but with the world. . . She had come to Europe to find a new life. Such was the story that Connie Maitland shouted at one; and, if poor Mrs. Sawyer overheard it, so much the worse for her. . .
A romantic setting, do you not agree? If you had seen her come into a room with those great, tragic eyes sweeping face after face as though she were looking for the one man who would gather up the fragments of her broken youth. . . If I had been a man. . . Superb diamonds, I need hardly say; and almost an arrogance of mourning, as though she would not be comforted. . . All the young men followed her with their eyes—spell-bound. And some men no longer young. . .
Do you see much of that pathetic class of over-ripe bachelor which my boy rather naughtily calls the “Have-Beens”? They are common, I suppose, to every age and country, but England seems to contain more than her fair share. Between thirty-five and fifty, not particularly well-connected, not a parti among them, not even extravagantly popular, but useful—apparently—and ubiquitous. I could give you the names of a dozen. . . Several of them have been in quite good regiments at some time or other. I understand they belong to the usual clubs; most of them dance quite competently; all of them play extremely good bridge, I am told. . . Several women I know make out a stop-gap list of them; then, if they’re short of a man—it is several grades lower than the embassies, of course, and you are not expected to give even a day’s notice—, the butler can telephone to them in turn until he finds one disengaged. Delightfully simple, is it not? Having no personalities of their own, they accord well with every one; having no pride, they never resent an eleventh-hour invitation; they are too discreet to pay unduly marked attention to a married woman, they know their place too well to attempt any intimacy with the girls.
I am not ashamed to confess that I have an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of a man who is a man; but the kind I am describing seem to ask nothing more of life than invitations and more invitations—and this strange modern privilege of being “Bunny” and “Chris” and “Theo” to women who are old enough to have outgrown such nonsense. If you entertain—I do not, as you are aware—, I believe it is essential to have some such list as I have indicated; and I am told that the men repay you by running errands and being useful in a thousand ways. For their sake I hope they never hear what other men say about them, even the fellow-members of their little community—there is no more contemptuous critic of “Bunny” than “Theo”—or what the women say, for that matter. We may, if we are built that way, ask “Bunny” or “Theo” to come and look at frocks with us; but we don’t respect the man who does. . . If any girl dared ask Will to waste a morning, talking to her while she sat for her portrait. . .
“Bunny” and “Theo” and “Chris” all pricked up their ears when they heard about Mrs. Sawyer. It was another house for them to lunch or dine at; and, of course, they were expected to come to the old houses primed with all the gossip they could pick up about her. I don’t know whether any of them thought seriously that they had a chance with her; they must surely realize that a woman prefers a man of some spirit. . . And, if they do, they have no excuse for standing in a ring and keeping every one else away. Of course, they were useful to her. Major Blanstock found her a house in South Audley Street and helped her furnish it and found servants for her and so forth and so on. He even introduced her to Connie Maitland—as a short cut to knowing everybody, which I gather was her ambition.
Certainly there is no one to equal Connie for that. You have seen men in the street, unloading bricks from a cart and tossing them, three or four at a time, from one to another? Should Connie ever sustain a reverse, she will always have a second string to her bow. . . Major Blanstock tossed this Mrs. Sawyer to Connie, Connie tossed her to me. . . I was expected, I presume, to toss her on to some one else, but I happen to have been brought up in a different school; before I undertake the responsibility of introducing a complete stranger, I like to know something about her. Goodness me, I don’t suggest that my recommendation counts for anything, but for my own peace of mind, when somebody says “Oh, I met her at Lady Ann’s”—there is an implied guarantee—, I want to feel that my friends’ confidence is not misplaced.
“Now, Major Blanstock,” I said, “I want you to tell me all about your lovely young divinity, the rich widow. If I am to befriend her, I must know a little about her.”
I imagine that I was not the first enquirer, for he answered with an impatience which in other days some of us might have considered uncivil.
“Is she rich?,” he asked. “I know nothing about her. I don’t even know she’s a widow. I met her on the boat coming home from Buenos Aires; and, as she’d never been in London, I tried to make her feel at home and asked Lady Maitland to give her a helping hand.”
And that was literally all I got out of him—the fountain-head. Connie knew nothing and wanted to know nothing. It was enough that Mrs. Sawyer was presentable in herself and would attach her name to any subscription-list for any amount. The others—people who are usually well-informed—simply handed on the gossip which they had themselves made up overnight. It was then that I approached my diplomatic friends.
The difficulty was to know where to start. I couldn’t commit myself, I felt, by one dinner, so when my Will came back. . . From the north, yes. You knew that he was home? Oh, yes! Well, at the moment he is not doing anything. The Morecambe experiment was not a success; the place didn’t suit him, and he didn’t suit the place. That is all I care to say on the subject. Half-truths are always misleading; and I cannot tell you the full story, because I do not know it. Should it not be enough to know that for days my spirit was crucified? And the end is not yet. . . I have lost the thread. . . Ah, yes. We dined à trois: Will and Mrs. Sawyer and I. She was fascinating, magnetic. For the first time Will forgot all about the odious clergyman’s odious daughter. . . No, it slipped out. That belongs to the unhappy Morecambe episode, and I really do not think it very kind of you to keep trying to pump me when I have said I prefer not to discuss it. . . When he returned after seeing her home. Will wanted to know all about her, and in such a way. . . I mean, if his voice and manner meant anything, they meant that he had met his fate, as it were. I could tell him little. For one thing, I didn’t know; for another, his excitement had gone to my head, I saw ten things at once and, breaking through them all, this splendid, untamed creature with the flashing eyes walking side by side with my Will. Such a contrast . . . and such a combination. . .
“Well, hadn’t you better find out something about her?,” said Will.
I promised to do my best, but one was sent from pillar to post in a quite too ridiculous way. I thought some one had told me she came from Buenos Aires (perhaps it was only Major Blanstock’s saying he had met her on the boat coming home from there); I tried the Argentine colony and the Legation, only to be referred to the Brazilian Embassy; and there, though I am sure they had never heard of her, they were certain that she came from Peru. Until then, I had never realized how many republics there were in South America; I went from Colombia to the Argentine and from Ecuador to Chili. Invariably the first question was: “What was her name before she became Mrs. Sawyer?” And that, of course, I did not know.
There is such a thing as trop de zèle, sometimes hardly distinguishable from making oneself ridiculous. . .
“Surely,” I said to Will, “our judgement of this person or that is a better criterion than the bald (and perhaps inaccurate) statement that a person was born here and married there. Connie Maitland has asked us to shew some little kindness to our friend; and I am not ashamed to confess that it seems grudging to insist too much on credentials. In a favourite phrase of your own. Will, she is “good enough” for me; and, if any one says: “I met her at Lady Ann’s,” I should be tempted to answer: “I hope you do not need a better recommendation.”
“I don’t want to look a fool, that’s all,” said Will.
“My dear boy,” I reassured him, “if she were a complete impostor, does one make a fool of oneself by asking her to dinner once or twice? If so, I am afraid I rank hospitality above my own personal dignity.”
As a matter of fact, it was all the other way. Mrs. Sawyer developed a mania for entertaining. I went gingerly at first, for one had seen so many rastaquouères treading that road, but no fault could be found with her methods. Either through Connie Maitland or others, she seemed to know every one, and you went to the little réunions in South Audley Street with the certainty that, if you did not meet all your friends there, at least every one that you met would be a friend. I enjoyed her parties; indeed, I only hope that she enjoyed them as much as we did, though I confess I sometimes looked at those tragic black eyes and wondered what amusement it could give her.
Stay! There was one blot: her hospitality left one no opportunity of making an adequate return. Where there is a marked difference of means, I am the last to suggest that one should proceed on the principle of “a cutlet for a cutlet and a quail for a quail”, but it is uncomfortable to feel that everything is coming from one side. My own conscience is clear, for we had done our part; Mrs. Sawyer had in fact dined with us once in Mount Street—just Will and me; I am not in a position to entertain in the old sense of the word—, we had asked her again at least once, and she had never been able to come. It was always: “Oh, won’t you come to me? And whom shall I ask to meet you? And would you prefer just to dine or shall we go to a play?” All in that charming almost-broken English of hers. It would have been ungracious to refuse. . .
I confess that I never saw and do not see to this day how some of the “Have-Beens” justified their existence. I mean. Will and I dined or lunched or went to a play with her three and four times a week, simply because Major Blanstock told us that she was alone in London and Connie Maitland had asked me to look after her. I can assure you, we never went to South Audley Street without finding a little cluster of “Bunnies” and “Theos” and the rest.
I tackled one of them about it. . . This is between ourselves, but it was Mr. Gorleigh—“Reggie” Gorleigh, I suppose I should call him, to be in the fashion.
“You seem a great friend of Mrs. Sawyer,” I said. “I am always meeting you here. Tell me; I don’t know how long she is staying in London, but one would like her to take away a pleasant memory of such hospitality as one can shew her. Is there anything we can do to make a little return? I hardly like to go on taking with both hands.”
“Well, I felt that from the first,” said Mr. Gorleigh. “Geordie Blanstock introduced me, and I came here once or twice. . . Then I felt . . . as you do; and I cried off. The only thing is, she hasn’t many friends, and I thought it wasn’t quite fair, perhaps, to stay away out of a sort of false delicacy. The poor little woman wants companionship.”
“Your feelings do you credit,” I said as gravely as I could.
Really, it would have been laughable if it had not been so disgusting. A man who lives by sponging on his friends for free meals to pretend that he was coming, against his will, to give “the poor little woman” the inestimable privilege of feeding him. . . But, if you please, that was the accepted “eye-wash”, as my boy would call it. In a spirit of pure mischief, I am afraid, I went from one to another: “Bat” Shenstone, “Laurie” Forman, “Theo” Standish, “Bunny” Fancroft. Always the same story! They didn’t come to the house for what they could get out of it; I must understand that they were Mrs. Sawyer’s friends. Hoity-toity! Friends with a capital “F”. . .
Very soon it was “Consuelo’s” friends. Looking back on it all, one seems to hear a series of commands: “on the word ‘loot’, quick march; on reaching South Audley Street, halt and enter; on the word ‘love’ . . .” and so forth and so on. No, it’s not mine; Will drew a most amusing picture. . . But that is literally what happened: first of all, they were “Consuelo’s” friends, then they were all in love with her.
I have suggested that men of that stamp are incapable of being serious about anything—except the next meal; but any one who was genuinely fond of the poor woman could not help seeing that this formal persecution was more than a joke. Will came to me after one of her parties and said that it was high time for us to do something.
“Get her away from all that gang,” he cried; and from the agitation of his voice I could see that he was taking this to heart.
And, you know, it was rather dreadful to see that lovely creature with the tragic eyes standing like a bewildered child with all these young-old men baying round her. . .
“It’s easier said than done,” I told him.
“Uncle Tom Brackenbury’s going north for the Twelfth,” said Will. “Get him to lend you the Hall and ask Consuelo down.”
My brother, as you know, is of so curious a temper that I have always been more than chary of even seeming to put myself under an obligation to him. One had the feeling, don’t you know, that, if he did not place a wrong construction on one’s request, my niece Phyllida would. . . Since Culroyd’s engagement, however, poor Aunt Ann’s shoulders have been relieved a little of their burden; the family persists in thinking that I contributed to bring it about, whereas I rigidly set my face against any planning of that kind and was only responsible to the extent that Hilda Surdan was staying in my house when my nephew Culroyd met her. . . The point of importance, however, is that Aunt Ann is now embarrassingly popular. Brackenbury lent me the house almost before I asked for it. . .
Then I had to think how the invitation might be made most attractive to Consuelo. After the excitement of her life in London, undoubtedly the best thing would have been to give her all the rest and quiet that we could. There is, however, a strain of something restless and untamed about her; one pictures her running bare-foot through the woods or plunging into the surf by moonlight; and, though she would overcome that in time, I could not conceal from myself that, on the one occasion when she had dined with us en famille, she had flagged. . . I told her that I hoped to secure some of our common friends; and Will and I worked hard to arrange relays of the people who would best accord, so to say. . .
I started with Major Blanstock, as he seemed her oldest friend. To do him justice, after the first meeting at Connie Maitland’s house, I had never seen him with the jackals ; he didn’t pretend to be in love with her, he didn’t talk about the pearls of his friendship and he didn’t even refer to her as “Consuelo”.
“I shall be delighted to come, if I can get away,” he said.
“Your fascinating young widow is coming,” I said, as a bait—though I felt that he had long ago lost interest in her.
“My widow?,” he repeated. “I am alive—and unmarried, Lady Ann.”
“Silly man! Our Brazilian heiress,” I explained.
“Oh! Mrs. Sawyer,” he said. “Is she Brazilian? I didn’t know that. But it’s not fair to embarrass her with my friendship. She is almost a stranger to me; I don’t know that she’s an heiress, I don’t even know that she’s a widow.”
“But,” I said, “surely her husband drank himself to death.”
“Some one told me that he drank,” said Major Blanstock. “Whether he drank himself to death I can’t tell you. I didn’t feel it was my affair. . .”
I forget whether any one was with us at the time, but this story spread. . . At least, it wasn’t a story; several people, knowing nothing of the facts, had chosen to assume that a certain woman was a widow; one man, equally knowing nothing, said that he did not know whether she was a widow or not. Goodness me! Did it matter two pins one way or the other, so far as we were concerned? I should have been sorry to find out afterwards that there had been any kind of scandal, because one had thrown one’s mantle over the woman and given an implied guarantee, as it were. That was why I did attempt to learn a little something from my diplomatic friends. . . But it is hardly too much to say that a panic ensued among the “Bunnies” and “Theos”.
“They tell me,” said Mr. “Bat” Shenstone, “that Mrs. Sawyer’s husband is still living.”
“Oh?,” I said. That phrase—“They tell me”—! It always puts me on my guard.
I nearly told him that, if he was only a friend to her, it did not matter whether she had a husband or not. . . I noticed that she was “Mrs. Sawyer” now. . .
The stories that I met for the next few days were so fantastic that I really think some one must have been deliberately making them up. At one moment the husband was in a home for inebriates, at another he was alive and well with a formidable revolver ready for any one who became too “friendly” with his wife; at another he was supposed to be in prison for actually shooting a man; then she was said to have divorced him, then he was said to have divorced her. Finally I was assured that she had never had a husband and was an adventuress who had come to exploit London. The money, I was told, was a decoy, and in reality there was no money; she had been left a few thousands by some man with whom she had been living; and she was pouring it out right and left in the hope of ensnaring some one else before it was all spent.
I really did not know; what I should be required to believe next.
“We must clear this up,” said Will one night when we were all down at the Hall.
“Which story in particular,?” I asked.
“All of them,” he answered very decisively; “and at once. I’m not thinking of us, but we can’t afford to let Consuelo have these lies circulating about her. Why don’t you talk to her and find out the truth?”
I am not ashamed to confess that I rather shrank from the prospect. Mrs. Sawyer had always been so singularly uncommunicative that it seemed impertinence to peer behind the veil. And the more so when she was one’s guest. I don’t think I could have screwed up courage, if Will’s forethought had not shewn me the way; but I did tell her as gently and sweetly as I could that there was always a certain idle curiosity about foreigners who came to live in England and that, in her case, the curiosity was increased by her beauty and immediate success. I coaxed her to tell me a little about her life. . .
“What do you want to know?,” she asked.
Those great black eyes—how I wish you had seen her!—became cold as stone. I was frightened. . .
“Your husband. . .” I began.
“He is dead.”
Truly honestly, do you know, I couldn’t go on. I did find out that he had been dead eighteen months and they had been married for less than a year and there were no children. That, at least, was her story ; one had no opportunity of testing it or catching her out . . . even if one had wanted to. Who she was before, where the money came from, if there was any money—not a word! To this day I don’t know whether she hailed from Paraguay or Venezuela. . .
“She is a widow,” I was able to tell Will; and indeed I took great pains to scotch these ridiculous stories which had been swirling round London when I left. It was cruel that any one should say such things of any woman; and, if my boy ever thought fit to drop the handkerchief, I did not want to have any explaining-away to do. She was greatly attracted to him, and I fancy that the one doubt in his mind was the immense difference in blood and breeding: Roman Catholic (I presume; I have no certain knowledge even of that) and Anglican, Latin and Anglo-Saxon . . . and so forth and so on. We really knew so very little about her that my boy prudently and properly did not seek to press his advantage with her prematurely. . .
I sometimes feel that in London one uproots one lie only to make room for another. A few days’ “propaganda”, as Will would say, convinced people that “the mystery woman”, as some one christened her, had no homicidal husband lurking with a revolver behind the nearest bush. But a different story beeame wide-spread . . . indeed, universally repeated and almost universally believed. The old story, I should say, was revived. People said that she had come over with a few thousands and had spent every penny of it.
“I have no more knowledge than you have,” said Major Blanstock, when I tackled him about it one day at Brackenbury; and then he added with rather a tiresome assumption of virtue: “I didn’t feel it was my affair.”
“But you’re her friend,” I said.
“If she gives me an opportunity of proving it.”
“And in some ways her sponsor,” I said.
“Oh, I would stand sponsor for her at all times,” he answered. “If your story is true, she will have an opportunity of proving the quality of all her friends.”
And there the thing ended, so far as we were concerned. Brackenbury had lent us the house for two months; but, when Consuelo left us after a fortnight, we were not sorry to return the following day to London. I was in terror that Will might commit himself before we had really found out anything; but, the moment these stories began circulating again, he very wisely retired into his shell; I suppose it was because she felt that no progress was being made that Consuelo curtailed her visit. Or, perhaps, with that restlessness of hers, she was simply bored; my feelings would not suffer if she told me that one dull old woman. . . I should explain that our scheme of house-parties broke down; the women, indeed, came, but man after man failed us at the last moment. One spent Friday morning despatching one’s staff in turn to the telephone with names and more names and yet more names. . .
I found it hard to believe that all the “Bunnies” and “Theos” were in such request, but no enlightenment was vouchsafed until our return to Mount Street. If there had been a panic when we left London, the phrase sauve-qui-peut is hardly too strong for the condition we found awaiting us. Some one had industriously spread this story that Mrs. Sawyer was a mere adventuress, and everybody was anxiously disclaiming all acquaintance with her. I have suggested that for months it was impossible to enter South Audley Street without running into Mr. “Reggie” Gorleigh; with my own ears I heard him say: “Mrs. Sawyer? Oh, that South American woman! I think I know who you mean.”
For sheer audacity. . .
“I don’t know what else you would expect,” said Major Blanstock one day. “People in London will take anything from anybody—and go on taking it so long as they think there’s money about. If you whisper that they may afterwards have to make a return, they vanish into thin air. I know nothing of Mrs. Sawyer’s affairs; but, if it’s true that she has lost all her money, I should have thought that her friends would have rallied round her and shewn that it made no difference. On a strict calculation of one meal against another, they could keep her from starving for a year or two.”
“And so I have no doubt they will,” I said, though I detest all this modern weighing and balancing.
Where calculation comes in, hospitality goes out.
“She’s absolutely deserted!,” he cried. “I know, because I’m the only man who goes near her.”
“That, Major Blanstock,” I said rather sharply, “is neither fair nor true. Consuelo spent a fortnight with us, she was invited to stay longer.”
“But would you ask her again?,” he sneered; and I could see that he was most offensively hinting that we, like the rest, had dropped her when the bubble was pricked.
“My brother has unfortunately resumed possession of Brackenbury,” I told him.
And then I really had to pretend that there was somebody at the other end of the room who wanted to speak to me. . . I hope I am tolerably good-tempered, but I will not allow every one to make himself a ruler and a judge. . .
All through the summer it had been “Mrs. Sawyer this” and “Mrs. Sawyer that”. Dear Consuelo was so charming, her parties were so delightful. If one did not know her, one must take steps to become acquainted. And so forth and so on. . . In the autumn there was what I can only describe as a guilty silence; it was in questionable taste to mention her; she dropped out completely, and one almost begged one’s man not to bring the car home by way of South Audley Street. Every one seemed to fear that she might present herself any day at the door and claim to be taken in and supported by those who had only accepted her too lavish hospitality because they were “friends” and a little sorry for her lonely state. Then came the great surprise. . .
It can only have been a surprise to people who had jumped to conclusions without troubling to collect a shred of evidence. . . I purposely kept my mind a blank. . . There were rumours; and then one read the announcement—that she was marrying this Major Blanstock. I believe she is a great heiress, I believe her husband did drink himself to death. And I still believe, as I always believed, that she is a thoroughly nice, very unhappy woman. . .
She would never have done for Will. . . As you would be the first to agree, if you had seen her. Oh, I can’t describe my relief that nothing came of that. The difference of blood and breeding—Roman Catholic and Anglican, Latin and Anglo-Saxon. . .
But I feel that the poor woman would have been given a fairer chance if her own people at the Legation had been able to tell us something about her. If they can’t do that, I really don’t know what they are there for or why one takes the trouble to invite them to one’s house. . .