“Her father? Miss Hermione’s—?”
“My husband, of course. I suppose you know he’s living.”
Garnett blushed at his own clumsiness. “I—yes—that is, I really knew nothing—” he stammered, feeling that each word added to it. If Hermione was unnoticeable, Mr. Newell had always been invisible. The young man had never so much as given him a thought, and it was awkward to come on him so suddenly at a turn of the talk.
“Well, he is—living here in Paris,” said Mrs. Newell, with a note of asperity which seemed to imply that her friend might have taken the trouble to post himself on this point.
“In Paris? But in that case isn’t it quite simple—?”
“To find him? I daresay it won’t be difficult, though he is rather mysterious. But the point is that I can’t go to him—and that if I write to him he won’t answer.”
“Ah,” said Garnett thoughtfully.
“And so you’ve got to find him for me, and tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“That he must come to the wedding—that we must show ourselves together at church and at the breakfast.”
She delivered the behest in her sharp imperative key, the tone of the born commander. But for once Garnett ventured to question her orders.
“And supposing he won’t come?”
“He must if he cares for his daughter’s happiness. She can’t be married without him.”
“Can’t be married?”
“The French are like that—especially the old families. I was given to understand at once that my husband must appear—if only to establish the fact that we’re not divorced.”
“Ah—you’re
“Mercy, no! Divorce is stupid. They don’t like it in Europe. And in this case it would have been the end of Hermy’s marriage. They wouldn’t think of letting their son marry the child of divorced parents.”
“How fortunate, then—”
“Yes; but I always think of such things beforehand. And of course I’ve told them that my husband will be present.”
“You think he will consent?”
“No; not at first; but you must make him. You must tell him how sweet Hermione is—and you must see Louis, and be able to describe their happiness. You must dine here tonight—he is coming. We’re all dining with the Hubbards, and they expect you. They have given Hermy some very good diamonds—though I should have preferred a cheque, as she’ll be horribly poor. But I think Kate Hubbard means to do something about the trousseau—Hermy is at Paquin’s with her now. You’ve no idea how delightful all our friends have been.—Ah, here is one of them now,” she broke off smiling, as the door opened to admit, without preliminary announcement, a gentleman so glossy and ancient, with such a fixed unnatural freshness of smile and eye, that he gave Garnett the effect of having been embalmed and then enamelled. It needed not the exotic-looking ribbon in the visitor’s button-hole, nor Mrs. Newell’s introduction of him as her friend Baron Schenkelderff, to assure Garnett of his connection with a race as ancient as his appearance.
Baron Schenkelderff greeted his hostess with paternal playfulness, and the young man with an ease which might have been acquired on the Stock Exchange and in the dressing-rooms of “leading ladies.” He spoke a faultless, colourless English, from which one felt he might pass with equal mastery to half a dozen other languages. He enquired patronizingly for the excellent Hubbards, asked his hostess if she did not mean to give him a drop of tea and a cigarette, remarked that he need not ask if Hermione was still closeted with the dressmaker, and, on the waiter’s coming in answer to his ring, ordered the tea himself, and added a request for
IV
GARNETT had always foreseen that Mrs. Newell might some day ask him to do something he should greatly dislike. He had never gone so far as to conjecture what it might be, but had simply felt that if he allowed his acquaintance with her to pass from spectatorship to participation he must be prepared to find himself, at any moment, in a queer situation.
The moment had come; and he was relieved to find that he could meet it by refusing her request. He had not always been sure that she would leave him this alternative. She had a way of involving people in her complications without their being aware of it, and Garnett had pictured himself in holes so tight that there might not be room for a wriggle. Happily in this case he could still move freely. Nothing compelled him to act as an intermediary between Mrs. Newell and her husband, and it was preposterous to suppose that, even in a life of such perpetual upheaval as hers, there were no roots which struck deeper than her casual intimacy with himself. She had simply laid hands on him because he happened to be within reach, and he would put himself out of reach by leaving for London on the morrow.
Having thus inwardly asserted his independence, he felt free to let his fancy dwell on the strangeness of the situation. He had always supposed that Mrs. Newell, in her flight through life, must have thrown a good many victims to the wolves, and had assumed that Mr. Newell had been among the number. That he had been dropped overboard at an early stage in the lady’s career seemed probable from the fact that neither his wife nor his daughter ever mentioned him. Mrs. Newell was incapable of reticence, and if her husband had still been an active element in her life he would certainly have figured in her conversation. Garnett, if he thought of the matter at all, had concluded that divorce must long since have eliminated Mr. Newell; but he now saw how he had underrated his friend’s faculty for using up the waste material of life. She had always struck him as the most extravagant of women, yet it turned out that by a miracle of thrift she had for years kept a superfluous husband on the chance that he might some day be useful to her. The day had come, and Mr. Newell was to be called from his obscurity. Garnett wondered what had become of him in the interval, and in what shape he would respond to the evocation. The fact
