I noted that she looked less like Juno when she grinned. One can’t imagine Juno grinning. I don’t know why.
Mrs. Bradley changed the subject. Resting her clawlike hands on the arms of her chair, she smiled by stretching her lips sideways until her yellow countenance resembled that of a chameleon, blinked her bright, beady, little black eyes several times in quick succession, and observed in the voice which always startled strangers by its richness and beauty—it startled me, of course, the first time I heard it:
“What do you consider the most amazing sight on earth, Mr. Wells?”
There was a silence, while she darted her quick glances from one to another and then back to me. I could feel myself sweating, and I began to realise what birds feel like when snakes watch them. There was something saurian about Mrs. Bradley—about her eyes, about her lips, about the brain behind those eyes and the tongue behind those lips. She passed the tip of a small red tongue over the lips and then pursed them into a little beak, and I remember being rather surprised to note that the tongue was not forked like a serpent’s tongue. “So this,” I thought to myself, “is a psycho-analyst.” Mrs. Bradley apparently read my thoughts.
“Quite so, my dear,” she said. “And, moreover, one who is old-fashioned enough to consider Sigmund Freud the high priest of the mysteries of the sect. Kindly refrain from making the obvious and heartrending pun, for there should be no jesting upon sacred subjects except by Dean Inge.”
She concluded the remark with a startling scream of mirth, and, to my acute embarrassment, she pinched my cheek playfully. Margaret laughed. Margaret had very fine brown hair with golden lights in it, was a good tennis player and a remarkably poor performer upon the ukulele. I speak of her as I found her, of course. Mr. Bransome Burns was a suitor for her hand. He was finding the going extremely sticky, and had twice skidded into the ditch; once when he lost every point after deuce in a game of tennis with Margaret as his partner and another time when he had struck the fox-terrier for leaping up at him. He was afraid of dogs, and, inevitably, I suppose, was violently disposed towards them. His digestion was poor, as I say. Margaret, who was young, did not realise the significance of this. Her father was in favour of the match, I believe, for Burns had money and was not particularly shady, as financiers go. He was not even reckless, and he played a good game of bridge, but not quite as good as Sir William’s. It was, of course, a good deal better than mine. Burns’ game, I mean. Mrs. Bradley, who had been a schoolfellow and close friend of Lady Kingston-Fox, informed me that she was watching the progress of the affair with mild interest, but was quite determined to prevent the match taking place. Her theory, startlingly borne out by personal observation, was that married happiness was extremely rare in any case, and was almost impossible of achievement when one of the protagonists was forty-seven and had a weak digestion, and the other was twenty and played the ukulele very indifferently. She liked Margaret and treasured Bransome Burns as the possessor of the most completely fossilised intelligence she had ever encountered.
Burns, I believe, considered her a queer old party and wondered whether she would bite at an investment if it were put to her in sufficiently attractive terms. He could not believe that she had ever been married.
“You don’t tell me any man not under the influence of dope ever married
I understood, I replied, that Mrs. Bradley had been married and widowed twice.
“Gosh!” said Mr. Burns, impressed. “Got
It was a pity, perhaps, that I could not bring myself to repeat this observation to Mrs. Bradley, for I am convinced, from what I know of her, that she would have appreciated it to the full. I often caught the financier’s decidedly fish-like eye fixed ruminatingly upon her. He was trying, I fancy, to estimate exactly how much she was worth, and the problem was difficult. Her clothes, although odd, and, in some cases, positively hideous, were manifestly good. On the other hand, she had a gift for repartee and a fund of bonhomie which he could not associate with a woman who possessed a large fortune, unless, of course, as he said, she was a music hall star or a duchess who had floated the ancestral hall as a limited liability company. She was a far better bridge player than either Burns or Sir William, and was an adept at pool and snooker. She was also the most brilliant darts player and knife thrower that I have ever seen. She was also a dead shot with an airgun, and annoyed Burns considerably by winning five pounds from him one miserably wet afternoon by knocking the necks off ten empty wine bottles with ten successive shots. I know she did that, because I saw her do it.
He could not place her. Neither could I… With all her extraordinary pot-house accomplishments, she had an old-fashioned precision of speech and an unfamiliarity with Americanisms or modern slang which puzzled both of us. She was obviously what we both understood by the term “a lady,” and yet, on her own showing, she knew the worst aspects of the worst cities in Europe and the United States, and was acquainted with every form of human degradation and vice. Nothing shocked her, but I’ve seen her make Burt’s hair stand on end. Her only light reading was modern poetry, and her limit of personal indulgence seemed to be one glass of sherry taken immediately before dinner. Altogether an extraordinary woman. But not a freak. No, I must dissociate myself from those who consider her a freak.
“The most amazing sight on earth?” I said, screwing up my eyes as I considered her question. “Oh, I don’t know.” I laughed. “A bargain sale, I should think.”
“I once saw two sharks fighting,” said Sir William, coming courteously to my rescue. The telling of the story restored his good-humour. Mrs. Bradley lay back in her chair and listened. Watching her, I was reminded of a deadly serpent basking in the sun or of an alligator smiling gently while birds removed animal irritants from its armoured frame. Margaret waited until her father had concluded his tale, and then she said.
“Cochet playing tennis is the most wonderful sight on earth. I saw him at Wimbledon last year.”
She sighed.
“Last summer wasn’t brilliant, was it?” she said. She stood up and went over to the window. “But this year beats everything. Did you ever know such weather? It’s the sort of weather to make morbid people commit suicide. I’m glad I have a naturally optimistic temperament.”
She turned round.
“Ring the bell, please, Mr. Burns,” she said. Burns complied. Then, re-seating himself, he said:
“The most wonderful sight on earth is a woman trying to extort money from her husband. She is capable of as many tricks and artifices as an ape, and as many changes of colour as a chameleon.”
We all protested; Sir William violently, myself weakly, of course, Margaret indignantly and Mrs. Bradley humorously. Burns grinned his fat financier’s grin.
“Well, be honest now,” he said. There was always, even in his most innocent remarks, an undercurrent of suggestion that his hearers were
