She had had one child; it struggled through a few months of sickly life, and died of convulsions during its mother’s absence at a garden-party. To all appearances, her grief at the loss betokened tenderest feeling. When, in half a year’s time, she again came forth into the world, a change was noted: her character seemed to have developed a new energy, she exhibited wider interests, and stepped from the background to become a leader in the little circle of her acquaintances.

‘Have you read this?’ asked his hostess abruptly, holding up to him a French volume, Ribot’s L’Hérédité Psychologique.11

‘No. That kind of thing doesn’t interest me much.’

‘Indeed! I find it intensely interesting.’

Harvey rose; he was in no mood for this kind of small-talk. But no sooner had he quitted his chair, than Mrs Abbott threw her book aside, and spoke in another tone, seriously, though still with a perceptible accent of annoyance.

‘Of course that man’s children are here, and I suppose it is our duty to provide for them till some other arrangement is made. But I think we ought to put the matter in the hands of the police. Don’t you, Mr Rolfe?’

‘I’m afraid there’s small chance of making their father support them. He is certainly out of England by now, and won’t easily be caught.’

‘The worst of it is, they are anything but nice children. What could one expect with such a father? Since their poor mother died, they have been in the hands of horrible people – low-class landladies, no doubt; their talk shocks me. The last amusement they had, was to be taken by somebody to Tussaud’s, and now they can talk of nothing but “the hunted murderer” – one sees it on the walls, you know; and they play at being murderer and policeman, one trying to escape the other. Pretty play for children of five and seven, isn’t it?’

Rolfe made a gesture of disgust.

‘I know the poor things can’t help it,’ pursued Mrs Abbott, with softer feeling, ‘but it turns me against them. From seeing so little of their father, they have even come to talk with a vulgar pronunciation, like children out of the streets – almost. It’s dreadful! When I think of my cousin – such a sweet, good girl, and these her children – oh, it’s horrible!’

‘They are very young,’ said Harvey, in a low voice, perturbed in spite of himself. ‘With good training—’

‘Yes, of course we must put them in good hands somewhere.’

Plainly it had never occurred to Mrs Abbott that such a task as this might, even temporarily, be undertaken by herself; her one desire was to get rid of the luckless brats, that their vulgarity might not pain her, and the care of them encumber her polite leisure.

After again excusing himself for this call, and hearing his apology this time more graciously received, Harvey withdrew from the cosy study, and left Mrs Abbott to her Hérédité Psychologique. On his way to lunch in town, he thought of the overworn journalist groaning with neuralgia, and wondered how Mrs Abbott would relish a removal to the town of Waterbury.

Four

Uncertain to the last moment, Harvey did at length hurry into his dress clothes, and start for Fitzjohn Avenue. He had little mind for the semi-fashionable crowd and the amateur music, but he could not answer Mrs Bennet Frothingham with any valid excuse, and, after all, she meant kindly towards him. Why he enjoyed so much of this lady’s favour it was not easy to understand; intellectual sympathy there could be none between them, and as for personal liking, on his side it did not go beyond that naturally excited by a good-natured, feather-brained, rather pretty woman, whose sprightliness never passed the limits of decorum, and who seemed to have better qualities than found scope in her butterfly existence. Perhaps he amused her, being so unlike the kind of man she was accustomed to see. His acquaintance with the family dated from their social palingenesis, when, after obscure prosperity in a southern suburb, they fluttered to the northern heights, and were observed of the paragraphists. Long before that, Bennet Frothingham had been known in the money-market; it was the ‘Britannia’ – Loan, Assurance, Investment, and Banking Company, Limited – that made him nationally prominent, and gave an opportunity to his wife (in second marriage) and his daughter (by the first). Three years ago, when Carnaby (already lured by the charms of Sibyl Larkfield) presented his friend Rolfe as ‘the man who had been to Bagdad’, Alma Frothingham, not quite twenty-one, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, and, according to her friends, promised to excel alike on the piano and the violin, having at the same time a ‘really remarkable’ contralto voice. Of late the young lady had abandoned singing, rarely used the pianoforte, and seemed satisfied to achieve distinction as a violinist. She had founded an Amateur Quartet Society, whose performances were frequently to be heard at the house in Fitzjohn Avenue.

Last winter Harvey had chanced to meet Alma and her step-mother at Leipzig, at a Gewandhaus concert. He was invited to go with them to hear the boys’ motet at the Thomaskirche; and with this intercourse began the change in their relations from mere acquaintance to something like friendship. Through the following spring Rolfe was a familiar figure at the Frothinghams’; but this form of pleasure soon wearied him, and he was glad to escape from London in June. He knew the shadowy and intermittent temptation which beckoned him to that house; music had power over him, and he grew conscious of watching Alma Frothingham, her white little chin on the brown fiddle, with too exclusive an interest. When ‘that fellow’ Cyrus Redgrave, a millionaire, or something of the sort, began to attend these gatherings with a like assiduity, and to win more than his share of Miss Frothingham’s conversation, Harvey felt a disquietude which happily took the form of disgust, and it was easy enough to pack his portmanteau.

Through the babble of many voices in many keys, talk mingling with laughter more or less melodiously subdued, he made his way up the great staircase. As he neared the landing, there sounded the shrill squeak of a violin and a ’cello’s deep harmonic growl. His hostess, small, slender, fair, and not yet forty, a jewel-flash upon her throat and in the tiara above her smooth low forehead, took a step forward to greet him.

‘Really? How delightful! I shot at a venture, and it was a hit after all!’

‘They are just beginning?’

‘The quartet – yes. Herr Wilenski has promised to play afterwards.’

He moved on, crossed a small drawing-room, entered the larger room sacred to music, and reached a seat in the nick of time.