Page:A Legend of Camelot, Pictures and Poems, etc. George du Maurier, 1898.djvu/165

 way, and being jostled out of it, and would listlessly lean against walls and doors, and gaze by the hour at the mother of his twins (who used to think dancing so immodest), as she floated languidly by to the enervating measures of the Manolo Valse, rocked in the close embrace of some well-seasoned hero, of martial or diplomatic air, who never seemed to tire of his lovely burden; while her supple form, in its close-fitting sheeny sheath, would lend itself, as if by instinct, to all the witching undulations of the passionate "Lurch of Liverpool," or Boston's suggestive "dip."

Then rousing herself, as the strain would change, she would plunge headlong, supported by a fresh partner, into the stormy vortex of the polka, with a dishevelled recklessness even more seductive than her former dreamy and voluptuous abandon.

Or else in scented conservatories (discreetly dim), continental Princes with ardent exotic eyes, or foreign Ambassadors with tropical turns of speech, or polygamous Eastern potentates, with pearls and diamonds loose in their waistcoat pockets, would sit at her feet and ply her with the charm of their insidious conversation, while she fanned herself languidly, and drooped her sable lashes.

Or in the glare of crowded supper-rooms, bold, facetious Conservative Statesmen, or nice but naughty old Dukes, ribboned and starred and gartered so that there could be no mistake about them (which was always very pleasing to Mrs. Spratt—and small blame to her), would lounge over her alabaster shoulders, and whisper into her pretty little pink ear; they did not pour State secrets into that shell-like organ, but very straightforward compliments, or racy jokes, or risky little personal anecdotes about exalted houses, to the washing of whose family linen very few female Spratts are admitted in this nice, flattering, confidential way.

Fortunately, perhaps, absorbed as she now always was in the contemplation of her own peerless charms, she had contracted a habit of never listening to anecdotes of any kind, or jokes either; but she would reply to jokes, compliments, and risky little anecdotes alike with the same enchanting laugh that had more music than meaning in its ring; and this got the poor dear a reputation for being the reverse of prudish, which made her more popular than ever with the more elderly of her admirers; so that really clever, but rather plain women of the world, who made up for their want of beauty by their complete freedom from prudishness, were literally nowhere.

Mrs. Spratt's powers of conversation, never very brilliant, had been quite extinguished by her rise in the social scale. She was evidently made to be looked at—not to talk or listen. And yet, although there were many Ladies of high rank, quite as good to look at as she, and even more so, and who wore their dresses as low in the back, and as small in the waist, and as tight round the legs, and who, moreover, could both talk and listen delightfully to young or old, however frivolous, when it was worth their while; these were one and all deserted for Mrs. Spratt, and left to waste their fragrance on the desert air, and talk and listen to each other.

For not to be seen familiarly talking and listening to Mrs. Spratt, or rather pretending to do so, was to be "out of it."

And of all the men in that fashionable world, not one appeared more hopelessly "out of it" than Jack Spratt; and in all society there was nobody left for him to listen and talk to but himself.

Even he grew to perceive this in time!

He also grew to perceive that late hours interfere with work, and Mrs. Spratt had to go into the hollow world alone. Saddle-horses were brought round for her in the morning, broughams or victorias (according to the weather) in the afternoon, and in the evening there were dinners and dances, and bright little suppers in the small hours of the night, to which she could very well go without him.

For there was always at hand some smart unprejudiced woman of fashion, only too proud to chaperone the famous Mrs. Spratt, and who could keep always in sight, and out of hearing, and all that, just as well as the most innocently complacent of husbands. 76