CHAPTER XXVI

THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW PATH

It is odd that, while business is a mantle sufficiently ample to cover a whole lifetime of sins, we usually credit any pastime with being the cloak of a good deal of wickedness.

In the face of the indisputable fact that neither husband nor child approved of the change she had made in her coiffure, Regina entered upon a course of what can only be called complete prevarication. The following day she rose betimes in the morning as was her wont, as one of her fixed habits was always, under all circumstances short of absolute illness, to be ready for breakfast in time to give Alfred a quiet and ample meal. She had from the very beginning conceived it to be her bare duty to be the one to speed him on his daily quest into the city, and to welcome him when he returned to his home in the evening, and to do her full justice, Regina had rarely failed in this particular. She had left her children more or less to shape their own lives, and being of extremely dominant personalities, they had shaped them accordingly--Maudie in the direction of the soft, domestic, luxurious type, which later developes into the "feather bed;" Julia in a keen, alert, downright, make-your-own-world-as-you-go fashion. She had arranged her domestic affairs so that when she took up the regeneration of women her housekeeping arrangements did not suffer by her absence, and as I have said, she was always down in ample time to breakfast, always having made a decently becoming toilette, and she was always or almost always the first person that Alfred saw when he came home again in time for dinner. On this occasion she knew it would be impossible for her to arrange her hair in a new and unaccustomed way with anything like success and at the same time be ready at the usual breakfast time. So she merely combed her hair up and twisted it into a knot on the top of her head. Truth to tell, it was much more becoming than any style she had done it in before, though less elaborate than the arrangement of Madame Florence. She donned a plain white cambric wrapper, touched her face with powder, and tied a broad blue ribbon round her waist, bringing the bow low down, and pinning it with a huge brooch at a point about six inches lower than she usually wore her buckle. In the past one of Regina's landmarks had been what is usually called the Holbein curve, and the mere fact of pinning her waist ribbon a few inches lower than usual was sufficient to transform Regina if not from the ridiculous to the sublime, at least from the grotesque to the prevailing mode. She was already in the spacious and comfortable dining-room reading her letters when Alfred made his appearance.

"Whew!" he said, "it's going to be a blazing hot day; the city will be like a grill room!"

"And I suppose you are too busy to take an hour or two off?"

"Why, do you want me to go anywhere?"

"No, I was thinking it would be good for you if you could take an hour or two off and get a little fresh air."

"Utterly impossible, my dear. With any other partner, perhaps, but not with Chamberlain. To put it plainly, my dear, Chamberlain put in the money when I wanted to spread myself, and I did spread myself. The experiment was a success, and I am saddled with Chamberlain for the rest of my natural life."

"Is he no help to you?" said Regina.

"Well, he is less than no help. I think I shall be obliged to suggest taking in another partner; the business is too big now to have the whole responsibility on one pair of shoulders. I must have a holiday now and again--goodness knows, it isn't often for a man of my substance--but anything like the muddle in which I found things I never imagined even Chamberlain could accomplish. He's a dear chap, too full of apologies, perfectly aware of his own shortcomings, always in a domestic pickle--which is not to be wondered at--but as a partner he is hopeless."

"My poor Alfred!" said Regina.

"Ah, you may well say that. Of course, when one just comes back off a holiday, one doesn't feel like doing collar work all the time, all uphill and no easement. But it will pass, and I must seriously think of taking someone else in."

"Have you anyone in your eye?"

"Well, of course, Tomkinson's a splendid man. One wouldn't give him a full share, wouldn't make him an equal exactly, but I think it would be a wise thing if we were to make him a junior partner. Besides that, someone else might get hold of him; he is well known as a first-class man."

"I should, my dear. But why should you go on working and toiling like this? If you were to realize, and with what money I have we should be quite comfortable."

"Oh no, oh no, thank you, Queenie, not while I am strong and well. I should like a little more time to myself; I should like to be able to run over to Paris for a week or to spend a few days by the seaside. I'm thinking of taking up golf--I began to take an interest in the game at Dieppe. It's good for the liver; a mild craze for golf has saved many a man from an attack of paralysis."

"You would join a golf club?"

"Oh, yes, one of those clubs round London."

"And you would get an afternoon twice a week or so? Could I--could--I walk round with you?"

"Oh, I don't think so; I don't think they allow ladies' on men's golf links. No, no, if you want to start playing yourself, my dear, you must join a ladies' club and play on your own. It would be good for you."

"Yes--it would. Won't you have any more coffee?"

"No, thanks. I may be late for dinner; possibly I may not be able to get back--I'll send you a wire. By the way, when we leave Ye Dene we will have a telephone put up."

"Yes," she said, "it would be most convenient."

For some time after he had caught his 'bus and gone off to town she sat thinking. Golf, two afternoons a week--that would mean enjoyments in which she could take no part. She knew she was growing suspicious--well, she had enough to make her so. When the scales fall from blind eyes the eyes are not to be blamed for seeing. Some five minutes after Regina had come to this conclusion the door opened and Julia came in.

"All alone, ducky?" she remarked. "Well, I _am_ late. I'd no idea daddy was gone."

"Yes, you are late, or I fancy, to be correct, he was unusually early. He is almost killed with work--or I should say, over-work. However, he thinks he will get things straight in a few days and then it will be a little easier."

"Dear daddy! I really don't see what use Mr. Chamberlain is to him," said Julia, holding out her hand for the coffee cup which her mother had just filled.

"No, he is no help in a business sense, but he put the money into the concern. What are you going to do to-day, Julia?"

Julia looked up in unmitigated astonishment. "To-day--oh--ah--I shall be out and about all day," she returned promptly.

"I rather wanted you to go to town with me."

"Awfully sorry, dear, I can't go to-day," Julia answered.

Regina felt exactly as she might have felt if someone had flung a pail of cold water in her face.

"I was going to the West End," she said half hesitatingly. "I thought you might like to go and see this new milliner of mine."

"I should have loved it," said Julia, "if I had known before, but I've made several engagements for to-day."

She did not vouchsafe any information as to her movements, and Regina hastened to explain things for Julia.

"You are going with one of the Marksbys?"

"No, I'm not. I'm going to lunch at the club, then I'm going to do a little shopping and later I'm going to tea with the Ponsonby-Piggots."

"Really! Are you lunching at the club with somebody?"

"No, I've somebody lunching with me."

Again Regina felt that curious sensation of a douche of cold water administered over her entire person. Well, she had brought up her children to be independent, to have wills, caprices, likes and dislikes of their own, she could not blame them if they were not of the clinging, great-chum-with-mother type which she would have preferred them to be at this moment.

"Suppose we make it a fixture for the day after to-morrow?" said Julia, helping herself to more delicate strips of bacon from the covered silver dish before her.

"Yes, certainly."

"Shall we lunch here or in town?" Julia went on.

"Whichever you like."

"Your club is such a long way," said Julia, with a faint accent of disparagement in her tones; "to my mind that is the worst of professional clubs; they're always so ultra-professional that one can't find a corner for anything at all fashionable. Suppose you come and lunch with me, mother dear? If you are giving up your societies why don't you join a good West-End club? You'd find it so useful, living out as far as we do."

"I think I must."

"I shouldn't recommend mine. It's all very well for me, but it's a cheap little club and it wouldn't do for you. Now, why don't you join one of the big clubs in Petticoat Lane?"

"Petticoat Lane!"

"Oh--I beg your pardon, mummy, I meant Dover Street. There are half-a-dozen of them. Shall I see if I can get your name put up? I daresay you will have to wait some little time. Which would you like--one that improves your mind or one that improves your convenience?"

"Certainly not one that improves my mind."

"No, I think you are quite right; I hate clubs where they have lectures and debates and other beastly things that they never have in men's clubs. Now there's the Kaiserin, that would suit you very well: handsome clubhouse, excellent cooking arrangements, spacious entertaining-room which you can hire and have all to yourself, every necessity and comfort to make a club thoroughly comfy--in fact, a second home without any bother."

"But how do you know?" said Regina in a curiously small voice.

"Oh, I know several women who belong to the Kaiserin," Julia answered carelessly. "What are you going to do to-day, dearest? Going to see your milliner again?"

"No, I'm going to have my hair dressed; I can't do it properly myself for a few days, and I have one or two other things to do."

Now it happened that of the one or two other things that Regina had to do, the most important was a visit to the distinguished specialist in whose hands the fashionable world was content to put itself with a view to getting rid of superfluous tissue. It was just on the stroke of noon when Regina found herself walking across Cavendish Square in the direction of that street of sighs which most of us know, alas! too well. She was kept waiting some little time, but the dining-room in which she spent the period of detention, along with three other ladies much fatter than herself, was cheerful, and the papers were of the newest (which is not always the case, let me remind you, in the houses of medical specialists). At last her turn came to penetrate to the sanctum of the great man. Regina was quite nervous, needlessly so, but in five minutes the bland and friendly personality whom she had come to consult had put her quite at ease. She was weighed! I do not think it would be exactly delicate to tell you the precise weight at which she turned the scale, but I have always held her up to you as a woman of that type which is called "a fine figure."

"Let me see, you want to get rid of four stones," said the doctor, genially; "well, that's not a very severe case. It will take you four or five months; you must take no liberties with yourself and I will send you a card this evening telling you exactly what you may and may not eat and drink. You must live by the card, literally by the card. Remember, no vagaries, no irregularities, no coquetting with the 'one time that never hurts one.' You must make up your mind that you will give up your own will until you have reached the required standard, and believe me, dear lady, you will be a happier woman, a healthier woman and a handsomer woman when you have attained your object."

Regina wrote a check and went out into the sunlight, out of the land of liberty and into the straight and narrow path of a strict and severe _regime_.