Part 22 (1/2)

Lady Ver and I drove after luncheon--me paid some calls, and went in to tea with the Montgomeries, who had just arrived at Brown's Hotel for a week's shopping.

”Aunt Katherine brings those poor girls up always at this time, and takes them to some impossible old dressmaker of her own in the daytime, and to Shakespeare or a concert at night, and returns with them equipped in more hideous garments each year. It is positively cruel,” said Lady Ver, as we went up the stairs to their _appartement_.

There they were, sitting round the tea-table just as at Tryland--Kirstie and Jean embroidering and knitting, and the other two reading new catalogues of books for their work.

Lady Ver began to tease them. She asked them all sorts of questions about their new frocks, and suggested they had better go to Paris once in a way.

Lady Katherine was like ice. She strongly disapproved of my being with her niece, one could see.

The connection with the family she hoped would be ended with my visit to Tryland. Malcolm was arriving in town, too, we gathered, and Lady Ver left a message to ask him to dine to-night.

Then we got away.

”If one of those lumps of suet had a spark of spirit they would go straight to the devil,” Lady Ver said as we went down the stairs. ”Think of it--ties and altar-cloths in London! Mercifully they could not dine to-night. I had to ask them, and they generally come once while they are up--the four girls and Aunt Katherine--and it is with the greatest difficulty I can collect four young men for them if they get the least hint whom they are to meet. I generally secure a couple of socially budding Jews, because I feel the subscriptions for their charities which they will pester whoever they do sit next for are better filched from the Hebrew than from some pretty, needy Guardsman. Oh, what a life!”

She was so kind to me on the way back; she said she hated leaving me alone on the morrow, and that I must settle now what I was going to do or she would not go. I said I would go to Claridge's, where Mrs. Carruthers and I had always stayed, and remain quietly alone with Veronique. I could afford it for a week. So we drove there and made the arrangement.

”It is absolutely impossible for you to go on like this, dear child,” she said. ”You must have a chaperone; you are far too pretty to stay alone in a hotel. What _can_ I do for you?”

I felt so horribly uncomfortable I was really at my wits' end. Oh, it is no fun being an adventuress, after all, if you want to keep your friends of the world as well.

”Perhaps it won't matter if I don't see any one for a few days,” I said.

”I will write to Paris. My old mademoiselle is married there to a flouris.h.i.+ng poet, I believe--perhaps she would take me as a paying guest for a little.”

”That is very visionary--a French poet! Horrible, long-haired, frowsy creature! Impossible! Surely you see how necessary it is for you to marry Christopher as soon as you can, Evangeline, don't you?” she said, and I was obliged to admit there were reasons.

”The truth is, you can't be the least eccentric or unconventional if you are good-looking and unmarried,” she continued. ”You may snap your fingers at society, but if you do you won't have a good time, and all the men will either foolishly champion you or be impertinent to you.”

”Oh, I realize it,” I said, and there was a lump in my throat.

”I shall write to Christopher to-morrow,” she went on, ”and thank him for our outing last night, and I shall say something nice about you and your loneliness, and that he, as a kind of relation, may go and see you on Sunday, as long as he doesn't make love to you, and he can take you to the Zoo--don't see him in your sitting-room. That will give him just the extra fillip, and he will go, and you will be demure, and then by those stimulating lions' and tigers' cages you can plight your troth. It will be quite respectable. Wire to me at once on Monday to Sedgwick, and you must come back to Park Street directly I return on Thursday, if it is all settled.”

I thanked her as well as I could. She was quite ingenuous and quite sincere. I should be a welcome guest as Christopher's fiancee, and there was no use my feeling bitter about it--she was quite right.

As I put my hand on Malcolm's skinny arm going down to the dining-room, the only consolation was my fate had not got to be him. I would rather be anything in the world than married to that!

I tried to be agreeable to Sir Charles. We were only a party of six. An old Miss Harpenden, who goes everywhere to play bridge, and Malcolm, and one of Lady Ver's young men, and I. Sir Charles is absent, and brings himself back. He fiddles with the knives and forks, and sprawls on the table rather, too. He looks at Lady Ver with admiration in his eyes. It is true, then, in the intervals of Paris, I suppose, she can make his heart beat.

Malcolm made love to me after dinner. We were left to talk when the others sat down to bridge in the little drawing-room.

”I missed you so terribly, Miss Travers,” he said, priggishly, ”when you left us that I realized I was extremely attracted by you.”

”No, you don't say so!” I said, innocently. ”Could one believe a thing like that?”

”Yes,” he said, earnestly. ”You may, indeed, believe it.”

”Do not say it so suddenly, then,” I said, turning my head away so that he could not see how I was laughing. ”You see, to a red-haired person like me these compliments go to my head.”

”Oh, I do not want to flurry you,” he said, affably. ”I know I have been a good deal sought after--perhaps on account of my possessions”--this with arrogant modesty--”but I am willing to lay everything at your feet if you will marry me.”