Part 5 (1/2)

He was young, and French, and she was beautiful and he was desperately in love with her. Kneeling suddenly on the damp gra.s.s, he buried his face in his arms as they lay limply across the sun-dial. There was a long pause. He did not sob, he was quite still, but every line of him proclaimed unspeakable agony.

”Poor boy,” she said gently.

Then he rose. ”I am not a boy,” he declared, his chin twitching but his voice firm, ”and I love you. He is old and--_c'est un vieux roue_. I at least am young and I have lived a clean life.”

He asked her no question, but she paused to consider. ”I know, I understand,” he continued, ”you hate this life, you are bored and sick of it all; you do not love your mother. _Mon Dieu, ne pas pouvoir aimer sa mere!_ And you want to get away. Then--marry me instead. I am not so rich, but I am rich. And, ah, I love you--_je t'aime_.”

Poor Pontefract, leaning back in his big Mercedes trying to realise his bliss, was jilted before Brigit had spoken a word. Like a flash, his image seemed to stand before her, beside the delightful boy-man whose youth and niceness pleaded so strongly to her. She did not consider that breaking her word was not fair play, she had no thought of pity for Pontefract. She loved n.o.body, and therefore thought solely of herself.

This boy was right. She would be happier with him than with poor, old, fat Ponty. So poor, old, fat Ponty went to the wall, and putting her hands into Joyselle's, she said slowly:

”Very well--I will. I will marry you. Only--you must know that I am an odious person, selfish and moody, and----”

But she could not finish her sentence, because Joyselle had her in his arms and was kissing her.

”I will be your servant and your slave,” he told her, with very bad judgment but much sincerity. ”I will serve you on my knees.”

”Now you must--buck up--and not let them see to-night. Mother will be cross at first. And--I must write Ponty before we tell.”

Her practical tone struck chill on Joyselle's glowing young ear, but he followed her obediently to the house. As they reached the door the opening bar of Mendelssohn's Wedding March rang out, played with a mastery of the pianola that, in that house, only Kingsmead was capable of.

On entering, Brigit's face was scarlet. She knew that her brother was welcoming the wrong bridegroom. And it suddenly occurred to her that it was awkward to be engaged to two men at once.

”I say----” began Tommy as he saw Joyselle, and she interrupted him hastily. ”Play something of Sinding's, dear,” she said, and the boy complied. But his eye was horribly knowing, and hard to bear.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lady Brigit leaned back in her corner and surveyed the otherwise empty compartment with a sigh of relief. She knew that her face still bore signs of the anger roused by her mother in their recent interview, and she felt the necessity of looking as savage as she felt.

And she felt very savage indeed. If an American Indian--an idealised, poeticised American Indian--could be invested with the beauty that does not belong to the red races and yet which, if perfected on the lines of beauty suggested by some of the n.o.bler specimens of the n.o.bler tribes, she might look like Brigit Mead. The girl had a clean-cutness of feature, a thin compactness of build, a stag-like carriage of her small head that, together with her almost bronze skin and coal-black hair, gave her an air remarkably and arrestingly un-English. The picture in the Luxembourg gallery, a typically French, subtle, secretive face, gives the expression of her face and the strange gleam in the long eyes.

But it, the face in the picture, is overcivilised, whereas Brigit looked untamed and resentful.

She wore, for the weather had changed with the unpleasant capriciousness of an elderly coquette, a warm, close-fitting black coat and skirt and a small black toque. Round her neck clung to its own tail, as if in a despairing attempt to find out what had happened to its own anatomy, a little sable boa. She had a dressing-case and an umbrella, both of them characteristically unc.u.mbersome and light, and several newspapers and a book.

Her journey was not to be a long one. She was going to change trains in London and go half an hour into Surrey to spend a few days with a friend. Lady Kingsmead, when told of the speedy jilting of the desirable Pontefract, and the subsequent acceptance of young Joyselle, had been disagreeable.

”It is ridiculous, and everyone will say you are cradle-s.n.a.t.c.hing,” she had said. ”When you are forty he will be thirty-seven--almost a boy still.”

”Dearest mamma,” returned the girl with a very unfilial lift of her upper lip, ”forty is--_youth_!”

”And for you to marry a n.o.body; the son of n.o.body knows whom!”

”But everybody knows who his father is--which is rather distinguished nowadays!”

Then Lady Kingsmead, as was natural, quite lost her temper and stormed.

Brigit was an idiot, a fool, a beastly little creature to do such a thing. Ponty was a gentleman, at least, whereas----

”Whereas Theo is a delightful, nice, perfectly presentable young man, and the son of the greatest violinist of the century.”