Depressed with reaction and heavy with unwonted sleeping by daylight,
she was glad to go from her dressing-table to the carriage waiting to
take herself and her aunt for the customary drive. It was but a moment
before her mind was startled into its accustomed activity.
"Mr. Warner has disappeared again." Mrs. Nunn tilted her lace parasol
against the slanting sun. "Poor Maria!"
"Disappeared?"
"That is the general interpretation. Maria, with whom he was to dine
to-night, received a note from him this morning asking to be excused
as he was going away for some time; and when Hunsdon rushed down to
Hamilton House--unshaved and without his plunge--he was told that the
poet was gone; none of the servants could say where nor when he would
return. So that is probably the last of the reformed poet. I suppose
last night's excitement proved too much for him."
Anne's feeling was almost insupportable, but she forced her tone into
the register which Miss Bargarny and her kind would employ to express
lively detached regret. "That would be quite dreadful, and most
ungrateful. But I do not believe--anything of the sort. No doubt all
that reading of his own work stirred his muse and he has shut himself
up to write."
"Well, as he always shuts himself up with a quart of brandy at the
same time, that is equally the end of him as far as we are concerned.
For my part I have never been able to make out what all of you find in
him to admire. He would be quite ordinary to look at if it were not
for a few good lines, and I never heard him utter a remark worth
listening to. And as for fashion! Compare him last night with Lord
Hunsdon or Mr. Abergenny!"
"I think myself he made a mistake not to appear in a rolling collar
and a Turkish coat and turban! I don't fancy that he emulates Lord
Hunsdon or Mr. Abergenny in anything."
"At least not in devotion to you, so you will not miss him. And you
have nothing to regret, if he _was_ the fashion--thanks to Maria--for
awhile; a young girl should never suffer detrimentals to hang about
her. Which of your beaux do you fancy most?" she demanded in a tone
elaborately playful.
"Which? Oh, Lord Hunsdon is the better man, and Mr. Abergenny the
better beau."
"I don't fancy that Mr. Abergenny's attentions are ever very serious,"
said Mrs. Nunn musingly. "He certainly could make any young lady the
fashion, but he is fickle and must marry fortune. But Hunsdon--he is
quite independent, and as steady as"--she glanced about in search of a
simile, remembered West Indian earthquakes, and added lamely--"as the
Prince Consort himself." Then she felt that the inspiration had been a
happy one, and continued with more animation than was her wont: "You
know they are really friendly."
"Who?"
"The Prince Consort and Hunsdon. It is almost an intimacy."
"Why not? I suppose a prince must have friends like other people, and
there are not many of his rank in England. I do not see how the Prince
Consort could do better than Hunsdon. The Queen certainly must
approve."
"I am glad you so warmly commend Hunsdon. I have the highest respect
for him myself--the very greatest."
"If you mean that you wish me to marry him, Aunt Emily--have you ever
reflected that it might cool your friendship with Lady Hunsdon? She
does not like me and I am sure would oppose the match. I may add,
however, that Lord Hunsdon has so far made no attempt to address me."
"I don't fancy you are more blind than everybody else in Bath House. I
am gratified, indeed, to see that you are not. You are mistaken in
thinking that your marriage with Hunsdon would affect my friendship
with Maria. It is true that she has conceived the notion that you have
an independent spirit, and is in favour of Mary Denbigh at present;
but she is too much a woman of the world not to accept the inevitable.
And we have been friends for five-and-forty years. She could not get
along without me. I have not been idle in this matter. I sing your
praises to her, assure her that you have never crossed my will in
anything. Last night I told her how sweetly you had submitted to
buying that coloured gown, and to wear that fillet--it becomes you
marvellously well. I have also told her what a tractable daughter you
were."
"I couldn't help myself. I had not a penny of my own----"
"One of the unwritten laws of the world you now live in is to
tell the least of all you know. The fact remains. You _were_
tractable--submissive. You never made a scene for poor Harold
in your life."
"He wouldn't have known if I had."
"Well, well, I am sure you are submissive, and always will be when
your interest demands it. I admire a certain amount of spirit, and
your difference from all these other girls, whatever it is, makes you
very attractive to the young men. Abergenny says that you are an
out-of-door goddess, which I think very pretty; but on the whole I
prefer Hunsdon's protest: that you are the most womanly woman he ever
set eyes on."
"It has more sense. I never read in any mythology of indoor goddesses.
Opinion seems to differ, however. Lady Mary said to me yesterday: 'You
are so masculine, dear Miss Percy. You make us all look the merest
females!'"
"Mary Denbigh is a cat. You know she is a cat. She would give Maria
many a scratch if she caught Hunsdon. But she will not. It is all in
your own hands, my dear."
Anne did not make the hoped for response. She did not even blush, and
Mrs. Nunn continued, anxiety creeping into her voice: "You need never
be much thrown with Maria. She would settle herself in the dower house
which is almost as fine as Hunsdon Towers. In town she has her own
house in Grosvenor Square. Hunsdon House in Piccadilly--one of the
greatest mansions in London--would be all your own."
But she could not command the attention of her niece again, and
permitting herself to conclude that the maiden was lost in a pleasing
reverie, she subsided into silence, closed her eyes to the beauty of
land and sea, and also declined into reverie, drowsy reverie in which
pictures of herself in all the glory of near kinship to a beautiful
and wealthy young peeress, were mixed with speculations upon her
possible luck at cards that night. She had lost heavily of late and it
was time she retrieved her fortunes.
At dinner and in the saloon later the talk was all of the poet's
disappearance. Some held out for the known eccentricities of genius,
others avowed themselves in favour of the theory that respectable
society had risen to its surfeit the night before. The natural
reaction had set in and he was enjoying himself once more in his own
way and wondering that he had submitted to be bored so long. Anne went
to bed her mind a chaos of doubt and terror.