"Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep?"
It is quite four o'clock, and therefore two hours later. Barbara has
returned, and has learned the secret of Joyce's pale looks and sad eyes,
and is now standing on the hearthrug looking as one might who has been
suddenly wakened from a dream that had seemed only too real.
"And you mean to say--you really mean, Joyce, that you refused him?"
"Yes. I actually had that much common-sense," with a laugh that has
something of bitterness in it.
"But I thought--I was sure----"
"I know you thought he was my ideal of all things admirable. And you
thought wrong."
"But if not he----"
"Barbara!" says Joyce sharply. "Was it not enough that you should have
made one mistake? Must you insist on making another?"
"Well, never mind," says Mrs. Monkton hastily. "I'm glad I made that
one, at all events; and I'm only sorry you have felt it your duty to
make your pretty eyes wet about it Good gracious!" looking put of the
window, "who is coming now? Dicky Browne and Mr. Courtenay and those
detestable Blakes. Tommy," turning sharply to her first-born. "If you
and Mabel stay here you must be good. Do you hear now, good! You are not
to ask a single question or touch a thing in the room, and you are to
keep Mabel quiet. I am not going to have Mrs. Blake go home and say you
are the worst behaved children she ever met in her life. You will stay,
Joyce?" anxiously to her sister.
"Oh, I suppose so. I couldn't leave you to endure their tender mercies
alone."
"That's a darling girl! You know I never can get on with that odious
woman. Ah! how d'ye do, Mrs. Blake? How sweet of you to come after last
night's fatigue."
"Well, I think a drive a capital thing after being up all night," says
the new-comer, a fat, little, ill-natured woman, nestling herself into
the cosiest chair in the room. "I hadn't quite meant to come here, but I
met Mr. Browne and Mr. Courtenay, so I thought we might as well join
forces, and storm you in good earnest. Mr. Browne has just been telling
me that Lady Swansdown left the Court this morning. Got a telegram, she
said, summoning her to Gloucestershire. Never do believe in these sudden
telegrams myself. Stayed rather long in that anteroom with Lord
Baltimore last night."
"Didn't know she had been in any anteroom," says Mrs. Monkton, coldly.
"I daresay her mother-in-law is ill again. She has always been attentive
to her."
"Not on terms with her son, you know; so Lady Swansdown hopes, by the
attention you speak of, to come in for the old lady's private fortune.
Very considerable fortune, I've heard."
"Who told you?" asks Mr. Browne, with a cruelly lively curiosity. "Lady
Swansdown?"
"Oh, dear no!"
Pause! Dicky still looking expectant and Mrs. Blake uncomfortable. She
is racking her brain to try and find some person who might have told
her, but her brain fails her.
The pause threatens to be ghastly, when Tommy comes to the rescue.
He had been told off as we know to keep Mabel in a proper frame of mind,
but being in a militant mood has resented the task appointed him. He has
indeed so far given in to the powers that be that he has consented to
accept a picture book, and to show it to Mabel, who is looking at it
with him, lost in admiration of his remarkable powers of description.
Each picture indeed, is graphically explained by Tommy at the top of his
lungs, and in extreme bad humor.
He is lying on the rug, on his fat stomach, and is becoming quite a
martinet.
"Look at this!" he is saying now. "Look! do you hear, or I won't stay
and keep you good any longer. Here's a picture about a boat that's going
to be drowned down in the sea in one minnit. The name on it is"--reading
laboriously--"'All hands to the pump.' And" with considerable vicious
enjoyment--"it isn't a bit of good for them, either. Here"--pointing to
the picture again with a stout forefinger--"here they're 'all-handsing'
at the pump. See?"
"No, I don't, and I don't want to," says Mabel, whimpering and hiding
her eyes. "Oh, I don't like it; it's a horrid picture! What's that man
doing there in the corner?" peeping through her fingers at a dead man in
the foreground. "He is dead! I know he is!"
"Of course he is," says Tommy. "And"--valiantly--"I don't care a bit, I
don't."
"Oh, but I do," says Mabel. "And there's a lot of water, isn't there?"
"There always is in the sea," says Tommy.
"They'll all be drowned, I know they will," says Mabel, pushing away the
book. "Oh, I hate 'handsing'; turn over, Tommy, do! It's a nasty cruel,
wicked picture!"
"Tommy, don't frighten Mabel," says his mother anxiously.
"I'm not frightening her. I'm only keeping her quiet," says Tommy
defiantly.
"Hah-hah!" says Mr. Courtenay vacuously.
"How wonderfully unpleasant children can make themselves," says Mrs.
Blake, making herself 'wonderfully unpleasant' on the spot. "Your little
boy so reminds me of my Reginald. He pulls his sister's hair merely for
the fun of hearing her squeal!"
"Tommy does not pull Mabel's hair," says Barbara a little stiffly.
"Tommy, come here to Mr. Browne; he wants to speak to you."
"I want to know if you would like a cat?" says Mr. Browne, drawing Tommy
to him.
"I don't want a cat like our cat," says Tommy, promptly. "Ours is so
small, and her tail is too thin. Lady Baltimore has a nice cat, with a
tail like mamma's furry for her neck."
"Well, that's the very sort of a cat I can get you if you wish."
"But is the cat as big as her tail?" asks Tommy, still careful not to
commit himself.
"Well, perhaps not quite," says Mr. Browne gravely. "Must it be quite as
big?"
"I hate small cats," says Tommy. "I want a big one! I want--" pausing to
find a suitable simile, and happily remembering the kennel outside--"a
regular setter of a cat!"
"Ah," says Mr. Browne, "I expect I shall have to telegraph to India for
a tiger for you."
"A real live tiger?" asks Tommy, with distended eyes and a flutter of
wild joy at his heart, the keener that some fear is mingled with it. "A
tiger that eats people up?"
"A man-eater," says Mr. Browne, solemnly. "It would be the nearest
approach I know to the animal you have described. As you won't have the
cat that Lady Baltimore will give you, you must only try to put up with
mine."
"Poor Lady Baltimore!" lisps Mrs. Blake. "What a great deal she has to
endure."
"Oh, she's all right to-day," returns Mr. Browne, cheerfully. "Toothache
any amount better this morning."
Mrs. Blake laughs in a little mincing way.
"How droll you are," says she. "Ah! if it were only toothache that was
the matter But--" silence very effective, and a profound sigh.
"Toothache's good enough for me," says Dicky. "I should never dream of
asking for more." He glances here at Joyce, and continues sotto voce,
"You look as if you had it."
"No," returns she innocently. "Mine is neuralgia. A rather worse thing,
after all."
"Yes. You can get the tooth out," says he.
"Have you heard," asks Mrs. Blake, "that Mr. Beauclerk is going to marry
that hideous Miss Maliphant. Horrid Manchester person, don't you know!
Can't think what Lady Baltimore sees in her"--with a giggle--"her want
of beauty. Got rather too much of pretty women I should say."
"I'm really afraid," says Dicky, "that somebody has been hoaxing you
this time, Mrs. Blake;" genially. "I happen to know for a fact that Miss
Maliphant is not going to marry Beauclerk."
"Indeed!" snappishly. "Ah, well really he is to be congratulated, I
think. Perhaps," with a sharp glance at Joyce, "I mistook the name of
the young lady; I certainly heard he was going to be married."
"So am I,"' says Mr. Browne, "some time or other; we are all going to
get married one day or another. One day, indeed, is as good as another.
You have set us such a capital example that we're safe to follow it."
Mr. and Mrs. Blake being a notoriously unhappy couple, the latter grows
rather red here; and Joyce gives Dicky a reproachful glance, which he
returns with one of the wildest bewilderment. What can she mean?
"Mr. Dysart will be a distinct loss when he goes to India," continues
Mrs. Blake quickly. "Won't be back for years, I hear, and leaving so
soon, too. A disappointment, I'm told! Some obdurate fair one! Sort of
chest affection, don't you know, ha-ha! India's place for that sort of
thing. Knock it out of him in no time. Thought he looked rather down in
the mouth last night. Not up to much lately, it has struck me. Seen much
of him this time, Miss Kavanagh?"
"Yes. A good deal," says Joyce, who has, however, paled perceptibly.
"Thought him rather gone to seed, eh? Rather the worse for wear."
"I think him always very agreeable," says Joyce, icily.
A second most uncomfortable silence ensues. Barbara tries to get up a
conversation with Mr. Courtenay, but that person, never brilliant at any
time, seems now stricken with dumbness. Into this awkward abyss Mabel
plunges this time. Evidently she has been dwelling secretly on Tommy's
comments on their own cat, and is therefore full of thought about that
interesting animal.
"Our cat is going to have chickens!" says she, with all the air of one
who is imparting exciting intelligence.
This astounding piece of natural history is received with varied
emotions by the listeners. Mr. Browne, however, is unfeignedly charmed
with it, and grows as enthusiastic about it as even Mabel can desire.
"You don't say so! When? Where?" demands he with breathless eagerness.
"Don't know," says Mabel seriously. "Last time 'twas in nurse's best
bonnet; but," raising her sweet face to his, "she says she'll be blowed
if she has them there this time!"
"Mabel!" cries her mother, crimson with mortification.
"Yes?" asked Mabel, sweetly.
But it is too much for every one. Even Mrs. Blake gives way for once to
honest mirth, and under cover of the laughter rises and takes her
departure, rather glad of the excuse to get away. She carries off Mr.
Courtenay.
Dicky having lingered a little while to see that Mabel isn't scolded,
goes too; and Barbara, with a sense of relief, turns to Joyce.
"You look so awful tired," says she. "Why don't you go and lie down?"
"I thought, on the contrary, I should like to go out for a walk," says
Joyce indifferently. "I confess my head is aching horribly. And that
woman only made me worse."
"What a woman! I wonder she told so many lies. I wonder if----"
"If Mr. Dysart is going to India," supplies Joyce calmly. "Very likely.
Why not. Most men in the army go to India."
"True," say Mrs. Monkton with a sigh. Then in a low tone: "I shall be
sorry for him."
"Why? If he goes"--coldly--"it is by his own desire. I see nothing to be
sorry about."
"Oh, I do," says Barbara. And then, "Well, go out, dearest. The air will
do you good."