Oh, fairest of creation, last and best
Of all God's works!
For one or two days after the public announcement of her engagement,
Millicent was not quite free from care. She rather dreaded the posts.
It was not that she feared one letter in particular, but the postman's
disquietingly urgent rap caused her a vague uneasiness many times a day.
Sir John's reply to her appealing little letter came short and sharp.
She showed it to no one.
“MY DEAR MISS CHYNE,--I hasten to reply to your kind letter of to-day
announcing your approaching marriage with my son. There are a certain
number of trinkets which have always been handed on from generation to
generation. I will at once have these cleaned by the jeweller, in order
that they may be presented to you immediately after the ceremony.
Allow me to urge upon you the advisability of drawing up and signing a
prenuptial marriage settlement.--Yours sincerely,
“JOHN MEREDITH.”
Millicent bit her pretty lip when she perused this note. She made two
comments, at a considerable interval of time.
“Stupid old thing!” was the first; and then, after a pause, “I HOPE they
are all diamonds.”
Close upon the heels of this letter followed a host of others. There was
the gushing, fervent letter of the friend whose joy was not marred by
the knowledge that a wedding present must necessarily follow. Those
among one's friends who are not called upon to offer a more substantial
token of joy than a letter are always the most keenly pleased to hear
the news of an engagement. There was the sober sheet (crossed) from the
elderly relative living in the country, who, never having been married
herself, takes the opportunity of giving four pages of advice to one
about to enter that parlous state. There was the fatherly letter from
the country rector who christened Millicent, and thinks that he may
be asked to marry her in a fashionable London church--and so to a
bishopric. On heavily-crested stationery follow the missives of the
ladies whose daughters would make sweet bridesmaids. Also the hearty
congratulations of the slight acquaintance, who is going to Egypt for
the winter, and being desirous of letting her house without having to
pay one of those horrid agents, “sees no harm in mentioning it.” The
house being most singularly suitable for a young married couple. Besides
these, the thousand and one who wished to be invited to the wedding
in order to taste cake and champagne at the time, and thereafter the
sweeter glory of seeing their names in the fashionable news.
All these Millicent read with little interest, and answered in that
conveniently large calligraphy which made three lines look like a
note, and magnified a note into a four-page letter. The dressmakers'
circulars--the tradesmen's illustrated catalogues of things she could
not possibly want, and the jewellers' delicate photographs interested
her a thousand times more. But even these did not satisfy her. All these
people were glad--most of them were delighted. Millicent wanted to hear
from those who were not delighted, not even pleased, but in despair. She
wanted to hear more of the broken hearts. But somehow the broken hearts
were silent. Could it be that they did not care? Could it be that
THEY were only flirting? She dismissed these silly questions with the
promptness which they deserved. It was useless to think of it in that
way--more useless, perhaps, than she suspected; for she was not deep
enough, nor observant enough, to know that the broken hearts in question
had been much more influenced by the suspicion that she cared for
them than by the thought that they cared for her. She did not know
the lamentable, vulgar fact that any woman can be a flirt if she only
degrade her womanhood to flattery. Men do not want to love so much as to
be loved. Such is, moreover, their sublime vanity that they are ready to
believe any one who tells them, however subtly--mesdames, you cannot be
too subtle for a man's vanity to find your meaning--that they are not as
other men.
To the commonplace observer it would, therefore, appear (erroneously,
no doubt) that the broken hearts having been practically assured that
Millicent Chyne did not care for them, promptly made the discovery that
the lack of feeling was reciprocal. But Millicent did not, of course,
adopt this theory. She knew better. She only wondered why several young
men did not communicate, and she was slightly uneasy lest in their anger
they should do or say something indiscreet.
There was no reason why the young people should wait. And when there is
no reason why the young people should wait, there is every reason why
they should not do so. Thus it came about that in a week or so Millicent
was engaged in the happiest pursuit of her life. She was buying clothes
without a thought of money. The full joy of the trousseau was hers. The
wives of her guardians having been morally bought, dirt cheap, at
the price of an anticipatory invitation to the wedding, those elderly
gentlemen were with little difficulty won over to a pretty little
femininely vague scheme of withdrawing just a little of the
capital--said capital to be spent in the purchase of a really GOOD
trousseau, you know. The word “good” emanating from such a source must,
of course, be read as “novel,” which in some circles means the same
thing.
Millicent entered into the thing in the right spirit. Whatever the
future might hold for her--and she trusted that it might be full of
millinery--she was determined to enjoy the living present to its utmost.
Her life at this time was a whirl of excitement--excitement of the
keenest order--namely, trying on.
“You do not know what it is,” she said, with a happy little sigh, to
those among her friends who probably never would, “to stand the whole
day long being pinned into linings by Madame Videpoche.”
And despite the sigh, she did it with an angelic sweetness of temper
which quite touched the heart of Madame Videpoche, while making no
difference in the bill.
Lady Cantourne would not have been human had she assumed the neutral in
this important matter. She frankly enjoyed it all immensely.
“You know, Sir John,” she said in confidence to him one day at
Hurlingham, “I have always dressed Millicent.”
“You need not tell me that,” he interrupted gracefully. “On ne peut s'y
tromper.”
“And,” she went on almost apologetically, “whatever my own feelings on
the subject may be, I cannot abandon her now. The world expects much
from Millicent Chyne. I have taught it to do so. It will expect more
from Millicent--Meredith.”
The old gentleman bowed in his formal way.
“And the world must not be disappointed,” he suggested cynically.
“No,” she answered, with an energetic little nod, “it must not. That is
the way to manage the world. Give it what it expects; and just a little
more to keep its attention fixed.”
Sir John tapped with his gloved finger pensively on the knob of his
silver-mounted cane.
“And may I ask your ladyship,” he inquired suavely, “what the world
expects of me?”
He knew her well enough to know that she never made use of the method
epigrammatic without good reason.
“A diamond crescent,” she answered stoutly. “The fashion-papers must be
able to write about the gift of the bridegroom's father.”
“Ah--and they prefer a diamond crescent?”
“Yes,” answered Lady Cantourne. “That always seems to satisfy them.”
He bowed gravely and continued to watch the polo with that marvellously
youthful interest which was his.
“Does the world expect anything else?” he asked presently.
“No, I think not,” replied Lady Cantourne, with a bright little absent
smile. “Not just now.”
“Will you tell me if it does?”
He had risen; for there were other great ladies on the ground to whom he
must pay his old-fashioned respects.
“Certainly,” she answered, looking up at him.
“I should deem it a favour,” he continued. “If the world does not get
what it expects, I imagine it will begin to inquire why; and if it
cannot find reasons it will make them.”
In due course the diamond crescent arrived.
“It is rather nice of the old thing,” was Millicent's comment. She held
the jewel at various angles in various lights. There was no doubt that
this was the handsomest present she had received--sent direct from the
jeweller's shop with an uncompromising card inside the case. She never
saw the irony of it; but Sir John had probably not expected that she
would. He enjoyed it alone--as he enjoyed or endured most things.
Lady Cantourne examined it with some curiosity.
“I have never seen such beautiful diamonds,” she said simply.
There were other presents to be opened and examined. For the invitations
had not been sent out, and many were willing to pay handsomely for the
privilege of being mentioned among the guests. It is, one finds, after
the invitations have been issued that the presents begin to fall off.
But on this particular morning the other presents fell on barren ground.
Millicent only half heeded them. She could not lay the diamond crescent
finally aside. Some people have the power of imparting a little piece
of their individuality to their letters, and even to a commonplace
gift. Sir John was beginning to have this power over Millicent. She
was rapidly falling into a stupid habit of feeling uneasy whenever she
thought of him. She was vaguely alarmed at his uncompromising adherence
to the position he had assumed. She had never failed yet to work
her will with men--young and old--by a pretty persistence, a steady
flattery, a subtle pleading manner. But Sir John had met all her wiles
with his adamantine smile. He would not openly declare himself an
enemy--which she argued to herself would have been much nicer of him. He
was merely a friend of her aunt's, and from that contemplative position
he never stepped down. She could not quite make out what he was “driving
at,” as she herself put it. He never found fault, but she knew that his
disapproval of her was the result of long and careful study. Perhaps in
her heart--despite all her contradictory arguments--she knew that he was
right.
“I wonder,” she said half-aloud, taking up the crescent again, “why he
sent it to me?”
Lady Cantourne, who was writing letters at a terrible rate, glanced
sharply up. She was beginning to be aware of Millicent's unspoken fear
of Sir John. Moreover, she was clever enough to connect it with her
niece's daily increasing love for the man who was soon to be her
husband.
“Well,” she answered, “I should be rather surprised if he gave you
nothing.”
There was a little pause, only broken by the scratching of Lady
Cantourne's quill pen.
“Auntie!” exclaimed the girl suddenly, “why does he hate me? You have
known him all your life--you must know why he hates me so.”
Lady Cantourne shrugged her shoulders.
“I suppose,” went on Millicent with singular heat, “that some one has
been telling him things about me--horrid things--false things--that I am
a flirt, or something like that; I am sure I'm not.”
Lady Cantourne was addressing an envelope, and did not make any reply.
“Has he said anything to you, Aunt Caroline?” asked Millicent in an
aggrieved voice.
Lady Cantourne laid aside her letter.
“No,” she answered slowly, “but I suppose there are things which he does
not understand.”
“Things?”
Her ladyship looked up steadily.
“Guy Oscard, for instance,” she said; “I don't quite understand Guy
Oscard, Millicent.”
The girl turned away impatiently. She was keenly alive to the advantage
of turning her face away. For in her pocket she had at that moment a
letter from Guy Oscard--the last relic of the old excitement which was
so dear to her, and which she was already beginning to miss. Joseph had
posted this letter in Msala nearly two months before. It had travelled
down from the Simiacine Plateau with others, in a parcel beneath the
mattress of Jack Meredith's litter. It was a letter written in good
faith by an honest, devoted man to the woman whom he looked upon already
as almost his wife--a letter which no man need have been ashamed of
writing, but which a woman ought not to have read unless she intended to
be the writer's wife.
Millicent had read this letter more than once. She liked it because it
was evidently sincere. The man's heart could be heard beating in every
line of it. Moreover, she had made inquiries that very morning at the
Post Office about the African mail. She wanted the excitement of another
letter like that.
“Oh, Guy Oscard!” she replied innocently to Lady Cantourne; “that was
nothing.”
Lady Cantourne kept silence, and presently she returned to her letters.