It is no wonder married men are obliged to say gallant things to other
people, if, when they get home, their wives are like that.
I tried to be agreeable to a lady who was next me. She was a Christian
Scientist, and wore glasses. She endeavoured to convert me, but I was
abnormally thick-headed that day, and had to have things explained over
and over, so she gave it up at last.
Finally when I felt I should do something desperate, a footman came to
say Lady Verningham wished to see me in her room, and I bounded up--but
as I got to the door I saw them beginning to shake their heads over
her.
“Sad that dear Ianthe has such irregular habits of breakfasting in her
room--so bad for her,” etc., etc., but thank heaven, I was soon outside
in the hall, where her maid was waiting for me.
One would hardly have recognized that it was a Montgomerie apartment,
the big room overlooking the porch, where she was located. So changed
did its aspect seem! She had numbers of photographs about, and the
loveliest gold toilet things, and lots of frilled garments, and
flowers, and scent bottles, and her own pillows propping her up, all
blue silk, and lovely muslin embroideries, and she did look such a
sweet cosy thing among it all. Her dark hair in fluffs round her face,
and an angelic lace cap over it. She was smoking a cigarette, and
writing numbers of letters with a gold stylograph pen. The blue silk
quilt was strewn with correspondence, and newspapers, and telegraph
forms. And her garment was low-necked, of course, and thin like mine
are. I wondered what Alexander would have thought if he could have seen
her in contrast to Mary! I know which I would choose if I were a man!
“Oh, there you are!” she exclaimed, looking up and puffing smoke
clouds. “Sit on the bye-bye, Snake-girl. I felt I must rescue you from
the horde of Holies below, and I wanted to look at you in the daylight.
Yes, you have extraordinary hair, and real eyelashes and complexion,
too. You are a witch thing, I can see, and we shall all have to beware
of you!”
I smiled. She did not say it rudely, or I should have been uppish at
once. She has a wonderful charm.
“You don’t speak much, either,” she continued. “I feel you are
dangerous! that is why I am being so civil to you; I think it wisest. I
can’t stand girls as a rule!” And she went into one of her ripples of
laughter. “Now say you will not hurt me!”
“I should not hurt anyone,” I said, “unless they hurt me first--and I
like you--you are so pretty.”
“That is all right,” she said, “then we are comrades. I was frightened
about Robert last evening, because I am so attached to him, but you
were a darling after dinner, and it will be all right now; I told
him you would probably marry Malcolm Montgomerie, and he was not to
interfere.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind!” I exclaimed, moving off the bed. “I
would as soon die as spend the rest of my life here at Tryland.”
“He will be fabulously rich one day, you know, and you could get round
Père Montgomerie in a trice, and revolutionize the whole place. You had
better think of it.”
“I won’t,” I said, and I felt my eyes sparkle. She put up her hands as
if to ward off an evil spirit, and she laughed again.
“Well, you sha’n’t then! Only don’t flash those emeralds at me, they
give me quivers all over!”
“Would _you_ like to marry Malcolm?” I asked, and I sat down again.
“Fancy being owned by that! Fancy seeing it every day! Fancy living
with a person who never sees a joke from week’s end to week’s end. Oh!”
“As for that”--and she puffed smoke--“husbands are a race apart--there
are men, women, and husbands, and if they pay bills, and shoot big game
in Africa, it is all one ought to ask of them; to be able to see jokes
is superfluous. Mine is most inconvenient, because he generally adores
me, and at best only leaves me for a three weeks’ cure at Homburg, and
now and then a week in Paris, but Malcolm could be sent to the Rocky
Mountains, and places like that, continuously; he is quite a sportsman.”
“That is not my idea of a husband,” I said.
“Well, what is your idea, Snake-girl?”
“Why do you call me ‘Snake-girl?’” I asked. “I hate snakes.”
She took her cigarette out of her mouth, and looked at me for some
seconds.
“Because you are so sinuous, there is not a stiff line about your
movements--you are utterly wicked looking and attractive too, and
un-English, and what in the world Aunt Katherine asked you here for,
with those hideous girls, I can’t imagine. I would not have if my
three angels were grown up, and like them.” Then she showed me the
photographs of her three angels--they are pets.
But my looks seemed to bother her, for she went back to the subject.
“Where do you get them from? Was your mother some other nation?”
I told her how poor mamma had been rather an accident, and was nobody
much. “One could not tell, you see, she might have had any quaint
creature beyond the grandparents--perhaps I am mixed with Red Indian,
or nigger.”
She looked at me searchingly.
“No, you are not, you are Venetian--that is it--some wicked, beautiful
friend of a Doge come to life again.”
“I know I am wicked,” I said; “I am always told it, but I have not done
anything yet, or had any fun out of it, and I do want to.”
She laughed again.
“Well, you must come to London with me when I leave here on Saturday,
and we will see what we can do.”
This sounded so nice, and yet I had a feeling that I wanted to refuse;
if there had been a tone of patronage in her voice, I would have in
a minute. We sat and talked a long time, and she did tell me some
interesting things. The world, she assured me, was a delightful place
if one could escape bores, and had a good cook and a few friends. After
a while I left her, as she suddenly thought she would come down to
luncheon.
“I don’t think it would be safe, at the present stage, to leave you
alone with Robert,” she said.