“You might give me away at my wedding,” I said, gaily. “I am thinking
of getting married, some day!”
“That I will,” he promised, “and, by Jove, the man will be a fortunate
fellow.”
Lady Ver and I drove after luncheon--we paid some calls, and went in to
tea with the Montgomeries, who had just arrived at Brown’s Hotel for a
week’s shopping.
“Aunt Katherine brings those poor girls up always at this time, and
takes them to some impossible old dressmaker of her own, in the day,
and to Shakespeare, or a concert, at night, and returns with them
equipped in more hideous garments each year. It is positively cruel,”
said Lady Ver, as we went up the stairs to their _appartement_.
There they were, sitting round the tea-table, just as at Tryland.
Kirstie and Jean embroidering and knitting, and the other two reading
new catalogues of books for their work!!!
Lady Ver began to tease them. She asked them all sorts of questions
about their new frocks, and suggested they had better go to Paris, once
in a way. Lady Katherine was like ice. She strongly disapproved of my
being with her niece, one could see.
The connection with the family, she hoped, would be ended with my visit
to Tryland. Malcolm was arriving in town, too, we gathered, and Lady
Ver left a message to ask him to dine to-night.
Then we got away.
“If one of those lumps of suet had a spark of spirit, it would go
straight to the devil,” Lady Ver said, as we went down the stairs.
“Think of it! ties and altar-cloths in London! Mercifully they could
not dine to-night. I had to ask them, and they generally come once
while they are up--the four girls and Aunt Katherine--and it is with
the greatest difficulty I can collect four young men for them if they
get the least hint who they are to meet. I generally secure a couple
of socially budding Jews, because I feel the subscriptions for their
charities, which they will pester whoever they do sit next for, are
better filched from the Hebrew, than from some pretty needy guardsman.
Oh, what a life!”
She was so kind to me on the way back; she said she hated leaving me
alone on the morrow, and that I must settle now what I was going to
do, or she would not go. I said I would go to Claridge’s where Mrs.
Carruthers and I had always stayed, and remain perfectly quietly alone
with Véronique. I could afford it for a week. So we drove there, and
made the arrangement.
“It is absolutely impossible for you to go on like this, dear child,”
she said. “You must have a chaperon; you are far too pretty to stay
alone in a hotel. What _can_ I do for you?”
I felt so horribly uncomfortable, I was really at my wits’ end. Oh! it
is no fun being an adventuress, after all, if you want to keep your
friends of the world as well.
“Perhaps it won’t matter if I don’t see any one for a few days,” I
said. “I will write to Paris; my old Mademoiselle is married there to
a flourishing poet, I believe; perhaps she would take me as a paying
guest for a little.”
“That is very visionary--a French poet! horrible, long-haired, frowsy
creature. Impossible! Surely you see how necessary it is for you to
marry Christopher as soon as you can, Evangeline, don’t you?” she said,
and I was obliged to admit there were reasons.
“The truth is, you can’t be the least eccentric, or unconventional, if
you are good-looking and unmarried,” she continued; “you may snap your
fingers at Society, but if you do, you won’t have a good time, and all
the men will either foolishly champion you, or be impertinent to you.”
“Oh, I realize it,” I said, and there was a lump in my throat.
“I shall write to Christopher to-morrow,” she went on, “and thank him
for our outing last night, and I shall say something nice about you,
and your loneliness, and that he, as a kind of relation, may go and
see you on Sunday, as long as he doesn’t make love to you, and he can
take you to the Zoo--don’t see him in your sitting-room. That will give
him just the extra fillip, and he will go, and you will be demure, and
then, by those stimulating lions’ and tigers’ cages, you can plight
your troth. It will be quite respectable. Wire to me at once on Monday,
to Sedgwick, and you must come back to Park Street directly I return on
Thursday, if it is all settled.”
I thanked her as well as I could. She was quite ingenuous, and quite
sincere. I should be a welcome guest as Christopher’s _fiancée_, and
there was no use my feeling bitter about it--she was quite right.
As I put my hand on Malcolm’s skinny arm going down to the dining-room,
the only consolation was my fate has not got to be him! I would rather
be anything in the world than married to that!
I tried to be agreeable to Sir Charles. We were only a party of six. An
old Miss Harpenden, who goes everywhere to play bridge, and Malcolm,
and one of Lady Ver’s young men, and me. Sir Charles is absent, and
brings himself back; he fiddles with the knives and forks, and sprawls
on the table rather, too. He looks at Lady Ver with admiration in his
eyes. It is true then, in the intervals of Paris, I suppose, she can
make his heart beat.
Malcolm made love to me after dinner. We were left to talk when the
others sat down to bridge in the little drawing-room.
“I missed you so terribly, Miss Travers,” he said, priggishly, “when
you left us, that I realized I was extremely attracted by you.”
“No, you don’t say so!” I said, innocently. “Could one believe a thing
like that.”
“Yes,” he said, earnestly. “You may indeed believe it.”
“Do not say it so suddenly, then,” I said, turning my head away, so
that he could not see how I was laughing. “You see, to a red-haired
person like me these compliments go to my head.”
“Oh, I do not want to flurry you,” he said, affably. “I know I have
been a good deal sought after--perhaps on account of my possessions”
(this with arrogant modesty), “but I am willing to lay everything at
your feet if you will marry me.”
“Everything!” I asked.
“Yes, everything.”
“You are too good, Mr. Montgomerie--but what would your mother say?”
He looked uneasy, and slightly unnerved.
“My mother, I fear, has old-fashioned notions--but I am sure if you
went to her dressmaker--you--you would look different.”
“Should you like me to look different then--you wouldn’t recognize me,
you know, if I went to her dressmaker.”
“I like you just as you are,” he said, with an air of great
condescension.
“I am overcome,” I said, humbly; “but--but--what is this story I hear
about Miss Angela Grey? A lady, I see in the papers, who dances at--the
Gaiety, is it not? Are you sure she will permit you to make this
declaration without her knowledge?”
He became petrified.
“Who has told you about her?” he asked.
“No one,” I said. “Jean said your father was angry with you on account
of a horse of that name, but I chanced to see it in the list of
attractions at the Gaiety--so I conclude it is not a horse, and if you
are engaged to her, I don’t think it is quite right of you to try and
break my heart.”
“Oh, Evangeline--Miss Travers”--he spluttered. “I am greatly attached
to you--the other was only a pastime--a--oh! we men you know--young
and--and--run after--have our temptations you know. You must think
nothing about it. I will never see her again, except just finally to
say good-bye. I promise you.”
“Oh! I could not do a mean thing like that, Mr. Montgomerie,” I said.
“You must not think of behaving so on my account--I am not altogether
heartbroken, you know--in fact I rather think of getting married
myself.”
He bounded up.
“Oh! you have deceived me then!” he said, in self-righteous wrath.
“After all I said to you that evening at Tryland, and what you promised
then! Yes, you have grossly deceived me.”
I could not say I had not listened to a word he had said that
night, and was utterly unconscious of what I had promised. Even his
self-appreciation did not deserve such a blow as this! so I softened my
voice, and natural anger at his words, and said quite gently,
“Do not be angry. If I have unconsciously given you a wrong
impression, I am sorry, but if one came to talking of deceiving, you
have deceived me about Miss Grey, so do not let us speak further upon
the matter. We are quits. Now, won’t you be friends, as you have always
been”--and I put out my hand, and smiled frankly in his face. The mean
little lines in it relaxed--he pulled himself together and took my
hand, and pressed it warmly. From which I knew there was more in the
affair of Angela Grey than met the eye.
“Evangeline,” he said. “I shall always love you, but Miss Grey is an
estimable young woman, there is not a word to be said against her moral
character--and I have promised her my hand in marriage--so perhaps we
had better say good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I said, “but I consider I have every reason to feel
insulted by your offer, which was not, judging from your subsequent
remarks, worth a moment’s thought!”
“Oh, but I love you!” he said, and by his face, for the time, this was
probably true. So I did not say any more, and we rose and joined the
bridge players. And I contrived that he should not speak to me again
alone before he said good-night.
“Did Malcolm propose to you,” Lady Ver asked, as we came up to bed. “I
thought I saw a look in his eye at dinner.”
I told her he had done it in a kind of way, with a reservation in
favour of Miss Angela Grey.
“That is too dreadful!” she said. “There is a regular epidemic in some
of the Guards’ regiments just now to marry these poor common things
with high moral characters, and--indifferent feet! but I should have
thought the cuteness of the Scot would have protected Malcolm from
their designs. Poor Aunt Katherine!”