That night Henry Baring came to call. Being a sort of family friend he
had a way of walking in unexpectedly, with a box of candy for whoever
saw him first. If mother and I were out, he played chess with father. If
there was no one in, he was quite likely to range round the lower floor,
and ask the butler about his family, and maybe read for an hour or so in
the library. The servants adored him, but he was matrimonially
impossible.
That night he came. I was at home alone.
"You will take two full days' rest after your ball," mother had said. "I
have seen enough débutantes looking ready for the hospital the first
week they came out."
So I was alone that evening, and mother and father had gone to a dinner.
I was sulky, I don't mind saying. At six o'clock a box of flowers had
come, but they were only from Henry and not exciting. "Thought I'd send
them to-day," he wrote on his card. "Didn't like the idea of my personal
offering nailed to the club wall."
About nine o'clock I put on my silk dressing gown and went down to the
library for the book about the girl who always had her hand in the man's
coat pocket. I had got clear in when I saw Henry's red head over the top
of a deep chair.
"Come in!" he called. "I was told there was no one at home, but methinks
I know the step and the rustle."
"Don't look round," I said sharply. "I'm not dressed."
"Can't you stay a few minutes?"
"Certainly not."
"If I don't look?"
Well, it seemed silly to run. I was more covered up than I'd been the
night before in my ball gown. Besides, it had occurred to me that Henry
could be useful if he would. A sort of plan had popped into my head.
Inspiration, I called it then.
"Pretty nice last night, wasn't it?" he asked, talking to the fireplace.
"You looked some person, Kit, believe me."
"Considering that I've spent nineteen years getting ready, it should
have gone off rather well."
"I suppose I'll never see you any more."
"This looks like it! Why?"
"You'll be so popular."
"Oh, that! I'm not sure, Henry. I'm not beautiful."
He jumped at that, and almost turned round.
"Not beautiful!" he said. "You're--you're the loveliest thing that ever
lived, and you know it."
It began to look to me as if he wouldn't help after all. There was a
sort of huskiness in his voice, a--Oh, well, you know. I began on the
plan, however.
"You'll see me, all right," I said. "I'll have other friends, of course.
I hope so anyhow. But when one thinks who and what they are----"
"Good gracious, Kit! What are you driving at?"
"I'm young," I said. "I know that. But I'm not ignorant. And a really
nice girl with ideals----"
"I'll have to get up," he said suddenly. "I'll stand with my back to
you, if you insist, but I'll have to get up. What's all this about
ideals?"
"You know very well," I put in with dignity. "If every time I meet a
nice man people come to me with stories about him, or mother and father
warn me against him, what am I to do?"
"Can't you stand behind a chair and let me face you? This is serious."
"Oh, turn round," I said recklessly. "If I hear any one coming I can
run. Anyhow, it may be unconventional but I'm fully clothed."
"Are you being warned against me?" he threw at me like a bomb. "Because,
if--if you are, it's absurd nonsense. I'm no saint, and I'd never be fit
for you to--What silly story have you heard, Kit?"
He was quite white, and his red hair looked like a conflagration.
"It's not about you at all; it's about Russell Hill."
It took him a moment to breathe normally again.
"Oh--Russell!" he said. "Well, that's probably nonsense too. You don't
mean to say your people object to your knowing Russell?"
"Not quite that," I said. "But I can't have him here, or go round with
him, or anything of that sort."
"Do they venture to give a reason?"
"Toots Warrington."
It's queer about men, the way they stand up for each other. Henry knew
as well as he knew anything that most of the girls we both knew were
crazy about Russell. And if he cared for me--and the way he acted made
me suspicious--he had a good chance to throw Russell into the discard
that night. But he didn't. I knew well enough he wouldn't.
"That's perfect idiocy," he said sternly. "Society is organised along
certain lines, and maybe if you and I had anything to do with it we'd
change things. But there is no commandment or social law or anything
else against a man having a married woman for a friend."
"Friend!"
"Exactly--friend."
"I don't care to have anything to do with him."
"You needn't, of course. But you owe it to Russell to give him a chance
to set things straight. Any how he and Mrs. Warrington are not seeing
each other much any more. It's off."
"The very fact that you say it is 'off' shows that it was once 'on.'"
He waved his hands in perfect despair. If I'd rehearsed him he couldn't
have picked up his cues any better.
"I'm going to tell him," he said. "It's ridiculous. It's--it's
libellous."
"I don't want him coming here explaining. I am not even interested."
"You're a perfect child, a stubborn child! Your mind's in pigtails, like
your hair."
Yes, my hair was down. I have rather nice hair.
"If he comes here," I said with my eyes wide, "he will have to come when
mother and father are out."
"I'll bring him," said Henry valiantly. "I'm not going to see him
calumniated, that's all." Then something struck his sense of humour and
he chuckled. "It will be a new and valuable experience to him," he said,
"to have to come clandestinely. Do him good!"