‘What Zal said once to Rostum dost thou know?
“Think none contemptible who is thy foe.”’
To-morrow brings him, faithful to his word. It brings, too, a great many
gifts with him. Is there one child of the house forgotten? Not one. And
even Miss Barry is remembered.
‘Oh, how good, how kind of you!’ says Susan. ‘Fancy remembering every
one of us!’
‘I don’t believe I was ever called good before,’ says Crosby. ‘It makes
me feel like the bachelor uncle’—as he says this he thinks again of the
kiss that Susan had once given him—‘and old, quite hopelessly old!’
‘Nonsense!’ says Susan. ‘You?’—looking at him—‘you are not old.’
‘Go to, flatterer! You really shouldn’t, Susan! Flattery is bad for
people generally, and for me in particular. I’m very open to it.’
‘I don’t flatter,’ says Susan. She laughs and runs away to answer a call
from her aunt, who is evidently struggling with an idea, in one of the
rooms within.
‘Who’s that on the tennis-ground?’ asks Crosby of Betty as they are
standing on the hall-door steps.
‘Oh, don’t you know? That’s James. He came back a week ago. Of course,
now I think of it’—airily—‘you couldn’t know, as we were unable to write
to you for the past week. But it’s James. You remember hearing about
him?’ Crosby does. ‘Well, he’s home on leave now. But,’ says Betty,
giving way to suppressed mirth, ‘I think his wits have gone astray, and
he believes his home is here. Anyway, we can always find him somewhere,
round any corner, from ten to eight. And’—she grows convulsed with
silent mirth again—‘he’s just as spooney on Susan as ever!’
‘Yes?’ says Crosby.
‘He’s perfectly ridiculous. He is here morning, noon and night. And when
she lets him, he sits in her pocket by the hour. Of course it bores her,
but Susan is so absurdly good-natured that she puts up with everything.
Come down and have a game of tennis. Do!’
Betty, who is _bon camarade_ with Crosby, slips her hand into his arm
and leads him tennis-wards.
So this is James. Crosby gives direct attention to the young man on the
tennis-ground below him. A young man got up in irreproachable flannels,
and with a sufficiently well-bred air about him. Crosby gives him all
his good points without stint. He is well got up, and well groomed, and
decently shaved—and confoundedly ugly. He laughs as he tells himself
this. There is solace in the thought. In fact, James McIlveagh with his
big nose and little eyes, and the rather heavy jaw, and the general look
of doggedness about him, could hardly be considered a beauty except by a
deluded mother.
He is playing a set with Carew against Dom and Jacky, who is by no means
to be despised as a server. It occurs to Crosby, watching him, that he
is playing rather wildly, and giving more attention to the hall-door in
the distance than to his adversary. Game and set are called for Dom and
Jacky. It is with an open sense of joy upon his ugly face that Mr.
McIlveagh flings down his racket and balls; and indeed presently, when
he goes straight towards——
Towards whom?
Crosby, curious, follows the young man’s going, and then sees Susan.
Susan, with Bonnie! A Bonnie who now trots happily beside her, and is
evidently quite her slave—a pretty undoing of the old days, when she was
always his. Tommy, full of toys brought by Crosby—a white rabbit, a
performing elephant, an awful bear, and various other delightful things
tucked under his fat arms—is following them.
And now McIlveagh has reached her. He is speaking to her. Crosby, with a
grim sense of amusement at his own frame of mind, wonders what on earth
that idiot can be saying.
Presently Susan, smiling sweetly, and shaking her head as if giving a
very soft refusal to some proposal on the part of James, comes this way.
Tommy has caught hold of Bonnie’s hand—the new Bonnie, who can now run
about with him—and is dragging him towards the little wood, and Susan is
protesting. But now Bonnie is protesting too. ‘I can go, Susan. I have
walked a great deal farther than that. I have really.’ Crosby, watching
still, as if infatuated, can see that Susan is studying Bonnie silently,
as if in great amazement.
This little, well Bonnie seems almost impossible to her. Bonnie going
for a run—alone into the wood!
Crosby comes up to her.
‘I hardly realize it,’ she says gently, her eyes still upon the
retreating form of the child.
‘A great many things are hard to realize,’ says he. ‘For my part, I find
it very hard to see myself supplanted.’
‘Supplanted?’
‘Decidedly. And by the redoubtable James. By the way, Susan, I think you
gave me a distinctly wrong impression of that hero in the beginning of
our acquaintance. He doesn’t look half so wild as you represented him.’
‘As for that’—indifferently—‘I suppose they have drilled him.’
‘He’s quite presentable,’ glancing at the young soldier in question,
who, a few yards off, is looking as ugly as any impressionist could
desire, and sulky into the bargain. He can see that Susan is sitting
with a stranger, and evidently quite content—and—who the deuce is that
fellow, anyway?
‘What did you expect him to be?’ asks Susan.
‘Unpresentable, of course. I’ve been immensely taken in. And by you,
Susan! You quite led me to expect something interesting—a rare
specimen—and here he is, as like one of the rest of us as two peas.’
‘Did you expect him to have two heads?’ asks Susan, with a rather
ungrateful levity, considering James is an old friend of hers.
‘I hardly hoped for so much,’ says Crosby. ‘I’m not greedy. As a rule I
am thankful for small mercies—perhaps’—with a thoughtful glance at
her—‘because big ones don’t come my way. And I don’t think you need be
so very angry with me, Susan, because I think the excellent James less
ugly than’—with a reproachful air—‘I had been led to believe.’
‘I think him hideous,’ says Susan promptly, and with no attempt at
softening of any sort.
‘Alas! Poor James! But do you really?’
‘Very really,’ says Susan, laughing. ‘Just look at his profile.’
‘It’s a good honest one,’ says Crosby. ‘If a trifle——’
‘Well, I suppose it’s the trifle,’ says Susan.
‘I have seen worse.’
‘Oh! you can think him an Apollo if you like,’ says Susan, with a little
shrug. Shrugs from Susan are so unexpected that Crosby regards her with
interest. The unexpected is often very delightful, and certainly Susan,
at this moment, with her little new petulant mood upon her, is as sweet
as sunshine. It seems all at once to Crosby that he is seeing her now
again for the first time, with a fresh idea of her. What a little
slender maiden—and how beautiful, even in her thin ‘uneducated’ frock,
that has so often seen the tub, and is of a fashion of five years ago!
And yet, in a way, that old frock is kind to her—who would not be kind
to her? It stands to her, in spite of its age. It throws out all the
beauties of her delicately-built, but healthy young figure.
Susan here, in this primitive gown, is Susan! Susan got up in silks and
laces and satins, and all the fripperies of fashion, what would she be
like?
It is a question quickly answered. Why, she would be Susan too! Nothing
could change that gentle, tender heart. He feels quite sure of that. It
would only be Susan glorified! A Susan that would probably reduce to
envy half the so-called society beauties of the season.
Here he breaks through his thoughts, and comes back to the moment.
‘I don’t like your tone,’ says he reproachfully; ‘it savours of
unkindness. And considering how long it is since last we met——’
Here Susan interrupts him, remorse tearing at her soul:
‘I know. Seven months.’
‘You must have found it long,’ says Crosby. ‘I make it only twenty-two
hours, and’—consulting his watch—‘sixteen minutes.’
‘Oh! if you are alluding to yesterday,’ says Susan, with dignity that
has a sort of disgust in it.
‘Of course.’
‘I thought you were alluding to your being away in Germany. And as to
finding it long’—resentfully—‘I think you must have found it very much
longer, if you can count to a minute like that.’
Was there ever such a child? Crosby roars with laughter, though
something in his laughter amounts to passionate tenderness.
‘Forgive me, Susan!’ He leans forward, and takes her hand. As he feels
it within his—close clasped, and not withdrawn—and with Susan’s earnest
eyes looking into his, words spring to his lips: ‘Susan, once you took
me under your protection. Do you remember that old garden, and——’
Whatever he was going to say is here rudely broken in upon by the
advance of James, who, though distinctly ugly, looks no longer dull. He
seems now dreadfully wide-awake. Susan draws her hand quickly away, and
Crosby, who believes she has done this lest James should see the too
friendly attitude, is still further mortified by her manner.
‘I think I told you you were not to speak of that—that hateful day
again,’ says she; and turning from him as if eternally offended, seats
herself on a rug quite far away from him, and in such a position that
James can find a resting-place at her feet—a fact he is very swift to
see.
The others have all come up now, and Dom, who is terribly
conversational, opens the ball.
‘What are you now, James?’ asks he. ‘General?’
‘Not quite,’ responds James gruffly, who naturally objects to being
chaffed in the presence of the beloved one.
‘Colonel? Eh?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Dom,’ says Susan suddenly. ‘He is a lieutenant, but
soon he’ll be a captain—won’t you, James? Come up here and take part of
my rug.’
‘Oh no! no!’ says James, in a nervous, flurried tone that is filled with
absolute adoration; ‘I like being here.’
‘But——’
‘My dear Susan, why interfere with his mad joy?’ says Dom in a whisper
that is meant to be perfectly audible, and is so, to all around. ‘He’ll
catch cold to a moral; and he’s frightfully uncomfortable. But to sit at
your feet: what comfort could compare with that?’
‘Several,’ says Susan calmly. ‘Come here, James. I want to talk to you.’
And, indeed, from this moment she devotes herself to the devoted James.
Crosby she ignores completely, and when at last he rises to go, she says
‘good-bye’ to him with a very conventional air.
‘Are you really going—and so soon?’
The others have moved a little away from them.
‘What is the good of my staying when you won’t even look at me?’
‘I am looking at you,’ says Susan, flushing scarlet, but compelling her
eyes to rest on his—for a moment only, however. ‘But—you know I don’t
like you to allude to that day.’
‘It was a very small allusion. It gave you’—slowly—‘your chance,
however.’
‘My chance?’
‘To amuse yourself with the man of war.’
‘You think that I——’
‘I think a good deal at times.’ He laughs lightly, if a little
anxiously. ‘I am thinking even now.’
‘Of me?’
‘Naturally’—smiling. ‘Am I not always thinking of you?’
‘But what—what?’ demands she imperiously, tapping her slender foot upon
the ground.
‘That you do not believe the martial James so hideous after all.’
‘Then you are wrong—quite wrong’—vehemently.
‘Yes? Well, then, I think now——’
‘Now?’
‘That you are a very dangerous little coquette.’
Susan’s colour fades. A frown wrinkles her lovely brow.
‘I am not!’ says she coldly. ‘If all your thinking has only come to
that—I—despise your thoughts.’
It is the nearest approach to a quarrel he has ever had with her; but,
instead of depressing him, it seems to exalt him, and he goes on his way
apparently rejoicing.