“You are a very remarkable young man,” I said. “You respect your
mother’s wishes and you don’t like rouged girls. I most cordially hope
you will succeed in the egg market. But as for Rose, I can tell you
something. Rose is in love with nobody.”
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“I happen to know her fairly well,” I replied, “and to have kept her
under a certain amount of observation.”
“But—but—”
“You mean, once more, that I am too old? Maybe; but I guess that on this
particular subject I am right. I’ll tell her that you called. Good
afternoon.”
“Oh, sir,” he said, “will you? Wouldn’t it be better to say nothing
about it and let me see her first?”
“It might be,” I replied; “but that isn’t the way that Miss Holt and I do
things. We put the cards on the table. Good afternoon.”
He walked moodily to his little runabout, cranked it, lighted another
cigarette (although what use a cigarette can be in a thirty-mile gale
such as he was about to create for himself, I have no notion) and was
off.
He left me thinking that the chances are that if I live on another twenty
years, to be ninety—which I trust may not happen, even with the
assistance of the new monkey-gland treatment—and I still retain a few
faculties of hearing and speech and the simulacrum of a sympathetic
heart, some young spark of the future will endeavour to engage my
interest to help him in his courtship of Rose’s daughter—some young spark
not yet born, desiring a bride not yet born. That would seem to be my
destiny. But perhaps by 1940 there will be no such tedious
preliminaries: nothing but capture and possession—and awakening. Or will
the rhythm of life have reasserted itself and old-fashioned prejudices
have returned? We move in circles.
* * * * *
During dinner that evening I said to Rose: “There was a young fellow here
this afternoon asking after you.”
“Archie Sebright, I suppose,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Some one who dances with you, and—”
“Reggie Saunderson, of course.”
“No.”
“Who was it, then?”
“He had a very small moustache,” I said, “and he came in an even smaller
car.”
“Oh, Jack Nimmo.”
“No,” I said. “He had purple socks, with clocks, and showed too much of
them.”
“That must have been Claude Musters.”
“No,” I said.
“You must tell me,” she insisted. “Why are you such a tease?”
“His name was Sibthorp,” I said.
“Oh!” Rose replied, “he’s staying with the Wilkinsons. He’s rather a
nuisance, but he did well in the War, every one says. It’s terrible, the
bores that did well in the War! What did he want?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “Only to marry you.”
Rose laughed. “Like his cheek,” she said.
“None the less,” I said, during our dessert—and I have some rather good
Taylor 1880 which deserves to be sipped slowly—“this question of marriage
is bound to crop up now and then.”
“Why?” Rose asked.
“Because you’re a not repellent young woman, and the neighbourhood
appears to be infested by Claudes and Reggies, and Nature is always
urgent.”
“But I don’t want to marry any of them,” she said, “or in fact anyone at
all. Why can’t we go on as we are? Why is life always changing?”
“I wish it wasn’t,” I said; “but the law of life is change. We either go
forward—or backward. Every quiet little time such as this that I spend
with you, alone, talking and not (which is the true curse of Adam)
getting ready to do anything else, I am full of fearfulness, just because
I know that there is no standing still. They are all stolen. To you
they may be dull; to me these moments are beautiful.”
Rose put her hand on mine. “They’re not dull,” she said. “I love them
too.”
She glanced at the clock.
“There!” I said. “You’re spoiling it! It is exactly as I said. What do
you look at the time for?”
“Well,” she replied, “I promised Claude I’d show him a new step to-night;
but he’s not coming till half-past nine. We’ve got nearly a whole hour.”