THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
While the marchioness was confiding her maternal anxieties to Mr.
Despencer’s sympathetic ear, her daughter, Lady Victoria Mauleverer,
was engaged in calmly defying her affectionate parent’s behests.
She was now in the adjoining room; but the dust which yet lingered
on her small and delicately made shoes of dark green kid would have
revealed to the eye of one of those marvels of astuteness who formerly
flourished, and, for aught we know, flourish still in the pages of the
popular monthlies, that she had recently returned from out of doors.
Her perfectly plain skirt, not quite long enough to conceal the shoes
already mentioned, might have suggested further that the excursion
had not been wholly unconnected with a bicycle. Further incriminating
evidence was supplied by a dark cloth jacket, similar in design to that
worn by the steward on board a yacht, but ornamented with a number of
oxidized steel buttons of the size of crown pieces, and by a straw hat
indistinguishable from those ordinarily worn by undergraduates.
In spite of these evidences of that removal of the barrier between the
sexes which is the crowning triumph of our civilization, Lady Victoria
was a most attractive girl. She was not quite so youthful as the
marchioness, but that could hardly have been expected. At twenty, one
is usually a hardened woman of the world; at forty, one begins to be an
innocent little thing.
We have hinted that Lady Victoria had just returned from a bicycle
ride. It is necessary to add that she had not returned alone.
The companion who had escorted her, not only to the door of the house,
but up-stairs, to that of the drawing-room, was a tall, fine-looking
man of twenty-eight or thirty, whose whole surface, from his boots to
his forehead, gleamed with that excess of physical polish which is the
religion of the British soldier. It is not the only religion which
demands some intellectual sacrifice on the part of its votaries.
As soon as the two were inside the room, Lady Victoria turned to her
companion.
“How can you be so imprudent, Gerald! Do you know my mother is in the
next room?”
Captain Mauleverer walked boldly forward, and sat down without waiting
to be asked.
“Certainly,” he answered, coolly. “That is the reason why I have come
into this room. It was not my aunt whom I wanted to see. You know, we
are barely on speaking terms.”
“You needn’t tell me that. I assure you my mother has taken good care
to let me know her opinion of you. I warn you plainly that if she
comes in and finds you here, I shall abandon you to her.”
Captain Mauleverer tried to look unconcerned.
“I didn’t think you were such a coward as that, Vick,” he remonstrated.
“But, after all, I don’t see that I have done anything so very
dreadful. She can’t forbid me the house altogether, you know. I’m her
own husband’s nephew.”
Lady Victoria smiled with good-natured scorn.
“That’s nothing. You don’t know my mother. She wouldn’t hesitate to
forbid her husband the house, if she wanted to. Husbands occupy a very
uncertain position in society nowadays; they are only tolerated.”
“Is that a warning for me, I wonder?”
Something in her cousin’s tone, and the look with which he accompanied
the question, brought out an impatient frown on Victoria’s face. She
walked over to the window, and stood tapping her foot against the
floor.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gerald! You know as well as I do that it is not
the slightest use for this sort of thing to go on.”
She kept her back turned on him while she spoke. There was a touch of
softness in his voice as he answered:
“It has gone on a long time, Vick, hasn’t it?”
“A great deal too long,” was the reply, spoken with decision. “You know
it is perfectly hopeless. You can’t afford me; I have told you so over
and over again. Why on earth don’t you go and invest yourself in a
pork-butcher’s daughter from Chicago, like everybody else?”
She turned on him with some fierceness as she put the question. The
captain looked up at her reproachfully as he exclaimed:
“What a hateful girl you are to talk like that! You know perfectly well
that you love me.”
“Don’t be vulgar, Gerald!” was the sharp rebuke. “What has that to do
with the question? You know I am for sale, just like the Zulu women. I
don’t know exactly how many cows I am worth, but I know I am one of the
most expensive girls in London.”
Captain Mauleverer pulled his mustache, gazing at her with
ill-concealed admiration.
“Well, anyway, that is no reason why I shouldn’t look in at the
shop-window,” he retorted, cheerfully.
It was at this moment that the machine despatched by the marchioness
entered the room to summon Victoria to her mother’s presence.
“Is there any one with the marchioness?” she inquired.
The machine believed that Mr. Despencer was with her ladyship.
“Very good; I’ll come.”
As soon as the machine had withdrawn to its subterranean abode, Captain
Mauleverer asked, in the tone of a man who really desires information:
“Who on earth _is_ that man?”
Victoria looked blandly surprised.
“Mr. Despencer, do you mean? I haven’t the slightest idea.”
It was the captain’s turn to look surprised.
“Why, I thought he was constantly in the house.”
Victoria lifted her shoulders with fine disgust.
“Yes, but I don’t know him. He is not anybody, you know. I call him the
Ladies’ Journal. He is not received; he circulates. My mother takes him
in, but I don’t.”
“Is he one of those writing chaps?” inquired the captain, with military
contempt.
“I dare say. He may be the Poet Laureate for aught I know. But you must
really go away now, or there will be a row.”
“And when may I come back?”
“It would be much better if you didn’t come back at all.”
Captain Mauleverer shook his head as he rose reluctantly.
“It’s no good talking like that, Vick. You have got to put up with me,
so you may as well make the best of it.”
“Gerald! what nonsense!” Victoria spoke as though she were exceedingly
cross. “Go away directly; do you hear?”
“You haven’t told me when I may see you again yet,” returned the
obstinate Gerald.
“I am not going to do anything of the kind.”
“Then I shall stay here and compromise you,” said Gerald, preparing to
sit down again.
“Well”--she lowered her voice, with a glance towards the door of
communication with the next room--“my mother has a concert on Thursday
night.”
Captain Mauleverer brightened up.
“But if you come to it, I sha’n’t let you speak to me.”
“Won’t you?” He walked slowly towards her.
As Captain Mauleverer went out of the room by one door to go
down-stairs and out of the house, Lady Victoria went through the other
into the presence of her mother and Mr. Despencer.