Gwendoline Carew.
Lawrence Blake found Calcutta even more to his liking than he expected.
When he left England what conscience he possessed pricked him rather
severely, but when he reached India he was able to plunge into a round
of gaieties that left him little enough time to think. Still, whenever
he remembered Eileen he felt the same twinge. He recognised that she
was not quite like other girls. She had not in any way laid herself
open to the blow he had dealt her, and she had certainly not led him
on. All through she had been just her own natural self, and he could
not but know this only placed his conduct in a still less pleasant
light. It would have been nothing to be proud of with any girl, but it
does sometimes happen that a man is not wholly to blame when he has
gone further than he meant.
At the same time Lawrence was a little surprised. He had several times
paid quite as much and even more attention to members of the fair sex
without meaning it, and gone quietly away, but he never before
remembered experiencing the unpleasant sensation that he had acted like
a cad. Did he then care more than he supposed? he asked once or twice.
No, this was not the solution, for if anything, he felt relief as the
distance between them lengthened. It was then, perhaps, the fearless
measure of scorn that Paddy had dealt out to him, forcing him to see
himself as he looked in the eyes of anyone who loved truth and
sincerity. This, and the growing consciousness of how infinitely above
him in all that matters most, was the girl whose heart he had
carelessly trifled with.
The passengers on that particular P. and O. steamboat bound for India
found Lawrence taciturn and morose to a degree, and in the end left him
severely alone. When he arrived in Calcutta he revived, for there was
so much to distract his attention. Gwendoline was charming. Earl
Selloyd’s attentions were more pronounced than ever, and playing at
rivals amused him. And there was no risk of any serious harm this time
either, for Gwen was a wholly different type of girl from Eileen, and
perfectly well able to take care of herself. She liked queening it over
him, and he was useful to her, and for the rest she was more likely to
trifle with him, than give him a chance to trifle with her.
They saw a great deal of each other because Lawrence was a great friend
of both her father’s and mother’s, and their doors were always open to
him. So, while living at his club in Calcutta, he spent a part of each
day with the Carews, either lounging in the morning-room in the
morning, or dining with them in the evening, or accompanying them to
some of the endless social festivities they attended.
People soon began to talk, and generally designated him the Earl’s
chief rival, but neither Gwendoline nor Lawrence paid any attention,
only amusing themselves with the Earl’s discomfiture. Mrs Carew was
rather set upon the coronet, however, and endeavoured to enlist
Lawrence upon her side. The topic was brought up in the drawing-room
one afternoon about a month after he arrived, and just in the middle of
it Gwen herself burst into the room.
“He is an extremely nice man, and it is such an excellent position,”
her mother was saying, and then, she stopped short to find her daughter
standing before her with laughter in her splendid dark eyes.
“So mamma is making a countess of me off-hand, is she?” she asked,
turning to Lawrence, who was looking on with an amused smile from the
depths of a big easy-chair.
“We were just considering how a coronet would become you,” he replied.
“Oh! the coronet’s all right,” shrugging her shoulders, “but the man!
Heaven preserve me from marrying a woolly lamb with a spring inside,
that says ‘Baa-a-a’ when you squeeze it.”
“I didn’t think you had got so far as that,” said Lawrence wickedly.
“Don’t try to be funny,” retorted Gwen; “it doesn’t suit your peculiar
style of cleverness. Look here, mother,” turning to Mrs Carew again
with the air of a young queen, “don’t you go setting your heart on
Selloyd for a son-in-law, because I won’t have him. I won’t have
anybody yet. I’m having a glorious time, and I mean to keep on. It’s
all rot wanting to tie a girl up her first season. I mean to have three
seasons, and then, if no one else will have me, I’ll take Lawrence,”
and she flashed a bewitching glance at him.
“Lawrence won’t want a wife who’s been in the lists three seasons,”
said her mother.
“Lawrence will do as he’s told,” promptly. “It will be a new
experience, and very good for him.”
“And afterward I suppose you’ll allow me the same beneficial course
with you,” he remarked.
“Oh, no,” laughing. “Women who are reigning types of English beauty
never have to do as they are told. They simply reign.”
“All the same I’m afraid Lawrence would know you far too well to put
his head in such a noose,” said Mrs Carew. “If any man would let you do
as you liked, Selloyd would, and they say he is fabulously rich.”
“I don’t care. He can keep his old riches and his old title: I tell you
I’m having a good time, and I don’t mean to change it. With half
Calcutta at your feet abroad, and Lawrence at your feet at home, what
could I possibly want more?”
“You will wake up one day and find Lawrence gone, and the others
rapidly getting tired of stooping.”
“I don’t care—and Lawrence would have to come back.”
“That wouldn’t be much good if he were married.”
“Married!—Lawrence married!” and a ringing laugh sounded through the
room. “Why, he’d never have the energy to propose, much less be
bothered to get fixed up. He’ll just lounge about in easy-chairs all
his life, smiling his cynical old smile, and rousing himself
occasionally to make cutting speeches. The only way to marry Lawrence
would be to propose yourself, and arrange everything, because he’d give
in rather than have the bother of refusing. That’s how it will probably
end, and I shall take pity on him and be the victim. I shall say, ‘Wake
up, Lawrie, you’ve got to marry me,’ and I shall have the licence all
ready and drag him off then and there.”
“Who did you say would be the victim!” he asked.
The butler entered with a letter, and, after hastily reading it, Mrs
Carew explained that she must send an answer that evening, and excusing
herself to Lawrence went out, leaving the young folks alone. Gwendoline
seated herself on the arm of a chair near him and commenced a running
conversation.
“How did you like that photograph I sent you?” she asked presently. “I
don’t believe you ever had the manners to write and thank me.”
“If I didn’t it was because I knew I should be seeing you so soon.”
“Well, how did you like it? You don’t seem inclined to go into raptures
over it, as you ought.”
“All the same, I thought it excellent.”
“What did you do with yourself in that deadly little Irish hamlet?
Wasn’t it perfectly awful? Why didn’t you come away sooner?”
“I rather enjoyed it than otherwise.”
“Oh! you rather enjoyed it, did you?” pricking up her ears. “I thought
you never could be bothered to enjoy anything.”
“I can’t say I put myself out much over this.”
“Are there any nice girls there?”
“Yes.”
“Many?”
“Two.”
“So ho!” impressively. “Yet I didn’t think country bumpkins were much
in your line.”
“One of them is as good-looking as you.”
“Is she dark?” with a little pout.
“No, fair.”
“Umph—Insipid?”
“No, good.”
“Good!” she echoed in a tone of laughing derision. “How amusing! Have
you really been able to find entertainment in a goody-goody girl?”
“I didn’t say ‘goody-goody.’”
“Well, you implied it, and that’s the same thing.”
“Not in this case.”
“And I say it is. We’ll change the subject. Goody-goody girls don’t
interest me in the least. What’s the other like?”
“Like you.”
“Like me!”—in surprise. “Then she’s pretty, too?”
“No. On the whole she is plain.”
“You wretch! I protest she is not in the least like me!”
“And I tell you she is.”
“But how?”
“In manner and ways.”
“My dear Lawrence, you are talking nonsense. Do you mean to tell me
that after my Parisian education, and presentation in London, and year
of travel, and the gayeties of India, I resemble a little, countrified
Irish girl?”
“I said that she resembled you, which is quite a different thing.”
“Well, go on.”
“She is quite your equal at repartee. She has quite your number of
admirers, though they may not be of the same social position, and she
treats them with precisely the same disdain.”
“I hate her,” said Gwendoline pettishly.
“That is exactly what she said about you.”
Gwen sprang up. “Oh, she did, did she!” she exclaimed, “and pray why!”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do. Don’t try and back out of it now, after telling me that
much. What have you been saying to her about me!”
“I haven’t been saying anything.”
Gwen clenched her hand and bit her teeth together.
“In two minutes I shall shake you. There is nothing either funny or
clever in being exasperating.”
“I am sorry,” he replied, with imperturbable humour. “If you will tell
me what you want to know, I will try to enlighten you.”
“Then ‘why’ and ‘when’ did this country bumpkin say she hated me!”
“The incident took place in a sanctum at Mourne Lodge, known as my den,
upon the evening when Kathleen and Doreen ‘came out.’”
“And what was she doing in your den, pray, in the middle of a dance!”
Gwen spoke peremptorily. She had somehow, unconsciously, grown to
consider Lawrence her property, although there had never been anything
but good-fellowship between them. Ever since she was ten and he was
twenty she had ordered him about, and Lawrence, while teasing her, had
usually acquiesced because she amused him.
“To the best of my recollection she was playing with my foreign
swords.”
“And how could that have anything to do with me?”
“She chanced to weary of the swords, and on a voyage of further
discovery came across your photograph, in the place of honour, on my
desk.”
A pleased gleam passed through her eyes.
“Ah!” she said, “and she was angry because she is in love with you.”
“On the contrary, she hates me even more than you.”
Owen frowned and looked incredulous.
“Now you are talking riddles again—how silly you are! If she hates you,
why did she go into your den, and why was she angry with me? I believe
you are making the whole thing up.”
“I am not. I do not think she spoke half a dozen civil words to me
after the dance, and when I came away she would not shake hands. She
told me she much preferred my room to my company.”
“Really?” with dawning interest.
“Really,” emphatically.
“Well, she’s rather interesting after all,” said Gwen, “for no doubt
you are the eligible man of the neighbourhood.”
“She wouldn’t care a snap of the fingers for that.”
“Not any more than I do for the woolly lamb’s coronet?”
“Exactly. Now you are getting at the resemblance.”
“But you haven’t yet told me why she hates you and me.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not very clear,” he answered, “and
anyhow it would be too tedious to try and explain. It’s a trifle enough
anyway. Hullo!” breaking off, “isn’t that your baa-lamb I hear?”
Gwen listened with her head on one side.
“Yes, that’s his bleat,” she said. “Mamma will lead him in by a blue
ribbon, so to speak, in a minute, and I shall want desperately to
recite:
“‘Mummie had a woolly lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
But ’twas everywhere that Gwennie went
That lamb would always go.’”
She jumped up and commenced patting her hair into place and
straightening the lace of her dress, remarking that, after all said and
done, there was no harm in captivating. A moment later her mother came
in looking worried.
“My dear,” she said, “Earl Selloyd wishes to speak to you alone. He is
in the library.”
“Good Heaven!” exclaimed Gwen. “Has it come to this!”
“It’s very wrong to speak of it in that way,” said her mother
reprovingly. “I’m sure I don’t know where the girls of the present day
get their queer manners from. Do try and realise that Earl Selloyd has
come here this afternoon to pay you the greatest honour it is in the
power of any man to pay to any woman.”
“Baa—a—a—a,” mimicked Gwen wickedly, and Lawrence bit his lip.
“At least then, remember that you are a gentlewoman,” continued Mrs
Carew severely, “or that Providence intended you for one.”
“Now you’re getting sarcastic, mummie.” Gwen went up and put her arm
round her mother’s neck. “Don’t you get sarcastic with Gwennie, mummie,
because she’s just all right underneath. It’s only on the top die’s
queer. Because you thought you were going to rear a stately swan, and
found you had only a wicked duckling, you needn’t frown and pucker up
in that fashion. Stately swans are very tedious, and wicked ducklings
do at least keep you going; so you ought really to go down on your
knees and thank the good Providence that spared you the monotony of
perpetually sailing about with your neck at an uncomfortable angle.
Don’t you think so, Lawrie? Now, I’ll go and see his Earlship and be
good. To him I shall put the case differently, and explain how
infinitely preferable the calm of the stately swan is, beside the
tiresome duckling,”—and she crossed the large drawing-room to the door.
Here, however, she turned again.
“Lawrie.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know, I’ve an odd notion that if you haven’t already fallen in
love with that Irish, country-bumpkin girl, you very shortly will!” and
without giving him time to reply she vanished.