GIRLIE took a long while to array herself for that evening’s dreaded
meal. The crisis of her fate was now at hand. Realizing to the full
all that was involved in the coming of Mr. Montagu Jupp, she had not
the courage to ask Mrs. Minever whether that Old Man of the Sea was
really on the point of arrival. Only too soon would the fact be known.
In her present state of mind she was quite unable to face the dire
consequences that must attend his visit; she chose, therefore, to bury
her head ostrich-wise in sand by indulging the pitifully vain hope that
he was not coming after all.
How frail that hope was the momentous hour of eight revealed very
surely. Hardly had she entered the drawing room, striving heroically
for a show of composure which her wretched nerves denied her, when lo!
amid a cascade of chaff with an undercurrent of laughter and applause,
the great and admired Montagu came in his own person upon the scene.
Sir Toby, as usual, led the way. It was his fixed rule of life to
lead the way everywhere, under all conditions, in all circumstances,
if only he was allowed to do so. At the back of his mind he always
seemed to feel that the stars in their courses had ordained that he
should be the master of every ceremony. But, in comparison with the
mountain of geniality who alternately rolled and grinned as he followed
in his wake, Sir Toby was the merest pigmy. Mr. Jupp had the art of
monopolizing the attention of all the world, of catching every eye, of
dominating every assembly he entered.
Still, the mere arrival of the great man was in the nature of a triumph
for Sir Toby. Odds had been freely laid by despondent members of the
cast that Montagu would not appear. But his magnetic presence was just
what was needed to “pull things together.” However, as far as the
luckless leading lady was concerned, no one envied him his task.
Quite a thrill seemed to pervade the air of the drawing room at
the moment of their greeting. But Girlie, in the toils of sheer
desperation, was able for once to muster an inhuman stoicism. Already
she had undergone so much that she was now determined to die fighting.
Yes, whatever happened, she would die fighting. Heroically, with
bright eyes, with set lips, she came forward a pace, as the hostess
triumphantly convoyed the great man towards her. “How do you do?” she
said, holding out her hand.
The sublime Original, who at that fell moment was consuming cold mutton
and mixed pickles in the outer darkness of the nursery at The Laurels,
whither she had been banished in disgrace, could not have “played up”
better. Mr. Jupp, a little fatigued by travel and with a forward
looking mind in regard to his dinner, bowed over the hand that was
offered. He did not scrutinize the little lady closely, at any rate
just then. He took it for granted that she was what she was. Besides,
apart from the fact that the clock on the chimney piece had already
struck eight, there was a reason, known only to himself, why he should
be in no hurry to traverse the personality of Lady Elfreda Catkin, much
less to challenge her identity.
Truth to tell, and the dark secret was locked securely in the bosom of
Mr. Montagu Jupp, he had only met Lady Elfreda once, for a few brief
moments, so that the faculty of observation not being his long suit,
he was not so clear as he might have been as to what she really looked
like. The skeleton in Montagu’s cupboard which some of his friends,
the malicious Garden to wit, shrewdly suspected to be the case, was
that he was inclined “to talk through his hat”; in other words, he was
prone to claim an intimacy with all the world that the crude facts did
not always justify. He had said once in Sir Toby’s hearing over an
after-dinner whisky and cigar, that “he had taught Lady Elfreda Catkin
all the acting she knew,” but that incautious statement had been less
in response to sober truth than to her highly effective portrait in the
_Society_ Pictorial. It was sufficient for _un homme du monde_ that he
had talked with her once for five minutes at a garden party. The fact
was typical of the man, even a part of his picturesqueness, but at this
moment, had the luckless Girlie been aware of it, here was a card
incredibly in her favor.
Girlie, alas, did not know that. She went in to dinner and took
her accustomed place at the right hand of the host with a growing
conviction that she was about to be hanged in public, to say nothing of
the drawing and quartering to follow. She felt it was only a question
of minutes before Mr. Jupp denounced her. Every time her guilty eye
strayed furtively across to his side of the table she perceived his
eye, in its degree hardly less guilty, furtively upon her. But she did
not know, she could not guess the strength of her own position. She
could only marvel as course succeeded course, as her wine glass grew
empty and then grew full again, that the inevitable thunderbolt did not
descend.
As the meal went on and exposure grew ever more imminent in the mind
of the Deputy--a dramatic scene was surely reserved for the drawing
room!--she grew increasingly bold. After her glass had been replenished
three times she did not care what happened. She would die “game.”
This was her very last hour of vicarious splendor, but she had now an
intense desire to live it to the full. Her tongue was loosened, her
laugh rose higher and more frequent, her eyes grew wonderfully bright.
All this harmonized with the spirit of the others, for, as usual,
Mr. Jupp had brought an infectious gayety upon the scene. Everybody
laughed at everybody else; all were in a mood of festive enjoyment; the
almost perilous light-heartedness of “the little Catkin puss” excited
no comment--or, if it did, it counted to her for virtue. Certainly
her host, who for a week now had endured “heavy cake” with a noble
fortitude, was charmed by the change. There might be something in the
little noodle after all.
When dinner was over other people began to think so, too. Living in
the very crater of Vesuvius with an eruption long overdue, keyed up
beyond a self that was rather undercharged, for the first time in her
life Girlie let herself go. Somehow it seemed the only course to take.
Amid the hilarity the mere presence of Mr. Jupp had induced, that
remarkable man sat down at the piano and began to do it considerable
violence. Thereupon one of the younger “bloods” began to fox-trot with
Mrs. Spencer-Jobling. Sir Toby Philpot, not to be outdone, immediately
commandeered the hostess, Mr. Minever promptly laid siege to another
lady, and then Girlie grew alive to the fact that Lord Duckingfield was
smiling at her and moving resolutely in her direction.
“Just show me how to--won’t you, my dear?” His voice was wonderfully
persuasive and fatherly.
Girlie’s knowledge of the fox-trot was almost as vague as my lord’s.
But what did that matter? What did anything matter? She rose with a
laugh, she intertwined one slender arm with his; slowly she gyrated
with this performing bear of a man twice round the drawing room, and
then in the wake of the more enterprising couples through the open
door and out into the hall.
Mr. Jupp continued to pound the piano. Tango succeeded fox-trot, there
was an occasional relapse to the two-step, a brief intermission of
some forgotten waltz or other, with now and again, as became a truly
modern and progressive mind, a heroic attempt at the jazz. None of the
dancers obeyed the music; they didn’t really try to do so; each chose
the style that seemed the most natural, so that what began as a half
serious performance soon degenerated into an amazing go-as-you-please.
But it was highly enjoyable. At any rate, Lord Duckingfield thought it
was. A strenuous youth in factory and warehouse had left him no time to
pay court to Terpsichore. He knew what he liked, however. And what he
did like was to wheel slowly and solemnly round on his left foot, with
plenty of elbow room and without having too much ground to cover. And
if he was most agreeably assisted in these maneuvers by the charmingly
pretty bearer of a distinguished name, why so much the better.
This dainty, gray-eyed little girl quite set the genius of my lord.
She was so simple. And with all his riches and his ambitions and his
recent nobility, at heart he was really simple himself. After a most
exhilarating twenty minutes on the hall parquet, in a space hardly
more than six feet square, in the course of which Girlie, with the
inimitable tact of her sex, contrived neatly to fit step for step, Lord
Duckingfield espied a corner almost perilous in its charm and its
seclusion in an angle of the stairs. In point of fact he had had his
eye on it from the first. By the time he had truly earned a rest he
felt that it would come to him as the just reward of his merit and his
virtue.
In the room adjacent, on a piano whose extreme resonance was almost
unbearable, Mr. Jupp continued to do surprising things, while his
fellow guests, each after his or her manner, kept pace with him as
far as was humanly possible. At last, however, Lord Duckingfield came
to a sudden halt and drew a series of deep breaths. Then, Girlie upon
his arm, he made a bee-line for the palm-shrouded alcove beneath the
hall stairs. Kindly providence had decreed that two chairs, of the
sort called “comfortable,” should be there already. Girlie, a little
breathless too after her altruistic exertions, found herself at rest in
one a brief ten seconds before her cavalier came to anchor in the other.
She was feeling entirely reckless. She didn’t care. Her limit had been
reached, nay, it had been overstepped. She would drink of the cup. Life
was dancing a fiery symbol before her eyes. In spite of the sword that
hung by a thread in mid-air she was enjoying her hour. She was enjoying
it terribly. If she died of the shame that must follow, at least she
would be able to point to an experience beyond the run of women.
“Nice of you, my dear, to help an old duffer like me.” The rich, half
chuckling tone of Lord Duckingfield had an odd humility that was
wonderfully attractive in the ear of a woman.
“Not at all.” Softly she lisped in true Galsworthian phrase. A powerful
genius enfolded her. With a kind of mad dignity she sat up in the
wicker chair.
“Oh, but it is, though,” My lord was heavily serious for all that there
was a kind of elephantine humor in him. “Not many of you smart young
ladies would be bothered with a clumsy old fool like me.”
“But you are not clumsy--you are not at all clumsy,” It was not the
speech of a smart young lady, it was not true, it was not subtle, above
all, it was unworthy of the author of “The Patrician,” and by the light
of the inner mind she knew this only too well, but the stage-manager
of the pleasant little comedy understood the business better than did
she. The crude simplicity for which she could have wept at the moment
her lips betrayed it, really met the situation exactly. In spite of her
lineage--or perhaps because of it--Lord Duckingfield was more than ever
convinced that she was a very nice little girl.
“You see,” he said, and his abrupt fall to an almost disconcerting
intimacy was the truest compliment such a highly practical man could
have paid her, “you see, I don’t pretend to be one of the fancy sort.
No Eton and Oxford for me. At your age, my dear, I was earning my
thirty shillings a week at the carpenter’s bench and thinking myself
almighty lucky to be getting it.”
She actually had the wit to reward the reminiscence with a ripe
Galsworthian “Really!” But again she must have fallen short of the rich
quality of her mentor, since my lord went on, for all the world as if
she had not been a marquis’s daughter, “You don’t know, my dear, what
I’ve had to fight against. Most of you young ladies laugh at men like
me, but you are one of the sensible kind, so that’s why I don’t mind
telling you of my early life.”
The gray eyes smiled at Lord Duckingfield. And as the stage-manager
had fixed an electric bulb at a psychological angle midway between the
two chairs, so that its rays caught the light of those eyes and set it
dancing, Lord Duckingfield was suddenly and acutely aware of quite the
sharpest thrill he had ever experienced.
“Of course, I’m very rich now.” Lord Duckingfield seemed inclined to
carry naïveté to the verge of indelicacy. “Very rich indeed. Your
father will make allowances for that. But you are such a very nice
little girl that even had you been just plain Miss Brown....”
With a shiver, half enchantment, half dismay, Girlie realized that a
sympathetic hand had put forth from the adjacent chair and that it was
exquisitely enclosing hers. The close-breathing pause which followed
must have meant embarrassment for both, had either been in a condition
to respond to that form of emotion. But Girlie had burnt her boats. She
was past all caring. As for Lord Duckingfield he was now suddenly alive
to the fact that he was quite in love with this pretty gray-eyed mouse.
“You are so sensible.” The grip tightened upon the slender arm.
“There’s no nonsense about you. If you don’t mind my saying so you are
not at all like most of the smart girls I’ve met. They are so knowing.
And they take so much living up to--for an old duffer like me. Give
me something homely and sensible.” Inch by inch the wicker chair came
closer. She felt one arm, half chivalrous, half masterful, slowly
encircle her.
She made no effort to repel this audacity. Somehow it marched with
her own state of mind. But in the next moment something had happened,
something which had the effect of bringing her up short in the midst of
her folly and incidentally of summoning her northern forbears primly
upon the scene. Lord Duckingfield took her in his arms and kissed her.
It was the first time in Girlie’s life of twenty years that such a
thing had happened or had seemed likely to happen. Nothing could have
been more subversive of her strait “high-brow” code than to be kissed by
a man, and a rather elderly man, without so much as a by-your-leave,
in circumstances of semi-publicity. Even if she had a sense of having
dined, deep down she knew it to be an epic moment; she was thrilled as
she had never been thrilled; it was the event of her life. He might be
a real live peer of the realm; all the same his boldness was just a
little too much for Miss Cass of Laxton.
Involuntarily she stiffened, involuntarily she drew her chair a few
paces away from him. Slightly abashed but wholly impenitent Lord
Duckingfield followed her. But Miss Cass of Laxton was not quite lost
to a sense of her high destiny. What kind of man was this! How dare he!
She must let him know that this was not the form of a budding Charlotte
Brontë.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, as soon as the mild horror in her eyes
had convicted him. He spoke so nicely, so gently, that it was not in
her heart to be angry even had it been in her nature to be so.
He proved the depth of his contrition by a sudden descent into
autobiography. His early life was unfolded before her, his struggles,
his defeats, his slow ascent of fortune’s ladder. She could not help
admiring this large simplicity, she could not help honoring him for
it, but when she perceived that it was leading all-too-surely to what
she feared, but by another road, she was overcome. She began to steel
herself to bear the blow she had more than half invited.
_Don’t let me see you or hear from you again until he has proposed to
you._ Those grim words, brutal and incredible, came upon her ears for
the hundredth time. Was she weakly to yield to such cynicism! If a
spark of human decency remained to her, she must avert while there was
yet time that which too clearly was going to happen.
Spurred to action by a cruel desperation, she rose abruptly. But that
did not serve. Lightly, but firmly, Lord Duckingfield grabbed her by
the wrist and propelled her with half whimsical precision back to her
chair. The deed was accomplished with a kind of humorous deftness, but
the “insight” of Miss Cass might have told her, had she been able just
then to bring it into play, that the seeming archness of her suitor was
a mere mask. Really he was possessed by a most becoming nervousness
and this a lady of her powers ought to have divined. Perhaps she did
divine it. Underneath Lord Duckingfield’s humor was a fitting sense
of presumptuous audacity. He, at least, in spite of his democratic
sense, could not forget who she was. What more likely than that being a
thoroughly clumsy fellow he had already gone too far.
“Lady Elfreda.” His voice--his deep voice--sounded rather hoarse.
“I want you to help me if you can. I’m in love with you, as I never
thought I could be in love with any girl. You are just my sort. I think
we understand one another. I am sure I can make you happy. Will you
marry me?”
The moment had come. She had but herself to blame. Hers the sole fault
that the thing had happened. The blunt words of one whom she was quite
sure was a good and simple man fell upon her like a douche. They were
like a douche of ice-cool reason. In that instant she saw that this
wicked madness must cease. No matter what the cost she must forget her
miserable self. Such a horrid farce could not go on.
She felt his honest grip upon her fingers. The pause that followed
became more than she could bear. If ever she was to respect herself
again, here and now she must make an end. Desperately she assembled the
fugitive fragments of her will, but the very stars in their courses
were against her now. One phrase, one unforgettable phrase he had used
was running like quicksilver in her brain. “You are such a very nice
little girl that even had you been just plain Miss Brown...!”
Fatal corollary! She was “just plain Miss Brown” had he but known it.
Therefore, as his own words proved, where could be the purpose of his
knowing it? The argument was too sweetly specious! Torn as she was, she
had not the strength to fight it. Half-heartedly she strove to overcome
the spell of those fatal words, but she knew only too well that the
task was hopeless.
“Think it over, my dear.” He was no longer nervous; he was calm,
precise, matter of fact. “I’m not so young as I might be, but anything
that money can buy I am in a position to give you. No need for an
answer just now. I see you want time to think it over--it’s only proper
and natural. But to-morrow I hope you’ll be able to tell me that I may
write to your father.”
Again, with an increasing horror, Girlie felt the kiss of an honest man
upon her shrinking finger tips.