THE LOVER WHO CAME TOO LATE
But here, in our flat, I found to my amazement that someone had been
before me with the news.
Cicely’s marigold-coloured hair and flushed face reared themselves up
excitedly from the faded couch cushions as I came in.
“I say! _Tots!_ What’s all this?—Look here, what _is_ the meaning of it?”
she cried breathlessly. “What’s this wild story about you being engaged
to be married? Do say it isn’t true;—it can’t be! is it?”
“Who in the world,” I demanded, standing by our rickety old table in the
middle of the room and staring at her as she sat up leaning on her elbow,
“told you anything about it?”
“Well, who d’you suppose? Who would?”
I glanced quickly at the tray on the table, crowded with the _débris_ of
what had been tea for two, one saucer piled high with cigarette-ends that
told their own tale. Who had been? One of Cicely’s Slade girls? But how
would _they_ know? Whoever it was must have stayed _hours_!
“It was your friend”—Cicely announced this even as the cork hurls itself
from an unwired bottle of champagne—“Mr. Sydney Vandeleur!”
“Sydney—he’s been here?”
“Well, of course!”
“What on earth for?”
“What _for_, Tots? Why, to see _you_! And, I say! How awfully charming
and clever and delightful he is! And so handsome! Such a real artist’s
head, I call it! _Exactly_ like a Vandyke of Charles the First! Oh, my
dear! _Don’t_ tell me you’ve gone and got engaged to somebody else, when
there’s such a really _wonderful_ person so desperately in love with you!”
“Who says he’s in love with me?”
“Why, he does, of course. Didn’t you _know_? You must have. _Didn’t_ you?”
“N-no.”
Slowly I dropped my gloves and umbrella and vanity-bag and paper on to
the table. Of course I have “known,” at the back of my mind, all the
time about Sydney. But however positive a girl may be that a man cares
for her, _until he’s told her so she’s never certain_. This may sound
Irish—to a man. Any _girl_ understands....
To hear the fact proclaimed by Cicely’s lips—which really, I do believe,
would blurt out anything that came into her red head!—gave me the same
shock of surprise that it would have done even if I’d never received
little attentions from Sydney, never heard his neatly-turned compliments,
never seen those handsome brown eyes of his fixed upon me in unmistakable
admiration, or noticed the blank mask that had suddenly fallen over
them yesterday, when I broke to the Vandeleurs the news of my so-called
engagement. Cicely went on with her tale, enjoying it thoroughly.
“My dear Tots, you must have known. He’s wanted to marry you ever since
you were a slip of a schoolgirl with a little proud pearl of a face and
that lovely dark hair of yours in a great mane down to your waist. Even
then he always meant to propose to you.”
“And he tells _you_ that? Not me?”
Here I sat down suddenly in the elbow-chair with the one arm “that’s
always a-comin’ off, drat it!” as Mrs. Skinner says.
It came off now.
“_Drat_ it!” I quoted, through my teeth, and hurled the broken arm into
a corner with a violence that did some—not much—good to my feelings. “He
never told me, Cicely.”
“Because he was too tactful, too nice. He’d too much fine feeling,”
she explained eagerly. “He couldn’t possibly ask you so soon after the
‘smash’ in your affairs, and after Colonel Trant’s death, and all. It
_would_ have looked too much as if he were taking advantage of that to
rush the position. He determined to wait until you—until he—well, to
wait,” said Cicely. “He saw I was sympathetic; he didn’t mind telling me
all this. But he was going to ask you when he and his mother came back
from abroad. All the time, he was simply longing to come and carry you
off bodily from that hateful typewriter where he kept thinking of you
chained, he said, like Andromeda (who _was_ she, exactly?) to her rock.
Only he just wouldn’t. Wasn’t it _sweet_ of him, Tots!”
“To wait and tell all this to another girl?”
“But it was you he was coming round to tell!”
“He didn’t stop to see me.”
“He _had_ to get back to Belgrave Square and dress for a theatre-party of
his mother’s.”
“What he came for at all, after yesterday, I don’t see!”
“It was _about_ yesterday he came to see you, Tots! You see, he says he
met you, and you seem to have made him understand that you were engaged
to be married.”
“Well? Didn’t he believe me? Did he come round here and sit here filling
the place with that abominable reek of Egyptian cigarettes—and, yes!
finishing _all_ that nice peach jelly I got in specially for you—to find
out whether it was true?”
“Is it true, then?” gasped Cicely.
“_Yes!_ I told him so. I told Lady Vandeleur so. I am engaged.”
“And not—to _him_!” Cicely seemed utterly unable to grasp how this
could be. “What? After all he’s said—and _with_ his photograph on your
dressing-table—not that it’s nearly good enough for him! And after what I
told him I hoped——”
“What DID you tell him?” I groaned resignedly.
Cicely twisted the long, slender figure, upon which her equally slender
salary as a mannequin depends, into a more comfortable curve against the
cushions.
“Well! _Poor_ Mr. Vandeleur! When he said he’d seen you lunching at the
Carlton alone with a young man, I told him it must be a mistake. You
never _did_ lunch there, or with young men. It was just what I admired
you for, when it’s _so_ easy to get into the other way of being rather
nice to people just for the sake of their giving you a good time and
a change from being at work all day! And even though you’re not a bit
stuffy with me because I sometimes do it, you——”
“Never mind me. What did he say?”
“He said: ‘But how _could_ there be a mistake? She brought up this
self-satisfied-looking individual and introduced him to my mother as
her _fiancé_. She let us congratulate him!’ I said, ‘Well, but she
hasn’t _got_ a _fiancé_—or I should have known about it! I’ve never
heard a syllable. She didn’t even tell me she was going out to lunch.
She must have been taken out at a moment’s notice—by a friend of Jack
Trant’s, perhaps. Or,’ I said, ‘it may have been someone she absolutely
had to meet, on business!’” she continued vaguely—much she knows about
business!—“‘Getting a better post, or something of that sort. And
when she met you unexpectedly, she was flurried, and didn’t know how
to explain. Is your mother rather particular, or strait-laced?’ Mr.
Vandeleur said, ‘Very, I am afraid!’ So I said, ‘Well, that’s what must
have happened!—Tots, in her nervousness, and not wishing your mother to
be shocked, just blurted out ‘_fiancé_’——”
“Thank you,” I muttered. “I didn’t know _I_ was a blurter-out!”
“You mean _I_ am! I daresay! Well, I don’t care! I thought that _must_
have been it—I didn’t see what else it could have been! And the poor man
was so thirsting to hear anything I could tell him about you, that I
should have been a brute not to!” declared my chum, plaintively defiant.
“So I just said everything I could—about that photograph, and all!”
“What photograph?” I snapped.
“Why, that one of Mr. Vandeleur. I recognized him from that, the moment
Mrs. Skinner let him in. And I told him that it was the one and only
portrait of a young man that you seemed to possess, and that you always
keep it in a silver frame beside your looking-glass. Now, Tots, you can’t
say you don’t!”
No; I couldn’t.
“And that cheered him up so, poor fellow! He said—Oh, _isn’t_ it a
tragedy?” interpolated Cicely with zest—“that I’d given him fresh hope to
go away with!”
“Fresh fiddlesticks,” I muttered, still more savagely.
“You mean there isn’t any?”
“I mean,” I explained as patiently as I could, “that a girl can’t be
engaged to two men at once.”
“Then _who’s_ this other, Tots, that you’ve never said a word about? He
can’t possibly be fit to hold a candle to—I mean, who _is_ it?”
“It is the managing director and head of the firm where I’ve been
working,” I told her bluntly. “His name is Mr. William Waters.”
“_What?_ Not the man you all call ‘_Still Waters_’? The one you all
detest, who’s so impossible to please? Engaged to him? Oh, now you’re
pretending! Tell me, Tots. Of course you are only joking, after all?”
A nice idea of “joking” my chum has got!
“_Does_ this look like a joke?” I demanded suddenly. The newly-bought
diamonds flashed under her widely-opened eyes. “Don’t you admire my
engagement ring, Cis?”
Cicely Harradine’s soft bud of a face faded from pink to pale, and her
big eyes clouded dolefully. She said nothing for a moment but “Oh, Tots!”
(she’s quite as hopeless as Miss Smith). Then, in a tone of the timidest
reproach, she faltered, “Mr. Vandeleur _said_ he was ‘big and blonde
and City-fied and extremely prosperous-looking.’ I said I’d never seen
any friend of yours who was like that. No wonder! The head of the firm!
But—Tots!—I should—should hate to think of you, of all girls, marrying
anyone because of his—money?”
“Then don’t think it. You may do me that justice!” I said sharply. She
was nearly as bad in her way as the typists at the Near Oriental had
been in theirs—and the same prevarication had to be used to “head off”
_her_ comments on a marriage for money. After which, the accusation in
my chum’s big eyes melted suddenly into tears. Impulsively she flung her
slim arms round my neck—and I had to let her.
“Forgive me, Tots. Dear old girl, but how _was_ I to know? It’s all so
unexpected, and I never met him, and you never gave me a hint! I _didn’t_
see how you could possibly prefer anyone to Mr. Vandeleur, who _is_ so
wonderful! But of course I know Love’s blind—I mean, you can’t _make_
yourself not care for this Mr. Waters, just because another man wants
so badly to marry you! Oh, Tots, it’s all my fault, but I’m afraid he’s
going to write to you about that——”
“Mr. Vandeleur is?” (This, too!)
“Yes! It’s all because of what I said to him. I have been putting my foot
in it,” she admitted, as if this were quite a new idea to me too, “but
_do_ forgive me—Since you do really care for this Mr. Waters I’m only too
delighted, darling. Oh, I’m so glad for your happiness, you can’t think!
When did it happen? He’s _madly_ in love with you, of course?”
Here I thought grimly of Miss Robinson’s version: “_My dears, the little
Trant makes out she’s madly in love with him!_” All this about two people
who, as far as I can make out, have only one thing in common—both being
absolutely falling-in-love-_proof_!
Poor, well-meaning, warm-hearted Cicely was still effusing; eager to make
up for her first suspicion that I _wasn’t_ engaged for the only right
reason.
“I ought to have seen! Of course! It was he who gave you this extra work
about a fortnight ago?”
“Exactly!” (Extra work with a vengeance! More than I’ve bargained for!)
—“And that we were so thankful for, just when I lost my own job and was
ill, and there were all those extra things to get.... It was your ‘rise’
that got them all, I knew. Only I didn’t know ... this other. It _began_
then, I suppose, Tots?”
“Yes, it began then.”
“How romantic! Well! And I did notice that you’ve been absent-minded and
not saying much these last few days, and I _ought_ to have known why it
was. _Especially_ yesterday. Did HE take you out to lunch again to-day?
Oh, doesn’t it make the whole world different for you?”
“It makes the menu jolly different, anyhow,” I admitted.
“Ah, yes; you may pretend to be as flippant as you like about it, but I
know that’s ‘all put on’ to hide what you’re really feeling!” declared
Cicely.
Such a convenient conviction! I made up my mind, then and there, that
this was just the line I should adopt with my chum. And laughing merrily
for her benefit, I fled to my own little room.
* * * * *
Here, left to my own thoughts at last, I flung myself down on my creaky
little camp bedstead and raged as I reviewed this new aspect of the
situation. Put crudely, it is this: It’s not _until_ I tie myself up with
this wretched sham “engagement” to the Governor that I have the chance
of cutting everything to do with him and his odious office, and becoming
safely, happily and _genuinely_ engaged!
Or, in the jargon of the Near Oriental, it’s just after I’ve sold out at
a loss that I get an advantageous offer!
Why on earth couldn’t Sydney Vandeleur have said all that _before_? A
year ago—even a month ago—and, to _think_ what it would have saved!
I shouldn’t have minded getting that money for Jack—from his own
brother-in-law! Yes; if he’s cared for me all this time, why couldn’t he
have proposed to and married me before I’d so much as seen that hateful
Near Oriental, with that “Andromeda’s rock” of a typewriter, watched over
by what Miss Holt calls “that Gordian” of a Governor! Why couldn’t Sydney
have hurried up, for once in his life, to play Perseus?
“Too much tact!” Good gracious! Why must men have this absurd code of
ethics about “the right thing” when there’s a _woman_ in the case?
Why does a man who’s hard-up, for instance, consider it so much more
“honourable” to “ride away” without a word to the girl whose heart he
knows is his, just because he “feels he oughtn’t to propose before he’s
in a position to marry?”
He “feels he ought not to stand in the girl’s way of better offers.”
... But he _does_ that, more often than not, with her first sight of
him! Never mind. He’d _rather_ leave her fretting her heart out for life
over the belief that he was only flirting after all, or let her make
a miserable marriage with someone else—rather than be “dishonourable”
enough to own up that he cares and wants her to wait perhaps three or
four years for him. He’s saved his precious “code,” just as I suppose
Sydney wished to save his.
Oh, men’s “fine feelings,” men’s delicacy and tact, men’s sense of
honour! What infinitely greater damage these do in the world than all
women’s lack of principle!
That sounds sweeping, but _isn’t_ this enough to make a girl storm at the
scruples—or whatever they may call them—which have pretty well messed up
her own life for her?
I ought to be safely and happily married, by now, to Sydney Vandeleur.
He’d make a charming husband, I know; not a wish of his wife’s that he
wouldn’t immediately try to gratify, from the pattern of the drawing-room
carpets to where she would wish to live most of the time—Pont Street—Park
Lane—or the perfectly gorgeous, old-fashioned castle with all modern
conveniences that he owns in Ireland—Ballycool, they call it. Oh, for
the deep sighing woods and the silver lakes over there—miles and miles
from anywhere else—scented solitude, with all the drawbacks of solitude
removed by motors _ad lib._—by big house-parties of amusing people as
often as one chose!—Yes, I suppose I do share Miss Holt’s type of mind,
but then I never pretend to be romantic, or to cherish illusions about
being able to fall in love.... I should be really, genuinely fond of
Sydney himself—I mean I _should_ have been. He’d be so devoted—how could
one help feeling pleased to have him about, approving of everything one
did and said and looked? He’s what I’d call companionable; not too lofty
and masculine to take an interest in the details that mean so much more
to a woman than what this country is coming to, by Gad, or what on earth
McKenna or Asquith or someone is driving at when he says—(here yards,
droned aloud, out of the _Times_)—or whether Kent is going to do any
better this year; which is all the conversation that any married women
_I’ve_ ever met seem to get out of _their_ husbands. Sydney would always
know what anyone had had on at a party, including his wife. He’d be able
to help her think out her frocks—and what heavenly frocks they would
be! Then he’s so undeniably good-looking himself. One wouldn’t be able
to help appreciating the fact that the other women would always notice
it with envy, and would put it down as such a score to the credit of
the one he’d married! His dark, “interesting” face with the Vandyke
beard and the melancholy brown eyes seems watching me now out of the big
silver frame in which he sent it to me. Yes; it certainly does hold the
place of honour on the narrow painted-pine chest-of-drawers that has
two handles missing, but is still spread with ivory-topped brushes, a
monogrammed hand-mirror and long crystal scent flagons—relics from the
wreck of the Trant fortunes!—the place of honour usually reserved in a
girl’s room for the portrait of HIM—whoever “he” may be! Why did I put it
there? Partly for the sake of old times, I suppose; I’ve tried to keep
everything of that sort which was in my room at home.... Partly to remind
myself, whenever I’ve felt extra-downhearted, that there was at least
one eminently presentable young man who was accustomed to say pretty
things of the face and hair that I saw reflected in the somewhat wavy
looking-glass near by.... Sentiment, vanity, or a mixture of both, but
_not_ the motive with which Cicely had credited me and which she’d seen
fit to impart to the original.
That idiot of a Sydney! If I could hope he’d feel it, I’d smash the
glass of that frame and run red-hot hat-pins into his portrait. I have
been furiously angry to-day, in turns with the three typists, with Still
Waters, and with Cicely—but none of this counts, compared with my fury
against the lover who has come too late!
It’s his fault. It’s all his fault—all that’s just happened—all that
will happen during the mad “arrangement” of this next year. And when
that year’s up, where will it find me? A little richer, perhaps, by
what’s left of my desperately-won salary, but back in the over-crowded
labour-market, the world of working-women who lose looks and youth
and spirits in the struggle for daily bread. Oh, it’s all very well
to be plucky, and to treat everything as a joke, and to live from one
Saturday matinée to another, making the most of life in London as a
bachelor-girl—while you’re twenty-one.
What becomes of the “bachelor-girl” of forty-five? And fifty?
That, I suppose, I shall have to wait and find out for myself, thanks to
Mr. Sydney Vandeleur!
Why couldn’t he have left things as they were at the Carlton?—
But I’ve had enough of this. It has “done me up” completely.
I am going to bed.
* * * * *
This morning I feel, if anything, angrier with Sydney Vandeleur than I
did before.
He’s done it now! He _has_ written.
His note lies before me on our wobbly little breakfast-table with the
metal coffee-pot and the green Bruges crock full of lilac (bought out of
my “rise”!) screening me from Cicely’s anxious eyes as I read:
“_My dearest Monica_,
“_I have never called you so before. That was a mistake.
Anything is a mistake that keeps us two apart. Dear, I want to
come and see you at once, but cannot get out of some odious
‘arrangements’ of the Mamma’s for this week-end._
“_Let me come on Monday afternoon, and, though I don’t deserve
it, be kind to me then._
“_Till then, and ever_,
“_Your devoted S. V._”
Now _I_ have written; and pretty quickly too.
“_My dear Sydney_,
“_It was kind of you to write to me to congratulate me again on
my engagement to Mr. Waters, which I suppose is the meaning of
your note. You suggest calling; is this to congratulate me for
the third time? If so, I can only hope that my happiness will
keep pace with your good wishes for it! But I am afraid that I
shall not be able to receive them in person on Monday, as it
is the very day that I hope to be going off to Sevenoaks, on a
visit to my fiancé’s mother._
“_Please give my very kindest regards to Lady Vandeleur, and
believe me_
“_Sincerely yours_,
“_Monica Trant_.”
There!