THE FIRST KISS
“Well! I suppose there is nothing for it but to go in here,” I said,
marching, with my head well up, to the door of the den.
The Governor was only just in time to open it for me. Without a look at
him I walked in, making straight for the piano-stool.
I sat down. I planted my foot firmly upon the loud pedal. My fingers
clutched at the first chords of a spirited war-song as if it were a
life-buoy.
“Do sing!” I heard myself fling almost imperiously at my employer.
He sang—not well.
“And please keep on singing,” I said, into the last chords of the song.
“_Loud_ ones, please.”
Without any further conversation, we went doggedly through “_Drake’s
Drum_” and “_The Two Grenadiers_.”
I simply wasn’t going to let Uncle Albert Waters, left in the dining-room
with Major Montresor, imagine that his nephew and I had gone into the
den to—to make anything but—music for one single instant that evening.
Let them hear for themselves that we were busy at the piano the whole
time!
They could hear well enough through the wall of the dining-room——
No! Apparently they couldn’t hear well enough. For no sooner had we
come to the end of those bars of the “_Marseillaise_” that conclude the
Grenadier song, than the door of the den was thrown open and in walked
those two other men.
Uncle Albert, of course in advance, pranced up to the piano, thumped his
fist into the open palm of the other hand, leaned over the piano towards
us, then, in a solemn, confidential, impressive tone of voice, he brought
out—one word. It was the word:
“_Wedded!_”
“What?” rapped out the Governor, sharply wheeling round. And I couldn’t
help gasping, wondering if this old gentleman had suddenly come under
some hallucination about our being more, even, than merely “engaged.”
“Yes. ‘Wedded,’” repeated Uncle Albert, raising his voice again to its
normal blare. “You know!—The fellow and the girl! That first-rate picture
by Millais or Holman Hunt or one of ’em. Anyhow, you know it. She’s got
her head resting right back against the young chap’s shoulder, like this”—
(Unsuccessful imitation of the pose of Leighton’s model by Uncle Albert
against the piano.)
—“And he’s lifting her hand to his mouth—_you_ know. That’s the one.
That’s the name I was puzzling over half through dinner, and it only just
dawned upon me just as I finished my cigar. I had to come in and tell
you. And, if we’re not _de trop_,” added that appalling old man, settling
down like a big collapsible toy in one of the huge arm-chairs, “we’d like
to hear just one tune in here. ‘If he’s only _singing_,’ as I said to the
Major, ‘he might just as well have company by as not, and I’m fond of a
good song after dinner!’ So now, Billy, what have you got there? D’you
know that A 1 thing—ah, what is it? What a man I am for forgetting names!
Something bandy—not Bandy-legs——”
“Ha!” Major Montresor, from the other big chair, came to the rescue.
“‘_The Bando-lero_’!”
“That’s it! Know it, William? ‘I _am_ the Bando-lero!’” vociferated Uncle
Albert, “‘the—something—Bando-lero——’”
“I know it,” said my employer, with restraint, “but I haven’t got it in
the house!”
It was my turn to suppress a smile as I remembered how, in my
nursery-days, I’d defined “_a bandolero_” as “_a person with a very loud
voice_,” just as naturally as I used to think that “_a Radical_” meant
“_a dreadfully wicked man_.” It was the very song that I could imagine
Uncle Albert enjoying singing himself. A pity his nephew didn’t happen to
have it in the house!
“You have this, though,” I suggested helpfully, as I turned to the rack
and took out “_The Storm-Fiend_,” with a look at the Governor meaning,
“Don’t dare to say you loathe this thing!” (It was because he did, by the
way, that the song had been ordered for him in a burst of unsisterliness
by Theo.)
“Yes! _You_ can look soft nothings at the girl, my boy!” was Uncle
Albert’s interpretation of that glance of the Governor’s as I spoke, “but
she’s got to keep those pretty dark eyes of hers for the music!”
(—And I wonder the sheet of music didn’t shrivel up under the gaze of the
eyes thus praised!)
We then proceeded to dash through “_The Storm-Fiend_.” I wondered whether
the Governor found in the loud singing of it as much of a safety-valve as
I found in the playing of the artillery-like accompaniment!
“Bravo! Very good! Stirring song, that!” Uncle Albert’s bellow swelled
the echoes of the last chord. “Capital song—very well sung. I like that
tune—‘_I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho! I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho!_’” he
persisted (to some tune quite of his own). “‘_The Storm-Fiend is the
Lord—of—Woe!_’ Very good! Still, not very appropriate for to-night,
Billy? Not much Woe about this evening, my dear, eh?” (to me). “Supposing
we have a bit of sentiment now. What was that other song, now? I was
talking about it only at tea-time here—something tally-ho-ish that we
could all join in the chorus of.”
But here I felt I simply must nip in the bud a request for the one about—
“_All my Fancy dwells upon Nancy._”
“Nancy” had had _enough_!
So I rose, saying gently, “If you will excuse me, I am rather tired”—
This was no fib!
—“and I think I will go to bed early. Good night, Mr. Waters,” politely
to that awful Uncle Albert. “Good-bye, Major Montresor; so nice to
have seen you again like this.... Good-night,” with a little nod to my
official _fiancé_.
“‘_Be the day weary, be the day long_....’” I thought. But we hadn’t
_even yet_ come to the end of it.
For Uncle Albert Waters had bounded up again from the deep chair like a
large india-rubber ball, with yet another protest to his nephew.
“What’s that? what’s that? Ah, but that’ll never do. Never!” reverberated
through the den. “You’re never going to let the girl go off like that,
Billy?—Just a word and a nod?”
Good heavens—what could he mean?
“Why! She’d never think anything of you again, lad! Never mind two
old has-beens like us. We don’t count, do we, Major? Don’t you
take any notice of us. You kiss your sweetheart good night, like a
sensible youngster!” And before I could escape, before either of us
had fully realized what this terrible, bellowing, stout, red-faced,
eyes-on-stalked, cigar-scented, coarse, _horrid_ old man would take it
into his head to say or do next, he had literally pushed us into each
other’s arms.
I don’t know whether it was for a minute or for half a second that I was
given over to feeling the true horror of this position; to wondering what
on earth my make-believe _fiancé_ meant me to do about it—what _he_ meant
to do.
Then he—the Governor—decided the matter for me.
With the suddenest of movements he ducked swiftly forward and bent,
without further look or word, to kiss me. I was too petrified to draw
back even the fraction of an inch from the touch of his lips; it brushed
by, scarcely stirring on my cheek, to fall almost roughly on the ripple
of dark hair above my ear.
Then he bolted to the door and held it open for my headlong exit from the
den.
To the sound of an explosive “_That’s_ more like it!” from Uncle Waters.
“You surely never——” (Slam! from the door) I tore across the hall. I
didn’t pause for any more good nights in the drawing-room. I rushed
upstairs to my bedroom.
Here I flung myself down into one of the rosy-chintz chairs by the open
window and gasped while I tried to collect my whirling wits.
* * * * *
What _had_ happened? What was he—that young man—doing to _allow_
anything to happen? His “official” _fiancée_? Was this what he meant by
“official”—it wasn’t what _I_ meant, and I would let him know that. I was
furious with him—His uncle’s fault?—Yes! But he ought to have managed so
that _That_ wasn’t thrust upon me like this.
I _was_ angry!
Then I couldn’t help laughing a little at the mad incongruity of it.
Kissed, by Still Waters!
What could he think I thought of it? What was _he_ thinking about it all
now, downstairs there with those other two horrible men? What was his
Uncle Albert thinking? Chuckling and laughing, ho, ho! I expected....
That ghastly moment!
That ghastly, _ghastly_ moment!...
Thank goodness that the Governor did at least end it as soon as was
humanly possible. And, after all, that quick gesture of his hardly counts
as a kiss. I’ve seen the love-scenes in private theatricals carried out
just like that by bashful amateurs. A stage-kiss; a sham one; in fact, no
kiss at all.
Well, that, anyhow, was decent of Still Waters....
But _was_ it? Was he thinking of _my_ feelings? I don’t believe he was.
I believe—at least, a month ago I might have believed—with the rest
of the girls at the office, that that would be his only conception of
kissing a girl. I can’t believe that now—not of a brother of Theo’s and
Blanche’s—not of a son of Mrs. Waters’s! His father, Blanche said, was so
devoted to her ... their boy would have inherited some sort of idea of
the real thing! Besides, a young man who’s already surprised me by being
able to sing like that, and to be keen on dancing, and to win swimming
competitions, and to look, sometimes, quite _human_! Oh, no!
It was _meant_ for being decent.
He’d scarcely touched me—except just on the hair.
Then I felt furious again.
My hair—my pet vanity—the prettiest thing about me! Once Sydney
Vandeleur begged me for a piece of it to keep—that piece with the
ripple—as if I’d cut it! If I had, it wouldn’t have got kissed....
Hateful, clumsy, blundering, or _something_ young man! He _needn’t_
have kissed me at all! He _could_ have got out of it—in spite of his
detestable old uncle.
Couldn’t he have seemed to think that I was too shy to let him in public,
and allowed me to slip away? Or couldn’t he have followed me into the
hall and shut the door and _pretended_?
Or couldn’t he have hatched up some joke on the spur of the moment and
announced cheerfully—
“Oh, we don’t say our good nights in here, Uncle; outside in the veranda
is where we say good night”—or something like that?
Easily.
Then what did he mean by it?
Was it that this excruciating evening, with its countless trials, had
worn his patience absolutely through, and that he felt he must vent his
fury on something besides Cariad? Was that kiss a kind of “let-fly” at
_me_?
How frightfully unfair! As if I’d done anything but rush into breaches
and make the best of things for him! Good gracious! I shall tell him
exactly what I think of it all to-morrow!
* * * * *
But the evening held one last trial for me before I was able to slip into
that springy snowdrift of a bed and lie tossing, indignantly awake, for
quite an hour after I’d heard the motor puff off, taking Major Montresor
to catch his last train up to town.
This trial was heralded by a tap at my door.
Enter Blanche in her _débutante’s_ dinner-gown.
“How early you’re going to bed, Nancy! We thought you were still with
Billy, but Uncle Albert’s taken him on at billiards—he says he’s playing
worse than anyone he’s ever seen. Is anything the matter, dear?”
“Oh, no—nothing; why?”
“You look so flushed—I thought you might have a headache.”
A headache—ah! valuable antique feminine excuse for everything!
“Yes—perhaps I have, a little.”
“Poor darling! Everybody _did_ seem to be talking at once at dinner, and
Uncle Albert _is_ such a fog-horn, enough to go through anybody’s head.
Let me brush your hair for you, will you?”
I had to let her.
“It’ll be better with all these pins and clips out,” said Blanche,
unfastening and shaking loose. “Goodness, what lots you’ve got! It’s like
yards and yards of black skein-silk. And _how_ lovely and soft.”
And here, in the looking-glass, I saw the girl’s face, blonde and
clear-featured as her brother’s, pressed for a moment to the ripple of
dark hair above my ear.
It must have looked something like that just now to those two other men
in the den....
Then I saw my own face turn scarlet.
Blanche Waters saw that too.
“Oh, sorry,” she murmured, with a little “understanding” smile. “Mustn’t
I?”
She might just as well have _said_, “Mustn’t anybody except Billy kiss
you just there?”
—Which did, as my brother Jack would say, put the lid on it!
Well! to-morrow I am going to put my foot down, very firmly, on anything
more of _this_ sort!