“Rhoda,” said Mrs. Daye, as her daughter entered the drawing-room next
morning, “I have thought it all out, and have decided to ask them. Mrs.
St. George quite agrees with me. _She_ says, sound the Military
Secretary first, and of course I will; but she thinks they are certain
to accept. Afterward we’ll have the whole party photographed on the back
verandah—I don’t see how they could get out of it—and that will be a
souvenir for you, if you like.”
The girl sank into a deep easy chair and crossed her knees with
deliberation. She was paler than usual; she could not deny a certain
lassitude. As her mother spoke she put up her hand to hide an incipient
yawn, and then turned her suffused eyes upon that lady, with the effect
of granting a weary but necessary attention.
“You have decided to ask them?” she asked, with absent-minded
interrogation. “Whom?”
“How ridiculous you are, Rhoda! The Viceroy and Lady Scansleigh, of
course! As if there could be the slightest doubt about anybody else! You
will want to know next what I intend to ask them to. I have never known
a girl take so little interest in her own wedding.”
“That brings us to the point,” said Rhoda.
An aroused suspicion shot into Mrs. Daye’s brown eyes. “What point,
pray? No nonsense, now, Rhoda!”
“No nonsense this time, mummie; but no wedding either. I have
decided—finally—not to marry Mr. Ancram.”
Mrs. Daye sat upright—pretty, plump, determined. She really looked at
the moment as if she could impose her ideas upon anybody. She had a
perception of the effect, to this end, of an impressive _tournure_.
Involuntarily she put a wispish curl in its place, and presented to her
daughter the outline of an unexceptionable shoulder and sleeve.
“Your decision comes too late to be effectual, Rhoda. People do not
change their minds in such matters when the wedding invitations are
actually——”
“Written out to be lithographed—but not ordered yet, mummie.”
“In half an hour they will be.”
“Would have been, mummie dear.”
Mrs. Daye assumed the utmost severity possible to a countenance intended
to express only the amenities of life, and took her three steps toward
the door. “This is childish, Rhoda,” she said over her shoulder, “and I
will not remain to listen to it. Retraction on your part at this hour
would be nothing short of a crying scandal, and I assure you once for
all that neither your father nor I will hear of it.”
Mrs. Daye reached the door very successfully. Rhoda turned her head on
its cushion, and looked after her mother in silence, with a
half-deprecating smile. Having achieved the effect of her retreat, that
lady turned irresolutely.
“I cannot remain to listen to it,” she repeated, and stooped to pick up
a pin.
“Oh, do remain, mummie! Don’t behave like the haughty and hard-hearted
mamma of primitive fiction; she is such an old-fashioned person. Do
remain and be a nice, reasonable, up-to-date mummie: it will save such a
lot of trouble.”
“You don’t seem to realise what you are talking of throwing over!”
Mrs. Daye, in an access of indignation, came as far back as the piano.
“Going down to dinner before the wives of the Small Cause Court! What a
worldly lady it is!”
“I wish,” Mrs. Daye ejaculated mentally, “that I had been brought up to
manage daughters.” What she said aloud, with the effect of being forced
to do so, was that Rhoda had also apparently forgotten that her sister
Lettice was to come out next year. Before the gravity of this
proposition Mrs. Daye sank into the nearest chair. And the expense, with
new frocks for Darjiling, would be really——
“All the arguments familiar to the pages of the _Family Herald_,” the
girl retorted, a dash of bitterness in her amusement, “‘with a little
store of maxims, preaching down a daughter’s heart!’ Aren’t you ashamed,
mummie! But you needn’t worry about that. I’ll go back to England and
live with Aunt Jane: she dotes on me. Or I’ll enter the Calcutta Medical
College and qualify as a lady-doctor. I shouldn’t like the cutting up,
though—I really shouldn’t.”
“Rhoda, _tu me fais mal_! If you could only be serious for five minutes
together. I suppose you have some absurd idea that Mr. Ancram is not
sufficiently—demonstrative. But that will all come in due time, dear.”
The girl laughed so uncontrollably that Mrs. Daye suspected herself of
an unconscious witticism, and reflected a compromising smile.
“You think I could win his affections afterwards. Oh! I should despair
of it. You have no idea how coy he is, mummie!”
Mrs. Daye made a little grimace of sympathy, and threw up her eyes and
her hands. They laughed together, and then the elder lady said with
severity that her daughter was positively indecorous. “Nothing could
have been more devoted than his conduct yesterday afternoon. ‘How
ridiculously happy,’ was what Mrs. St. George said—‘how ridiculously
happy those two are!’”
Mrs. Daye had become argumentative and plaintive. She imparted the
impression that if there was another point of view—which she doubted—she
was willing to take it.
“Oh! no doubt it was evident enough,” Rhoda said tranquilly: “we had
both been let off a bad bargain. An afternoon I shall always remember
with pleasure.”
“Then you have actually done it—broken with him!”
“Yes.”
“Irrevocably?”
“Very much so.”
“_Do_ tell me how he took it!”
“Calmly. With admirable fortitude. It occupied altogether about ten
minutes, with digressions. I’ve never kept any of his notes—he doesn’t
write clever notes—and you know I’ve always refused to wear a ring. So
there was nothing to return except Buzz, which wouldn’t have been fair
to Buzz. It won’t make a scandal, will it, my keeping Buzz? He’s quite a
changed dog since I’ve had him, and I love him for himself alone. He
doesn’t look in the least,” Rhoda added, thoughtfully regarding the
terrier curled up on the sofa, who turned his brown eyes on her and
wagged his tail without moving, “like a Secretariat puppy.”
“And is that all?”
“That’s all—practically.”
“Well, Rhoda, of course I had to think of your interests first—_any_
mother would; but if it’s really quite settled, I must confess that I
believe you are well out of it, and I’m rather relieved myself. When I
thought of being that man’s mother-in-law I used to be thankful
sometimes that your father would retire so soon—which was horrid, dear.”
“I can understand your feelings, mummie.”
“I’m sure you can, dear: you are always my sympathetic child. _I_
wouldn’t have married him for worlds! I never could imagine how you made
up your mind to it in the first place. Now, I suppose that absurd Mrs.
St. George will go on with her theory that no daughter of mine will ever
marry in India, because the young men find poor old me so amusing!”
“She’s a clever woman—Mrs. St. George,” Rhoda observed.
“And now that we’ve had our little talk, dear, there’s one thing I
should like you to take back—that quotation from Longfellow, or was it
Mrs. Hemans?—about a daughter’s heart, you know.” Mrs. Daye inclined her
head coaxingly towards the side. “I _shouldn’t_ like to have that to
remember between us, dear,” she said, and blew her nose with as close an
approach to sentiment as could possibly be achieved in connection with
that organ.
“You ridiculous old mummie! I assure you it hadn’t the slightest
application.”
“Then _that’s_ all right,” Mrs. Daye returned, in quite her sprightly
manner. “I’ll refuse the St. Georges’ dinner on Friday night; it’s only
decent that we should keep rather quiet for a fortnight or so, till it
blows over a little. And we shall get rid of you, my dear child, I’m
perfectly certain, quite soon enough,” she added over her shoulder, as
she rustled out. “With your brains, you might even marry very well at
home. But your father is sure to be put out about this—awfully put out!”
“Do you know, Buzz,” murmured Rhoda a moment later (the terrier had
jumped into her lap), “if I had been left an orphan in my early youth, I
fancy I would have borne it better than most people.”