let us not come to blows about a word. I don't know what recondite
meanings you may attach to 'flirting'; but when a young woman hangs upon
a man's accents, as if his lips were bright Apollo's lute strung with
his hair, and responds with her own most animated conversation, and
makes her very handsomest eyes at him, and falls one by one into all her
most becoming poses, and appears rapt into oblivion of the presence of
other people--flirting is what ordinary dictionary-fed English folk call
it.”
And he gave his head a jerk of satisfaction, as one whose theorem was
driven home.
Ruth tittered--a titter that was an admission of the impeachment. “Well?
What would you have?” she asked, with a play of the eyebrows. “I take it
for granted that you haven't produced this young man without a purpose,
and I have never known you to produce any young man for any purpose
except one. So the more briskly I lead him on, the sooner will he come
to--to what, if I am not mistaken”--she tilted her chin at an angle of
inquiry--“dictionary-fed English folk call the scratch.”
Pontycroft gave his head a shake of disapproval. “No, no; Bertram is too
good a chap to be trifled with,” he seriously protested. “You shouldn't
lead him on at all, if you mean in the end, according to what seems your
incorrigible habit, to put him off.” Ruth's eyebrows arched themselves
in an expression of simplicity surprised.
“Why should you suppose that I mean anything of the sort?”
Pontycroft studied her with a frown. “You unconscionable little pickle!
Do you mean that you would accept him?”
“I don't know,” she answered slowly, reflecting. “He's a very personable
person. And he's a prince--which, of course, rather dazzles my
democratic fancy. And I suppose he's well enough off not to be after
a poor girl merely for her money. And--well--on the whole--don't you
see?--well--perhaps a poor girl might go further and fare worse.”
She pointed her stammering conclusion by a drop of the eyelids and a
tiny wriggle of the shoulders.
“In fact, when you said you would die a bachelor, you never thought you
would live to be married,” Pontycroft commented, making a face, slightly
wry, the intention of which wasn't clear. He felt about his pockets for
his cigarette case, lighted a cigarette, and smoked half an inch of it
in silence. “At any rate,” he went on, “here's news for your friends.
And what--by the by--what about deathless Aphrodite? 'The only man you
ever really cared for'--what becomes of that poor devil?”
A light kindled in Ruth's eyes; not an entirely friendly light; a light
that seemed to threaten. But all she said was, “How do you know that
that poor devil isn't Bertram Bertrandoni himself?”
The gesture with which Pontycroft flicked the ash from his cigarette
proclaimed him a bird not to be caught with chaff.
“Gammon,” he said. “You'd never seen him.”
“Never seen him?” retorted Ruth, her face astonished and reproachful.
“You are forgetting Venice. Why shouldn't I have lost my young
affections to him that night at Venice? You haven't a notion how
romantic it all was, with the moonlight and everything, and Lucilla
quoting Byron, and then Astyanax, in a panama hat, dashing to our
assistance like a knight out of a legend. Isn't it almost a matter of
obligation for distressed females to fall in love with the knights who
dash to their assistance.”
“Hruff,” growled Pontycroft, smoking, “why do you waste these pearls of
sophistry on me?”
Ruth laughed.
“All right,” she unblushingly owned up. “The only man I've ever
seriously cared for isn't Bertrando Bertrandoni. But what then? Let us
look at it as men of the world. What has that poor devil got to do with
the question of my marriage? You yourself told me that he was the last
man alive I should think of leading to the altar. You said the persons
we care for in our calf-period are always the wrong persons. And what
some people say carries double weight, because”--that not entirely
friendly light flickered again in her eyes for a second--“because they
teach by example as well as precept.”
And of course the words weren't out of her mouth before she regretted
them.
Pontycroft said nothing, made no sign. It may be that his sun-burned
skin flushed a little, that the lines of his forehead wavered. He
sat with his homely face turned towards Florence, and appeared to be
considering the effect of his cigarette-smoke on the view.
Ruth waited, and the interval seemed long. She looked guilty, she looked
frightened, her eyes downcast, her lips parted, a conscious culprit,
bowing her head to receive the blow she had provoked. But no blow fell.
She waited as long as flesh and blood could stand the suspense. At last
she sprang up.
“Oh,” she cried wildly, “why don't you crush me? Why don't you tell
me I'm a beast? Why don't you tell me you despise me--loathe me--for
being--for being such a cad? Oh, Harry, I am so sorry.”
She stood before him with tight-clasped hands, her whole form rigid in
an anguish of contrition. To have taunted him with a thing for which she
should have greatly pitied him, a secret she had no right even to know,
a grief, a shame, to which in decency she should never remotely have
alluded--oh, it was worse than brutal, it was cattish, treacherous, it
was base.
But he smiled up at her from calm eyes.
“What's the row?” he asked. “What are you sorry about? You very neatly
scored a point, that's all. Besides, on the subject in question, a
fellow in the course of years will have said so many stinging things
to himself as to have rendered him reasonably tough. And now then”--he
gaily shifted his key--“since Bertram isn't the favoured swain, let us
hope he soon will be. It's every bit as easy to fall in love with
one man as with another, and often a good deal easier. Come--sit
down--concentrate your mind upon Bertram's advantages--and remember that
words break no bones.”
Ruth's attitude had relaxed, her face had changed, contrition fading
into what looked like disappointment, disillusion, and then like a kind
of passive bitterness. Pontycroft waved his hand towards her chair.
Automatically, absently, she obeyed him, and sat down.
“I must beg pardon,” she said, with rather a bitter little smile, “for
my exhibition of emotion. I had forgotten how Englishmen hate such
exhibitions. It is vulgar enough to _feel_ strong emotions--a sort of
thing that should be left to foreigners and the lower classes; but to
_show_ them is to take an out-and-out liberty with the person we show
them to, the worst possible bad form. Well, well! Words breaks no bones;
'hearts, though, sometimes,' the poet added: but there again, poets are
vulgar-minded, human creatures, born as a general rule at Camberwell,
and what can they know of the serene invulnerability of heart that
is the test of real good-breeding? Anyhow”--her face changed again,
lighting up--“what you say about its being often a good deal easier to
fall in love with one man than with another is lamentably true--that's
why we don't invariably love with reason. Your thought has elsewhere
found expression in song--how does it go?” Her eyes by this time were
shining with quite their wonted mirthful fires, yet deep down in them
I think one might still have discerned a shadow of despite, as she
sang:--
Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière;
L'un parle bien, l'autre se tait;