MORE ABOUT RUPERT
Rupert had gone through a great many changes during the last few weeks.
He had begun to grow rather captivated by Miss Chivvey and in his
efforts to polish, refine and educate her had become rather carried away
himself. But towards the end she began to show signs of rebellion; she
was bored, though impressed. He took her to a serious play and explained
it all the time, during which she openly yawned. Finally, when she
insisted on his seeing a statuette made of her by her artistic friend,
an ignorant, pretentious little creature, known as Mimsie, they
positively had a quarrel.
"Well, I don't care what you say; I think it's very pretty," when Rupert
pointed out faults that a child could easily have seen.
"So it may be, my dear child--not that I think it is. But it's
absolutely without merit; it's very very bad. It could hardly be worse.
If she went all over London I doubt if she could find a more ridiculous
thing calling itself a work of art. Can't you see it's like those little
figures they used to have on old-fashioned Twelfth Cakes, made of
sugar."
"No, I can't. Shut up! I mayn't know quite so much as you, but ever
since I was a child everybody's always said I was very artistic."
They were sitting in her mother's drawing-room in Camden Hill. Rupert
glanced round it: it was a deplorable example of misdirected aims and
mistaken ambitions; a few yards of beaded curtains which separated it
from another room gratified Moona with the satisfactory sensation that
her surroundings were Oriental. As a matter of fact, the decoration was
so commonplace and vulgar that to attempt to describe it would be
painful to the writer whilst having no sort of effect on the reader,
since it was almost indescribable. From the decorative point of view,
the room was the most unmeaning of failures, the most complete of
disasters.
Rupert had hoped, nevertheless, to cultivate her taste, and educate her
generally. He was most anxious of all to explain to her that, so far
from being artistic, she was the most pretentious of little Philistines.
Why, indeed, should she be anything else? It was the most irritating
absurdity that she should think she was, or wish to be.
Rupert was growing weary of this, and beginning to think his object was
hopeless.
A certain amount of excitement that she had created in him by her
brusque rudeness, her high spirits, even the jarring of her loud laugh,
was beginning to lose its effect; or rather the effect was changed.
Instead of attracting, it irritated him.
About another small subject they had a quarrel--she was beginning to
order him about, to regard him as her young man, her property--and was
getting accustomed to what had surprised her at first--that he didn't
make love to her. She had ordered him to take her somewhere and he had
refused on the ground that he wanted to stop at home and think!
She let herself go, and when Moona Chivvey lost her temper it was not
easily forgotten. She insulted him, called him a blighter, a silly ass,
a mass of affectation.
He accepted it with gallant irony, bowing with a chivalrous humility
that drove her nearly mad, but he never spoke to her again.
* * * * *
Perhaps nothing less than this violent scene would have shaken Rupert
into examining his own feelings, and with a tremendous rebound he saw
that he was in love with Madeline, and decided to marry her at once. How
delighted the dear child would be!
He had seen very little of her lately, and he appreciated her all the
more.
In her was genuine desire for culture; longing to learn; real refinement
and intelligence, charm and grace, if not exactly beauty. Ah, those
sweet, sincere brown eyes! Rupert would live to see her all she should
be, and there was not the slightest doubt about her happiness with him.
It never occurred to him for a single moment that anyone else could have
been trying to take his place. Far less still that she should have
thought of listening to any other man on earth but himself. When she
came and told him all that had happened, the shock was great. He had
never cared for her so much. But he declined to allow her to break her
engagement; she could not play fast and loose with this unfortunate
young man, Charlie Hillier, and although she declared, with tears, that
she should break it off in any case, and never see him again, Rupert
kept to his resolution, and started for Paris that night.
In answer to one more passionate and pathetic letter from her, he
consented to write to her as a friend in a fortnight, but he said she
must have known her own mind when she accepted Charlie.
Rupert clearly felt that he had been very badly treated; he said he
never would have thought it of her; it was practically treachery.
* * * * *
When he went away he felt very tired, and had had enough, for the
present, at any rate, of all girls and their instruction. Girls were
fools.
He looked forward to the soothing consolations of the gaieties of Paris.
He was not the first to believe that he could leave all his troubles and
tribulations this side of the Channel.