Daisy's father and mother had both died when she was quite young, and
not yet half-way through the momentous teens. For seven years after that
she had lived with her mother's sister, the inimitable Aunt Jeannie,
whom she wished to see every day. But though she had passed seven years
with her, she had barely seen her aunt's husband. It was his death, a
year ago, that had sent her to the Nottinghams, for Aunt Jeannie in a
crisis of nerves had been ordered abroad for a year, and was now on the
point of return, and, having returned, was to stay with Lady Nottingham
for the indefinite period which may be taken up by the finding of a
suitable house.
Daisy knew there had been trouble at the back of all this. Uncle
Francis, Aunt Jeannie's husband, had been called an invalid, and she
gathered that his ill-health was something not to be openly alluded to.
Morphia was connected with it, a "habit" was connected with it, and
since this was somehow disagreeable, she had long ago so successfully
banished it from her thoughts that her curiosity about it was a thing
without existence. Certainly he made Aunt Jeannie very unhappy, but Aunt
Jeannie, who was such a dear, and so young still--not more than thirty,
for she was the youngest of a family of whom Daisy's mother was the
eldest--had been always sedulous to hide disquietude from her niece. And
it was entirely characteristic of Daisy to be grateful for having it all
hid from her, and not even in thought to conjecture what it was all
about. During this year of separation from Aunt Jeannie, in which, as
she had said (and Daisy, with all her faults and limitations, was a
George Washington for truth), she had missed her every day, she had
always looked forward to her return, and, though she liked being with
Lady Nottingham very much, knew that she would ultimately go back to the
unrivalled other aunt again with the intensest satisfaction.
But of late the prospect of going back, or living with any aunt at
all, had receded into at least a middle distance. There was no doubt
in her own mind (though she liked the absence of doubt to be endorsed
by her cousin) that Lord Lindfield had been extremely attentive to her
for the last month or so. He had committed dreadful social crimes,
such as throwing over an engagement already made and nearly due, when
he found that she would be at some house to which he was subsequently
invited. And somehow (that was the charm of him, or part or it),
though he upset dinner-tables right and left, nobody really minded.
Match-making London, which includes the larger part of that
marriageable city, even when they were personally affronted and
inconvenienced, smiled sympathetically when they heard what his
movements on the night he ought to have dined with them had been. He
did even worse than that; he had once, indeed, omitted to send the
excuse of a subsequent engagement, and everybody had waited a quarter
of an hour for him to put in a belated appearance. And when he did not
his hostess had remarked that he must be "picking daisies," and the
procession had gone dinner-wards with a widowed girl.
It turned out to be true, did this conjecture of the hostess. He had
dined "quietly" that night at Lady Nottingham's, and had played "old
maid" afterwards, as bridge was universally voted to be far too
intellectual. And Daisy took huge pleasure in such facts as these,
stealthily conveyed to her by one if not more of her innumerable girl
friends. For though there was no doubt that many dutiful mothers would
have liked their daughters to marry Lord Lindfield, yet when he
declared himself by signs as unmistakable as this, they neither felt nor
communicated any ill-humour.
He was picking daisies; very well, the sooner he plucked the particular
one the better. Daisy was so pleasant; no wonder, after all, that he
wished for her. And she too, quite soon, would join the ranks of the
match-makers, and be immensely kind to everybody else. Yet if only Katie
or Elsie or Nellie---- But it was no use thinking about that. Daisy,
once settled, would certainly do her best for those to whom fortune must
pay a "subsequent" visit.
Lady Nottingham purred approval over the girls on their punctual return,
before any of her guests had arrived. She was rather stout and very
comfortable. Behind her stoutness and her comfort there beat a heart of
gold, and an extremely acute brain, which was not always allowed for,
was alert and watchful. A heart of gold is considered as not
incompatible with comfort and stoutness, but nobody who had not come to
grips with her, or been her ally in some affair that called for
diplomacy or tact, knew how excessively efficient her brain was. She
had, too, the supreme gift of only sending into action as much of it as
was required to do the work, and never made elaborate plans when
something simple would do as well.
All this combined to make not only a character that was lovable, but a
friend whose wisdom might be depended on, and Daisy was eminently right
in valuing her aunt's counsel and advice. She sought it, indeed, this
evening, in the quiet half-hour that intervened between the departure of
the tea-party guests and the time when it was necessary to dress for
dinner.
Lady Nottingham was resting in her room when Daisy went to her,
ostensibly (and quite truly) to get the list of those who were coming to
dinner that night in order to arrange the table. But though she would
have gone there in any case for that reason, another and far more
essential one lay behind it. She wanted, indeed, to get her aunt's
opinion on the point she had herself talked to Gladys about that
afternoon, and sound her as to her opinion about Lord Lindfield.
The sorting of people to see who would take whom in to dinner, with
abstracted frownings over the map of the table, seemed to Daisy an
admirable accompaniment for disjointed questions, and one which would
give her an adventitious advantage, since at any moment she could be
absorbed in the task she was so kindly occupying herself with, and be
silent over it, if a reply was in any way inconvenient.
This sort of diplomacy, though not exactly habitual with Daisy, seemed
to her sufficiently acute and blinding, and she sat on the floor with a
peerage, the list of the guests, a sheet of paper and a pencil, and
began at once, while Lady Nottingham "rested" on the sofa against which
Daisy leant her back.
"Oh, what nice people!" said Daisy. "Can't they all take me in? Willie
Carton, Jimmie, Lord Lindfield, Mr. Braithwaite, and Lord Pately. Dear
Willie! I suppose he ought to take me in. Do you mind whether you sit at
the end of the table or in the middle of the middle, Aunt Alice? Middle
of the middle always works out more easily. All right. Dear Willie!"
The diplomat, who is known to be a diplomat, is at once under a heavy
handicap. Daisy was instantly detected, and Lady Nottingham, since there
was no direct question to reply to, preserved silence. Then, after a
sufficient pause, she asked,--
"Have you settled about Willie, dear?"
"Ye-es. It will be better if he takes Gladys in."
"Then he's settled for," said Lady Nottingham, turning over a page in
her book.
This did not suit Daisy; she had meant to make Aunt Alice ask leading
questions, instead of which she only gave the most prosaic answers. She
sighed.
"Poor Willie!" she said.
Aunt Alice laughed quietly and comfortably.
"Dearest Daisy," she said, "as you want to tell me about Willie, why
don't you do so? I suppose you want me to ask instead. Very well, it
makes no difference. I imagine he has proposed again to you, and that
you have refused him, and want to be quite sure I think you are wise
about it. You see, you said, 'Dear Willie' first, and 'Poor Willie'
afterwards. What other inference could a reasonable woman like me draw?
If you hadn't wanted to talk about it, you would have said neither the
one nor the other. Hadn't you better begin?"
Daisy laughed.
"I think you are a witch," she said. "Oh, one moment; the table is
coming right. Yes, and me at the end."
"And Lord Lindfield on your left," said Lady Nottingham, without looking
up.
That was the end of Daisy's diplomacy.
"You would have been burnt at the stake two hundred years ago,
darling Aunt Alice," she said. "I should have helped to pile the
faggots."
"What a good thing I wasn't born earlier," said she. Then for a
moment she thought intently; what she wanted to say next required
consideration. "Daisy dear," she said, "I wanted to talk to you
also, and if you had not been so very diplomatic I should have
begun."
"Oh, I wish I had waited," said Daisy.
"Yes. But it makes no difference. What you want is my advice to you as
to whether you should accept Lord Lindfield. I quite agree with you that
he is going to propose to you. Otherwise he has been flirting with you
disgracefully, and I have never known him flirt with a girl before."
Lady Nottingham put her book quite completely down. She wanted to
convey certain things quite clearly but without grossness.
"Now, Daisy, you are very young," she said, "but in some ways you are
extremely grown-up. I mean, I think you know your own mind very well. I
wish very much that your Aunt Jeannie had come back sooner, because she
is about nine times as wise as I, and could have advised you instead of
me. As it is, since I think you may have to settle a very important
question any day, I have got to give you the best advice I can. I think
he will propose to you, as I said, any day; indeed, I feel quite certain
of it, else it would be abominable in me to talk to you about it at all.
Therefore, do make up your mind before he does. Don't say, when he does,
that you are not sure, that you must take time to consider it. There is
no reason why a girl should not say 'yes' or 'no' at once, unless the
question comes as an entire surprise, which it does not do except in
second-rate novels like this one."
Lady Nottingham dropped the condemned volume on the floor.
"In real life," she said, "every girl sees long before a man proposes
whether he is likely to do so, and should know quite well what she is
going to say. And I think you intend to say 'yes.' You must, however, be
quite sure that, as far as you can tell, you are making a wise choice.
"Now, I am not going to shock you, but very likely I am going to make
you think you are shocked. You are not really. The fact is, you are not
in love with him, but he attracts you with an attraction that is very
often in the same relation to love as the bud is to the flower. He has
the sort of attraction for you that often contains the folded immature
petals of the full flower. You wanted to ask me some series of questions
which would lead up to that answer. And then you wanted to ask me one
further question, which was whether that was enough to say 'yes' on.
And my answer to that is 'yes.'"
The diplomacy in Daisy was quite completely dead. All this, so easy to
the mature woman, seemed a sort of conjuring-trick to her. It was
thought-reading of the most advanced kind, the reading of thoughts that
she had not consciously formulated. And the soothsayer proceeded:--
"You have seen the advantages of such a marriage clearly enough. You are
ambitious, my dear, you want to have a big position, to have big houses
and plenty of money, and to take no thought of any material morrow. That
is an advantage; it is only the stupid people, who call their stupidity
unworldly, who think otherwise. But the great point is not to keep
'to-morrow' comfortable, but to keep an everlasting 'to-day.' You must
be sure of that. Whatever the years bring--and Heaven knows what they
will bring--you should feel now, when you consider whether you will
accept him or not, that they can bring no difference to you. You must be
unable to conceive of yourself at seventy as different from yourself now
with regard to him. What is that music-hall song? 'We've been together
now for forty years.' It expresses exactly what a girl should feel forty
years before.
"And now for a thing more difficult to say. Lord Lindfield has--has
knocked about a good deal. Sooner or later you will know that, and it is
infinitely better that you should know it sooner, for it seems to me
almost criminal that girls should be left to find that sort of thing out
for themselves when it is too late. Mind, I do not say that he will
knock about again. The fact that he is quite certainly intending to
propose to you shows that he does not mean to. But he is not bringing a
boy's first love to a girl."
Lady Nottingham leant forward and stroked Daisy's head.
"My dear, how brutal this must sound," she said. "But I am the least
brutal of women. Assure yourself of that. And I have told you all there
is to tell, as far as I know, but I should have blamed myself if I had
told you less. And here is Hendon, and it is time for us to dress."
Daisy got up and kissed her aunt with a quick, trembling caress.
"I think you are a perfect darling," she said.