There was silence for a little while. An hour had passed since they
began to talk, but it was still short of midnight, and the hansoms and
motors still swept about the square like a throng of sonorous fireflies.
Just opposite a big house flared with lit windows, and the sound of the
band came loudly across the open space, a little mellowed by the
distance, but with the rhythm of its music intact.
"Oh, I could get into a ball-dress and go and dance now for lightness
of heart," said Jeannie. "But I won't; I will do something much nicer,
and that is I will hear from you the news of your year. Now it is 'you
next.' Tell me all you have done and been and thought of. And then I
shall want to know all about Gladys and all about Daisy. I talked to
Daisy--or, rather, she talked to me--for half an hour this afternoon,
but I don't think she got absolutely 'home' in her talk. I had the
impression that she was showing me the dining-room and drawing-room,
so to speak. She did not sit with me in my bedroom or in hers as we
are sitting now. The only talk worth calling a talk is when you put
your feet on the fender and tuck up your skirt and put the lights
out--figuratively, that is. One must be taken into privacy. Daisy
wasn't very private. You have got to be. Now, dear Alice, about
yourself first."
Alice sighed again--not appreciatively this time.
"There's very little to say. I am rather lazier than I was, and Daisy
and Gladys--Daisy chiefly--make all arrangements. I send them out to
dances alone, because they always find a chaperon of some kind; and you
know, Jeannie, I don't like hot rooms and supper. I weave plenty of
plans still, and they mostly come off, but I don't go to superintend the
execution of them. I don't think I have any very private life; if I had
you should at once be admitted. I think a great deal about the people I
like best. I try occasionally to straighten out their affairs for them.
I want all girls to marry suitable men, and all men to marry suitable
girls. I think, indeed, that the only change in me has been that I take
a rather wider view than I used to of the word suitable. You see, I am
an optimist, and I can't help it; and I believe that most people are
kind and nice. Oh, I don't say that it is not great fun being critical
and seeing their absurdities and their faults, but I fancy that if one
wants to increase the sum of comfort and happiness in the world, it is
better to spend one's time in trying to see their charms and their
virtues. Dear me, what dreadful commonplaces I am saying! However, that
is my very truthful history for the last year: I want to make people
jolly and comfortable and happy, but, if possible, without standing
about in extremely hot rooms with the band playing into one's ear at the
distance of three inches."
Jeannie laughed.
"I don't think that is at all a bad history," she said. "That is
just the sort of history which I hope will be written of me
by-and-by. Oh, Alice, I don't want any more troubles and crises--I
don't! I don't!--even if they are good for one. Sometimes I wonder
if there is some envious power that is always on the look-out, some
Nemesis with a dreadful wooden eye that waits till we are happy and
then puts out a great bony hand and knocks us over or squeezes us
till we scream. 'Oh, Nemesis,' I feel inclined to say, 'do look the
other way for a little bit.' Yes, I just want Nemesis to leave my
friends and me alone for a little."
"Ah! but Nemesis is looking the other way with great fixedness, it
seems to me," said Lady Nottingham. "She may be dabbing away at
other people, but you must be just, Jeannie; she hasn't been
dabbing at any of us lately."
"Oh, hush! Don't say it so loud," said Jeannie. "She may hear and
turn round."
Alice laughed.
"No such thing," she said. "But Nemesis will certainly send you a
headache and a feeling of being tired to-morrow morning if I sit up
talking to you any longer."
She half rose, but Jeannie pulled her back into the window-seat again.
"Oh, no; don't go yet," she said. "I am not the least tired, and it
is so dull going to bed. I hoard pleasant hours; I make them last as
long as possible, and surely we can lengthen out this one for a little
more. Besides, you have not told me one word about Daisy yet; and, as
I said, though I had half an hour's talk with her, I feel as if she
hadn't taken me into her room. All the private history she gave me was
that Willie Carton still wanted to marry her, and she still did not
want to marry him."
Lady Nottingham considered this for a moment in silence, wondering
whether, as Daisy had not spoken to her aunt about Lord Lindfield, she
herself was under any tacit bond of secrecy. But, scrupulous though she
was, she could not see any cause for secrecy.
Jeannie interrupted her silence.
"Is there somebody else?" she said.
Again Lady Nottingham thought over it.
"I can't see why I shouldn't tell you," she said, "since half London
knows, and is waiting quite sympathetically and agreeably for him to
ask her. She consulted me about it only this afternoon, and I think
when he does--I don't say if, because I feel sure he will--I think
that when he does she will accept him. I advised her to, and I think
she agreed. His name----"
"Ah, but perhaps Daisy wants to tell me his name herself," interrupted
Jeannie again. "Perhaps she wants to keep it as a surprise for me.
Don't tell me his name, Alice. Tell me all about him, though not enough
to enable me to guess. And tell me about Daisy's feelings towards him.
Somehow I don't think a girl should need advice; she should know for
herself, don't you think?"
"Not always. Sometimes, of course, a girl is definitely, even
desperately, in love with a man before she marries--but, Jeannie, how
often it is the other way! She likes him, she thinks he will be kind
to her, she wants to be married, she has all the reasons for marrying
except that of being in love. And such marriages so often turn out so
well; some even turn out ideally. My own did. But in some
circumstances I think a girl is right to ask advice."
Jeannie smiled.
"I think yours is an admirably sensible view, dear," she said, "and I
confess freely that there is heaps to be said for it. But I am afraid
I am not sensible over a thing like love. I think sense ought to be
banished."
"So do the lower classes think," remarked Lady Nottingham, rather
acutely, "and the consequence is that the gravest problem that has
ever faced the nation has arisen."
"Oh, I take it, he is not one of the unemployed?" said Jeannie.
"He is, but the top end of them."
"Oh, go on, dear; tell me all about him," said Jeannie.
"Well, he is rich--I suppose you might say very rich--he has a title;
he has an old and honoured name."
"Oh, I want something more important than all that," said Jeannie. "The
old and honoured name is all very well, but is he continuing to make it
honoured? To be honoured yourself is far more to the point than having
centuries full of honoured ancestors. Is he satisfactory? I can easily
forgive the ancestors for being unsatisfactory."
"I am sure he is a good fellow," said Lady Nottingham.
Jeannie got up and began walking up and down the room.
"Do you know, that is such an ambiguous phrase!" she said. "Every man is
a good fellow who eats a lot and laughs a lot and flirts a lot. Is he
that sort of good fellow? Oh! I hate milksops. I needn't tell you that;
but there are plenty of good fellows whom I should be sorry to see Daisy
married to."
There had started up in Jeannie's mind that memory of Paris, which had
made her hurry through and away from the town; there had started up in
her mind also that which had been so hard to get over in the autumn,
that of which she had spoken to Alice Nottingham, only to tell her that
she hoped she would never speak of it. These two were connected. They
were more than connected, for they were the same; and now a fear,
fantastic, perhaps, but definite, grew in her mind that once again
these things were to be made vivid, to pass into currency.
"Is he that sort of good fellow?" she asked.
There was trouble in her voice and anxiety, and Lady Nottingham was
startled. It was as if some ghost had come into the room, visible to
Jeannie. But her answer could not be put off or postponed.
"Something troubles you, dear," she said. "I can't guess what. Yes, he
is that sort of good fellow, I suppose; but don't you think you
generalize too much, when you class them all together? And don't you
judge harshly? Cannot a man have--to use the cant phrase--have sown his
wild oats, and have done with them? Mind, I know nothing definite about
those wild oats, but before now it has been a matter of gossip that he
has been very--very susceptible, and that women find him charming. It is
disgusting, no doubt. But I fully believe he has done with such things.
Is he not to have his chance in winning a girl like Daisy, and becoming
a model husband and father? Don't you judge harshly?"
Jeannie paused in her walk opposite her friend, and stood looking out
into the warm, soft night.
"Yes, perhaps I judge harshly," she said, "because I know what awful
harm a man of that sort can do. I am thinking of what a man of that sort
did do. He was no worse than others, I daresay, and he was most
emphatically a good fellow. But the woman concerned in it all was one I
knew and loved, and so I can't forgive him or his kind. You and I have
both known lots of men of the kind, have found them agreeable and
well-bred and all the rest of it; and, without doubt, many of them
settle down and become model husbands and model fathers. But I am
sorry--I am sorry. If only Daisy had cared for Willie Carton! And she
does not love this man, you say?"
"He attracts and interests her; she finds great pleasure in his
company; she wants to marry him. I am not what you would call a
worldly woman, Jeannie, but I think she is wise. It is an excellent
match, and in spite of what you say about so-called 'good fellows,' he
is a good fellow."
Jeannie's face had grown suddenly rather white and tired. She felt as if
Nemesis were slowly turning round in her direction again. She sat down
by her dressing-table and drummed her fingers on it.
"Yes, no doubt I judge harshly," she repeated, "and no doubt, also,
there is a particular fear in my brain, quite fantastic probably and
quite without foundation. I have a 'good fellow' in my mind whose--whose
'good-fellow proceedings' touched me very acutely. I want, therefore, to
know the name of this man. I can't help it; if Daisy wants it to be a
surprise for me, she must be disappointed. You see what my fear is, that
the two are the same. So tell me his name, Alice."
There was something so desperately serious in her tone that Lady
Nottingham did not think of reassuring her out of her fears, but
answered at once.
"Lord Lindfield," she said.
The drumming of Jeannie's fingers on the table ceased. She sat quite
still, looking out in front of her.
"Lord Lindfield?" she asked. "Tom Lindfield?"
"Yes."
Jeannie got up.
"Then thank Heaven she doesn't love him," she said. "It is quite
impossible that she should marry him. Since you began to tell me about
this man I was afraid it was Tom Lindfield, hoping, hoping desperately,
that it was not. She can never marry him, never--never! What are we to
do? What are we to do?"
"There is some reason behind this, then, that I don't know?" asked
Alice.
"Of course there is. I must tell you, I suppose. We must put our heads
together and plan and plan. Oh, Alice, I hoped so much for peace and
happiness, but it can't be yet, not until we have settled this."
"But what is it? What is it?" asked Lady Nottingham.
A hansom jingled round the corner and stopped just below at the
front door.
"The girls are back," said Jeannie. "Daisy is sure to come and see if
I am up. I wonder why they are home so early. You must go, dear Alice.
I will tell you about it to-morrow. I am so tired, so suddenly and
frightfully tired."
Lady Nottingham got up.
"Yes, I will go," she said. "Oh, Jeannie, you are not exaggerating
things in your mind? Can't you tell me now?"
"No, my dear, it would take too long. Ah, there is Daisy."
A gentle tap sounded at the door; it was softly opened, and Daisy,
seeing the light inside, came in.
"Ah, but how wicked of you, Aunt Jeannie," she said, "when you told me
you were going to bed early. Yes, we are early too, but it was stupid
and crowded, and so Gladys and I came away. Oh, you darling, it is nice
to know you are here! But how tired you look!"
"Yes, dear, I am tired," said Jeannie. "I was just sending Aunt Alice
away. And you must go away too. But it was dear of you just to look in
to say good-night."
When the two had gone Jeannie sat down again in the window, her head
resting on her hands, thinking vividly, intently.
"Thank Heaven she does not love him!" she said at length.