THE DANGER SIGNAL
That she should meet a real live author, the writer of the book she was
reading, was a coincidence strange enough to take Miss Mivvins' breath
away. Masters saw her wonderment, smiled at it.
"Is the fact," he asked, "so difficult a thing to reconcile with my
appearance?"
"Oh, no, no! How awfully rude you must think me! I meant--I mean--that I
expected the author of this book to be----"
Then she paused. Did not quite know what she expected or how to express
herself; added lamely:
"To be much older."
"Really! I am sorry I don't come up to your age standard. Age has its
privileges, but wisdom is not always its perquisite. Why should an
author be necessarily old? Surely youth is pardonable?"
She--a woman famous in her own particular circle for the coolness of her
tongue--could have kicked herself. Was saying, in her unwonted
nervousness, all the things she would rather have left unsaid. Angry
with herself, she blurted out:
"There is not, of course, any earthly reason why. It was purely my utter
stupidity."
He smiled at the flush on her cheek; a smile conjured up by his
admiration of it; said merrily:
"Here have I been peacocking around, with a sort of metaphorical feather
in my cap. Pampering my vanity, applying the flattering unction to my
soul--rubbing it in several times per diem--that no author of my age has
turned out so many volumes. Lo! with one breath you blow that feather
clean away."
She could not resist laughing at his mock despair. Became at her ease
once more; said:
"Indeed not! I don't know what prompted me to say what I did. As to this
book----"
"No! Don't! Please don't give me your opinion of it!"
His interruption was a continuance of his burlesque melodramatic style.
She did not quite know how to take him; said:
"You mean you would not value my opinion?"
That was disconcerting. Sobered him in a minute. He knew quite well the
kind of value he would be likely to put on any opinion of
hers--concerning himself.
"Oh, no!" His answer was spoken earnestly. "I do not mea----"
But she interrupted him. In her nervousness felt that whilst her tongue
was in action it would help to keep the helm the right way; said:
"Why should you? A stranger's opinion would necessarily be valueless.
You know nothing of me."
The deafness of those who will not hear is proverbial. The underlying
earnestness in the tone of his reply should have warned her.
"Aren't you going just a trifle too far?" he asked. "We are not quite
strangers. True, I know nothing of you--except that you are Miss
Mivvins."
An irresistible smile accompanied his words. His smile--and his laugh
too--were capable of creating many friends. But he did not allow them
to. His views on the subject of friendship were cynical in the extreme.
His smile was infectious. Once more those alluring dimples which he had
noticed at their first meeting deepened in her face.
"It is distinctly more my misfortune than my fault," he continued, "that
I know so little of you. May I say--with an absence of fear of your
thinking me impertinent--that I should like, much like, to know more of
you?"
The flush, that becoming flush, on her cheek again. The eyes were
fringed over by those long lashes of hers as she cast them groundwards.
Just a blend of trouble in her look as she queried:
"Really?"
He liked the pink showing on the white. Colours inspire some men.
Perhaps the combination in her face inspired him. Anyway, there was more
vigour and determination in his voice as he answered:
"Yes."
She, dallying, as a woman will, quite well knew that there was a spark.
That it would burst into flame, chose she to fan it; gained time by
asking:
"Why?"
He vaulted on to his hobby horse. The question was a stirrup helping him
to the saddle.
"Because I--may I say it?--hail you in a measure as a kindred soul."
She lifted her eyes; he could not fail to read the astonishment filling
them; continued:
"You are here in October, and you don't look bored; don't look as if
life held no further charm for you. You do not follow the fashionable
decrying of the place simply because it is out of fashion--_because_ it
is October."
She smiled. Encouraged by it, he continued, in the same strain:
"You are always alone, yet you create the impression that you are happy.
You don't seem to sigh for bands of music, to hanker after a crowded
promenade. You find existence possible without a shoal of people to help
you pass your time."
Her smile broadened into a laugh. This time at herself--at his
description of her; she asked:
"And those--shall I call them unusual?--characteristics in a woman
interest you?"
"Amazingly!"
"Why?"
She put the question with a little nervousness, bred of that eagerness
of his.
"Because--well, let me say by sheer force of contrast. In those
respects, Heaven be thanked, you are not as other women."
The amused look had not left her face. It lingered in the upward curve
of the corners of her eyes.
"So you prefer eccentric women, then?"
She could not resist just a trace of mischief in the tone of her query.
He answered:
"Heaven forefend! I see nothing eccentric in the attributes I have
allotted to you. They are refreshingly good to a thirsty soul."
The amusement and mischief tones left her voice. She asked demurely:
"Are you thirsty?"
"Parched! I confess I am. I have just escaped from the dead level of dry
conventionality. That arid desert: the Sahara of Society. Its womenkind
are my abomination."
She looked a little annoyed. As if not appreciating his description.
"I have heard it rumoured, Mr. Masters, that you fly from London to
escape Society's attentions."
"And for once the many-tongued is not a lying jade. I suppose all of us,
every man and woman, are more or less eccentric."
"Put it that we, most of us, have bees in our bonnets."
"Precisely. The buzzing of my particular insect is the artificial life
of modern Society. I just loathe it; never go out for that reason. Fly
from London? Yes; I own up; I do. As fast as an express can wing me. Fly
to escape the inanities with which the cup of social life is
overflowing."
"Balls, parties----"
"And things of that sort are my pet horrors."
She smiled at the expression of his disgust; his manner of expressing
it; said:
"I seem to be shaking a red rag at a bull!"
"If," he continued, "Society is the product of civilization I am an
untutored savage. Not an ungrateful one, mark you, but one thankful for
his savagery. Afternoon teas, flower shows, and the hundred and one
idiotic things which go to make up the ordinary every-day life in London
ought to be abolished by a drastic Act of Parliament."
Her smile merged into laughter. She had gauged his capacity for
exaggeration by this time. The beginning of her understanding of him was
setting in. Her laugh over, she said:
"I think you are very drastic."
"I hope not!"
"Why?"
"Because if you think so, I have been mistaken. I have formed a wrong
estimate of your character if you care for those things."
"And supposing I did? Would it be, think you--unwomanly?"
"As the world wags? No. On the contrary. The absolute quintessence of
womanliness in nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a possible
thousand."
"But----"
"Ah! that is it!"
"But if I did care for all and singular the things you object to so
much?"
"I should be sorry--really sorry--that I had spoken as I have done."
"Why?"
"Because it would, must, savour of impertinence. We, each of us, have a
right to our own opinions. I should just hate to think that I have been
forcing mine on any one; it would be a painful thing. Opinions, like
boots, should fit the wearer--neither too narrow nor too wide, and
possibly an allowance for stretching a point. To force an opinion would
be a modernized version of the iron boot the torturers used to handle in
the Inquisition days."
"But you expressed yourself"--she smiled at the recollection of
it--"very strongly just now."
"Because I thought we were more or less on the same plane; were thinking
in common. I hoped so."
"Tell me, will you, why you thought me different from other women:
thought as you did of me?"
"Oh, come! Isn't that now--don't you think that rather hard on me?"
"Why?"
"To put such a question as that. Calling on me to tell you why I think."
"Why not?"
"Think! If I could bring myself to lie you would not like it. Yet,
supposing I said something to offend you?"
"Why should you?"
"Because of my ignorance. I would not for worlds--knowingly. You would
know that I should not mean to."
"Very well, then. Why should I take offence where none is intended?"
He hesitated a moment. Plainly saw the danger-signal flying; then he
spoke:
"You are a woman."
She tossed her head at that. There was no mistaking the tone in which
she said:
"Thank you!"
"There!... Proof positive! I won't speak; I won't risk it. I am most
anxious not to offend you, and you shan't force my hand."
She tapped impatiently with the toe of her shoe.