As Mrs. Walbridge went down to breakfast the next morning, she was
conscious of a hope that Paul would not be too pleased about his
sister's engagement. She had not stopped to analyse her feeling, but it
was not an unkind one. For Paul to be greatly pleased, would, she knew,
mean that the worst side of his nature was touched by the event. So it
was with some relief that she found the young man and his sister in the
dining-room quarrelling.
"It's disgraceful," he declared, as she opened the door. "He's nearly
old enough to be your grandfather."
Mrs. Walbridge's heart gave a thump of pleasure at this speech, not that
she dreamed of his words having any influence on Grisel, but because
honest indignation over an abstract right or wrong was very rarely
roused in her son.
"Paul, Paul," she said gently, as she rang the bell and sat down behind
the old-fashioned, acorn-topped, silver-plated tea equipage.
"Good-morning, children."
Grisel kissed her and sat down at her place near the door, the chair
with its back to the fire had always been Paul's.
"My romantic brother feels that I am wasting my young life in marrying
Sir John Barclay," she declared, laughing lightly.
Paul grunted, and unfolded the morning paper. "There are plenty of men
who aren't beggars. I _do_ call it disgusting of Grisel to marry an old
man simply because he's rich."
He looked younger and softer in his unexpected anger, and his mother's
eyes rested on him with an odd expression of surprised relief. "He's
right in theory, you know, darling," she agreed, turning to the girl.
"Everybody'll say the same thing."
Grisel gave her ring a twist, and said nothing till the door had closed
on the maid. Then she helped herself to butter. "Oh, I know. Crabbed age
and youth--but Sir John--John, I mean--isn't crabbed--that's just the
point. He's a perfectly charming man, and everyone says so, mother, and
he's ever so young in some ways. He's worth," she added, with an odd
little flush of humility, "worth a dozen of me."
"Nobody denies that," put in Paul, taking his tea from his mother.
"You're a useless little baggage enough, everyone knows that. And I
shouldn't say a word if there was any chance of you even really liking
him, to say nothing of--of----" He broke off, and added gravely, as if
he were making use of words that he feared, "of loving him."
His mother stared at him. "Why, what _do_ you mean, Paul? You're being
very rude, and it's wrong of you. Of course Grisel likes Sir John,
and--and many women have loved husbands much older than themselves," she
added shamefacedly, aware of her own duplicity, for she was a devoted
believer in the union of youth to youth, and the growing old together of
happy married couples. Whence she drew this romantic belief it would be
hard to say, for the experience had certainly not come her way, and as
it happened several of her married friends had come to grief. But it was
her belief, and probably one of the secrets of the popularity of her
books, for in her heyday people liked pleasant stories about pleasant
people, who suffered, of course, through the machinations of the wicked,
but who made their way steadily, through floods of tears, to the safe
shores of the old-fashioned happy ending.
"I suppose the old fellow wears a padded coat and stays," Paul went on,
less angry now, and settling down to a solid enjoyment of tormenting his
little sister.
"Ass! He's only fifty-two, and isn't a bit that kind."
"What kind?"
"Oh, well, trying to be young. A stale beau. He seems a mere boy, for
instance, in some ways, beside father."
Paul scowled and said nothing. His mother had noticed several times of
late that there was some kind of dissension between him and his father,
but they had never been very friendly, no house being big enough for two
absolutely selfish men, and their interests had always clashed. But
during the last few weeks this antagonism had seemed to quicken into
something more definite, and Mrs. Walbridge wondered vaguely, as she ate
her breakfast, what it meant.
Grisel, who was pale, was yet too young to bear in her face any ugly
traces of her sleepless night, and she went through the meal with a kind
of resolute gaiety. She was full Of her own affairs, and declared her
intention of ringing up the girls as soon as she had finished eating,
and telling them the news.
"Maud and Moreton will be delighted," she declared. "They liked him so
much that night, and he's giving Billy some kind of work, something in
the City, that Billy says will be awfully useful to him, because Sir
John is so well known. Billy and Hermy were frightfully pleased. Wasn't
it kind of him?--of Sir John, I mean."
"Oh, now she's experiencing the joys of patronage," commented Paul,
spreading strawberry jam on his toast. "She'll be getting us all little
jobs, mother. Oh, hell!"
He was not a young man who used bad language, and his mother was
surprised as well as shocked at it. But before she could remonstrate the
door opened, and Ferdie came in, pale and tired-looking, with heavy eyes
and nervous twitching of his eyebrows, that boded evil things for his
companions.
Grisel looked at him sharply, and Paul, turning, fixed his eyes so
unswervingly on his father's face that his father snapped at him.
"What the deuce are you glaring at?"
"You," said the young man, coolly. "It's no good, Guv'nor, you can't
keep it up at your time of life. You'll be as plain as the rest of us if
you go on like this."
His words were not so offensive to his mother as they would have been to
most women, as addressed by son to father, for Ferdie Walbridge's
character was such that though his children undoubtedly had a certain
pride in him because of his good looks, and a kind of affection that was
not empty of pity, he had never, even when they were very little
children, inspired the least fear or even respect in them.
She looked, however, anxiously from one to the other of the three faces
round the table, and was relieved when Grisel, with a little determined
air of excitement, held out her left hand, and waved it under her
father's swollen, surly eyes.
"Look at that, oh beau sabreur," she cried, "and behold the future Lady
Barclay, and rejoice."
"Hallo, hallo!" His boorishness disappeared like a flash, and a
surprising amount of boyish beauty and delight rested on his face for a
moment, like the light from a passing torch. He kissed her and murmured
a few words of delight and sympathy, and taking up his cup walked about
the room, sipping tea and talking to himself as much as to the others.
"Good girl, good girl--you'll be very happy--Sir John Barclay's a fine
man. I knew it. I saw it coming! I'm not surprised. Violet, what did I
tell you? Well, are you proud of your baby, old woman?"
He gave his wife a rough thump on the back as he passed her chair. "He's
a baronet too. Delightful fellow, delightful." He stopped short, drawing
himself up and preening in the way that was half infuriating and half
pathetic. "Fancy his being _my_ son-in-law with that white hair!"
Mrs. Walbridge really could not bear him when he did that, so she rose,
ashamed of her feeling of disgust, and went out of the room.
Presently she heard the door slam, and knew that Paul had left. So,
after her daily interview with the cook, she went up to her study, and
sat down to think. Sir John Barclay would be coming to-day to see her,
and the interview would be a difficult one for her, for she was ashamed
of her daughter's decision; she was a bad liar, and she had always
shunned with a kind of fastidious pain, the sight of an old man in love
with a young girl. Then, too, there was Oliver, and her intimate
knowledge of him. Poor Oliver! He would be coming, and he would have to
be told, and his queer face would have that dreadful look of pain in it,
and then he would laugh and be ridiculous, and that would be still
worse. She wished Ferdie would say something to her about their
business affairs, but he hadn't said a word. He seemed able to put
troublesome thoughts clean away out of his mind, but she couldn't. What
was to become of them all? If only this book would please Mr. Lubbock
and Mr. Payne!
She heard the telephone bell ring faintly, and opening the door after a
moment heard the sound of Grisel's voice a little high and unnatural, it
seemed to her.
"He's the greatest dear," the girl was saying. "I knew you and Moreton
would be glad."
Mrs. Walbridge closed the door, and sat down. She was so used to
moulding events in her novels that it seemed to her intolerable and
almost ridiculous that in real life, in this matter of her little
daughter, for instance, events so obstinately refused to be moulded. She
ought to be able to make Oliver Wick suddenly rich enough to snatch her
away from this monstrous old man, who coveted her youth and beauty.
Unconsciously Mrs. Walbridge had fallen into the language of her
novels--and love should triumph among roses in the last chapter. But now
she could no nothing. Grisel had made her choice, and the old monster
was to triumph. Her only comfort in this dreary reverie was that Paul,
selfish, hard Paul, should unconsciously have taken sides with her in
her hatred of the marriage. She had never understood Paul. He was to her
not so much like a closed book as like a book written in a foreign
language of which she knew only a word or two here and there. She had
expected him to be pleased, because of Sir John Barclay's riches, and lo
and behold he was as displeased as she was, and full of a regret that,
though bitterly expressed, was, she knew, based on a genuine
sentimental disapproval of mercenary marriages.
After a while she opened the drawer of the table and took out the
manuscript, and, more in the hope of forgetting for a while about Grisel
than for anything else she began to read it. How flat it was! How dull!
The people were all unnatural; their language silly and vulgar. Her face
settled into lines of utter misery as she read. Mr. Lubbock and Mr.
Payne would never publish such stuff. She heard a clock strike once or
twice as she sat reading. The sound conveyed nothing to her. On and on
she read, and when finally the page with "finis" caught her eye she
realised that it must be late, and started up guiltily. Her misery was
too deep for tears, but as she closed the door on the failure she spoke
aloud to herself. "Written out," she said slowly. "That's what it is.
I'm old, and I'm written out."
* * * * *
Early that afternoon a woman who lived on the same landing as Miss
Breeze, came to "Happy House" with a note.
Caroline was in bed with a bad go of asthma, and would Violet come to
see her? Mrs. Walbridge went to the girls' room, where Griselda was
writing notes, and told her.
"Poor Caroline! I suppose I ought to go, dear, but I don't want to miss
Sir John when he comes."
Grisel, who had been very gay and full of laughter all day, looked up
sombrely.
"Oh, he won't be here before tea-time, I should think," she said. "He's
very busy, you know. Besides, father's in. Don't stay long. It'll be all
right."
"Writing letters, are you?" her mother asked foolishly.
She nodded. "Yes. Ever so many people I've got to tell, of course. Looks
so silly written down. 'I know you will be glad to hear,' 'I'm sure you
will be surprised when I tell you'"--she jabbed viciously at a clean
sheet of paper with her pen, sending a spray of ink across it.
"Have you written to Oliver Wick?"
"No, I haven't. He's such a goose. I thought perhaps you would write to
Mrs. Wick."
"You must write and tell him at once, daughter," Violet Walbridge said
sternly, and Grisel did not answer.
Caroline Breeze thought her friend looked very tired, and though she
didn't say so, very plain, when she came in to her bedroom, a small
bunch of asters in her hand. Miss Breeze had been ill, but felt better
now, and was sitting up in bed smoking a medicated cigarette, the smell
of which was very dreadful to Mrs. Walbridge. To her surprise, the
sentimental Caroline was rapturous with delight over the news of the
engagement. Darling Grisel, she was sure, would be very happy. "Better
to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave," she cried.
"No young man wanted her to be his slave," protested Mrs. Walbridge,
with mild horror.
"That Oliver Wick did." Caroline had never liked the young Mr. Wick,
Violet knew, because, plain and unalluring old woman that she was, she
resented the young man's lack of beauty. He failed in every way to come
up to her standard of a lover, and Grisel, of all the "Happy House"
children, having been her special care and pet, she felt that she had a
kind of right to object to such an unattractive and penniless young man
venturing to approach the girl, who was nearer to her than any young
thing in the world.
"She'll pay for dressing, too, Grisel will," Caroline declared, shaking
her head vigorously, and inhaling the thick yellow smoke from her
cigarette. "Where are they going to live? I suppose he'll be getting her
a house in one of the swell squares. Berkeley Square would be my
choice," she added. "By the way, Violet, it's a splendid name, Barclay.
I wonder if he's any relation to--isn't there an earldom of that name?"
Violet shook her head. "I'm sure I don't know," she said indifferently.
"I do wish he was younger. Why, he's older than I am, Caroline!"
"Fudge and nonsense! Fifteen years younger, to all intents and purposes.
Besides, Ferdie told me one day that he has magnificent health. That
always makes a difference, to say nothing of his money," she added
vaguely. "It'd be lovely to have someone in the family with plenty of
money."
"It won't make much difference to us," commented Mrs. Walbridge.
"No, of course not, but still--oh, Violet, I do hope they'll like the
book! By the way, I was reading a paper yesterday about a girl who got a
prize in some competition. She only got the fourth prize, and it was a
hundred pounds! Why don't you try for one of them?"
Mrs. Walbridge was humbled-minded, but she had her pride. "I saw that
thing. It was some rubbish that they print in pale blue paper
covers--scullery maid's romance!"
Caroline bridled. "I'm sure I didn't mean to offend you. As far as
that's concerned, there are a lot of competitions, and some very good
writers write for them. Harbottle's offering a thousand pounds for a
good novel, to start off his new five shilling edition."
But Mrs. Walbridge was not to be beguiled into paths of speculative
dalliance. "I'm writing my book, as you know, for Lubbock & Payne," she
said, "and even if I had a chance of winning a prize, which I haven't,
it wouldn't be honest to offer my book to anybody else."
The talk then turned again to Grisel and her prospects.
Somehow, although her dear old friend had done her best to cheer her up,
it was with a very flagging heart that Mrs. Walbridge reached "Happy
House" at tea-time.
She was afraid to face in her own mind the latent fear she had about
Oliver Wick. But she was tired, and could not put him resolutely out of
her mind, and she looked a very weary, faded little creature, on the
very verge of old age, as she toiled up the steps and opened the door.
Voices upstairs in the girls' room. She went up a few steps and
listened. Yes, there was a man's voice she had never heard before. Sir
John Barclay had come.
For a moment she thought of going to her own room and putting on her
afternoon dress. She knew how shabby she looked; she had on her oldest
hat, for the afternoon had looked threatening, and she had not touched
her hair since the early morning. Then, with a little sigh, she went
straight on. It wouldn't matter to this prospective bridegroom that his
lovely little sweetheart's mother was a dowdy old woman; and she was
tired, and wanted a cup of tea more than anything in the world. So,
without pausing, she opened the door and went in.
Maud and Hermy were both there, and they were all sitting round the
tea-table at which Grisel, very flushed and excited and pretty,
presided. The stranger sat with his back to the door. She had only time
to see that it was a straight, broad, strong back, surmounted by a
well-shaped head, covered with thick white hair, when the girls saw her
and rose in a little covey, fluttering towards her with cries of
excitement and affection.
"Oh, mother, isn't he delightful?" Maud whispered as she kissed her, and
Hermione's face expressed real unselfish sympathy and happiness. And
then Grisel, taking her by the hand, smiled over her shoulder.
"Come, John," she said, "this is mother."
The big man stood still in the middle of his advance, a puzzled, queer
look in his face, which even looked, she noticed, a little pale.
"Isn't it," he began, and broke off. Then he came up to her and held out
his hands. "Surely," he said, slowly, "you used to be Miss Violet
Blaine?"
"Yes." She was staring at him with utter amazement, so strange was his
manner, and the three young women were also staring.
"What do you mean, John?" Griselda burst out, after a pause that seemed
interminable. "What's the matter?"
Then the man laughed, gave himself a little shake and taking Mrs.
Walbridge's hand, bent and kissed it with a grace that proved that he
had lived long in some Latin country.
"Nothing's the matter," he said, in a pleasant deep voice, "except that
I knew your mother over thirty years ago, and I hadn't realised that you
were her child."
They all sat down, the three girls chattering in amazed amusement and
amused amazement. The two elders said little, and then, when Mrs.
Walbridge had been given her cup of tea and drunk a little of it, she
looked up with her big clear eyes at the man who was going to marry her
daughter.
"It seems very rude," she said gently, "but you know I don't remember
you! Are you quite sure you are not mistaken?"
"Why, how can he be, Mum, when he knew your name?" laughed Hermione. "Do
tell us about it, Sir John."
Barclay crossed his knees and folded his arms. He was a man with a fine,
smooth shaven face of the kind that might belong equally well to either
a very fine actor or a judge. His light blue eyes had a fair and level
gaze, and his finest feature, his mouth, was strong and benevolent, with
well-set corners, and firmness without harshness.
"It's quite natural," he said to Mrs. Walbridge, "that you should not
remember me. We met just before I went to the Argentine, as it was then
called, thirty-one years ago, at the house of some people named Fenwick,
near High Wycombe. You were staying in the house, and my father was the
dean of the parish, and the Fenwick boys and girls were my best friends.
We had a picnic to Naphill, and danced, and we drove on a brake to
Chalfont St. Giles to see Milton's house. Now do you remember?"
A deep, beautifying flush swept across the face under the deplorable old
hat. "I remember the picnic perfectly. A bottle of cold tea got broken
and ruined somebody's frock, do you remember? And I remember Milton's
house, but," she shook her head a little embarrassed but truthful, "I'm
awfully sorry, but I can't remember you."
There was a little pause, during which his fine face did not change.
"You were very preoccupied, I think," he added. "You weren't
particularly happy at the time, and I was only a long-legged loon of a
boy of twenty-one. But I remember," he went on, "I've always
remembered."
"Well, then, darling, you won't mind having Sir John as a son-in-law,
will you?"
It was Hermione who spoke. She was always the readiest of speech, being
the least fine of feeling of the three girls, and the slight strain that
lay on them all merged away at her commonplace words.
Sir John took his leave a few minutes later, and as he shook hands with
Mrs. Walbridge, he looked down at her very kindly, very gently. The
three others had gone into the bedroom on purpose to leave the two
elders alone a moment.
"She's very young, you know," Violet Walbridge said, without
preliminary.
"I know. I shall never forget that." And she felt as she went to her own
room that he had made her a solemn and very comforting promise.