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_His Official Fiancée_




                         _His Official Fiancée_

                  _By Berta Ruck (Mrs. Oliver Onions)_

                             [Illustration]

                                _TORONTO:
                             WILLIAM BRIGGS
                                  1914_

                       _Printed in Great Britain_




DEDICATED TO THE TWO GRANNIES




CONTENTS


      CHAP.                                   PAGE

         I.—THE SUMMONS                          1

        II.—THE PROPOSAL                        12

       III.—THINKING IT OVER——                  21

        IV.—ACCEPTED!                           29

         V.—THE FIRST LUNCH TOGETHER            47

        VI.—WHAT THEY SAID                      67

       VII.—CHOOSING THE RING                   77

      VIII.—THE ENGAGEMENT IS ANNOUNCED!        88

        IX.—THE LOVER WHO CAME TOO LATE        101

         X.—“HIS” MOTHER’S INVITATION          118

        XI.—MEETING “HIS” PEOPLE               130

       XII.—THE FIRST DINNER                   140

      XIII.—THE FIRST TÊTE-À-TÊTE              149

       XIV.—THE FIRST QUARREL                  160

        XV.—“THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS”          177

       XVI.—THE ORDEAL BY INSPECTION           189

      XVII.—THEO SITS UP                       193

     XVIII.—THE FIRST KISS                     211

       XIX.—THE FIRST HANDSHAKE                222

        XX.—FRIENDS                            253

       XXI.—THE FIRST LETTERS                  277

      XXII.—THE WOODEN WOMAN                   287

     XXIII.—“MANY WATERS——”                    305

      XXIV.—THAT GIRL                          317

       XXV.—THE FIRST AVOWAL                   324

      XXVI.—“ALL CHANGE HERE”                  330

     XXVII.—PARTING COMPANY                    343

    XXVIII.—THE FIRST GLEAM                    362

            POSTSCRIPT.—FULL MOON              381




HIS OFFICIAL FIANCÉE




CHAPTER I

THE SUMMONS


“‘_A girl without a sweetheart_,’ girls—(I was readin’ something about it
this very morning ’s I was coming along in the Toob),” chattered little
Miss Holt over her work. “_A girl without a sweetheart is like a ship at
sea, without knowing what port she’s to put in at_——”

“Accounts for the way a lot of ’em seem to pick their sweethearts on the
principle ‘_Any port in a storm!_’” said Miss Robinson, with her little
sniff.

“Well! Seems to me there’s a good deal in the idea that a poor husband
is better than none,” came philosophically from Miss Holt, whose back
is always curved like a banana over her typing-table, and who “smarms”
her dull brown hair down under a hair-net until her head looks like a
chocolate. “After all, my dear, if you’re married, you’re married; and
nobody can say you aren’t. But if you _aren’t_ married, you aren’t. And
nobody can say you _are_!”.

“How true,” said Miss Robinson dreamily. “Got that, Miss Trant?”

And she gave a sardonic glance towards me, to see if I was thoroughly
taking this in. I was trying not to. The buzz of Cockney whispering which
goes on, intermittently, all day long in our murky “typists’-room” was
beginning to get on my nerves again almost as badly as it did in the
first week that I worked at the Near Oriental Shipping Agency. I didn’t
raise my eyes. Then, above the click and the buzz, came a shriller:

“Miss Trant, if you please?”

My fingers fell from the typewriter, and I looked up with a start into
the sharp little South-London face of our smallest office-boy.

“Yes? What is it, Harold?”

“Miss Trant, Mr. Waters says he wishes to see you in his private room at
two o’clock.”

“To see _me_?” I asked in a panic; hoping that it might not be true, that
by some lucky chance my ears had deceived me. They hadn’t.

“Yes; at two o’clock sharp, miss.”

“Very well, Harold,” I heard myself say in a small, dismayed voice.

Then I heard the door of our room shut upon the office-boy’s exit.

I turned, to meet the shrewd, sympathetic brown eyes of Miss Robinson
over her machine.

“Governor sent for you?”

I nodded dismally.

“Any idea what it’s about, Miss Trant?”

“Oh, it might be about _anything_ this last week,” I sighed. “It might be
about my forgetting to enclose those enclosures to the Western Syndicate.
Or for leaving out the P.T.O. at the bottom of that Budapest letter. Or
for spelling Belgium B-e-l-g-u-i-m. Or half a dozen other things. I knew
Mr. Dundonald was going to complain of me. It’s been hanging over me for
the last three days. Anyhow I shall know the worst to-day.”

“P’raps he’ll give you another chance, dear,” said little Miss Holt.

“That’s not very likely,” I said. “He’s such an abominably accurate
machine himself that he’s ‘off’ anybody in this office who isn’t a
machine too, girl or man.”

“D’you suppose the Governor even knows which of us _is_ a girl and which
is a man? because I don’t,” put in Miss Robinson. “I bet you he——”

“Talking in theyairr!” interrupted the grating Scotch accent of Mr.
Dundonald, as he passed through to the Governor’s room, where, alas! I,
Monica Trant, was soon to present myself.

A deathly silence, broken only by the clicking of the four typewriters,
fell upon our department.

But I’m pretty sure that all the work _I_ did from then on until
lunch-time was of very little good.

That gloomy typists’ room, looking over the “well” of the great buildings
in Leadenhall Street, and so dark that we worked always by electric
lights, switched on one over each machine, faded away from me. I ceased
to know I was breathing in that familiar smell of fog and mackintoshes
and dust and stuffiness. I ceased to hear the muffled roar of the City
outside, and the maddening “click! click-a-click-pprring!” of the
typewriters within, as I shut myself into my own mind.

Dismally I reviewed my own situation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here was I, “alone in London,” all my poor little capital spent on the
business-training which I had joyfully hoped was going to bring me in
a nice “independent-feeling” income of at least two pounds a week. At
the offices of William Waters and Son, of the Near Oriental Shipping
Agency, a post I had obtained after weeks of weary searching for work, my
salary was twenty-five shillings a week. _Now_, in all probability, I was
going to lose even that. And then what was I to do? How was I to go on
contributing my half of the rent of the Marconi Mansions flat; how was I
to pay for even my cheap meals and my “these’ll-have-to-do” clothes? How
_was_ I to earn my living?

Obviously, I’m not cut out for a business-girl!

My three months in the office has plainly shown me that.

“You lack method, Miss Trant”—as Mr. Dundonald, the head of our
department, has told me more than once. “You lack _concentrrayshn_. You
are intelligent enough, for a young lady, but when I think I can rrely
on you, what happens? I find ye out in some rideeclus mistake that
the rrrawest student from Pitman’s wouldn’t make. And this after I’ve
warrrned you times and again. What do you think is going to be the end of
it?”

Evidently the sack.

And what else _is_ there I can do?

Nothing!

I can’t draw fashion-plates or write articles for the magazines.

Go on the stage—no, I never _could_ remember my cue, even in private
theatricals. I love children—but people want diplomas and Montessori
Systems with their nursery-governesses. For serving in a shop I don’t
suppose I’m tall enough. That’s one of the inconsistencies of men—they
quote poetry about a girl being “just as high as their hearts,” and then
advertise for parlour-maids and mannequins who must stand well over five
foot nine, which I don’t. Though, even if my nickname _is_ “Tots,” thank
goodness I’m not dumpy, like little Miss Holt, who thinks a poor husband
is better than none....

What about the principal profession open to women—getting married?

Well, but I never see any men, now a days—you can’t call
things-in-the-City _men_, exactly—whom I could get married _to_. Besides,
there’s nobody, now that I’m an unbecomingly-dressed pauper, who would
want to marry me.—Except, perhaps ... Sydney Vandeleur ...? Dear old
Sydney is a friend left over from the days before the smash in our
family when “_the world was more than kin when we had the ready tin_.”
I’ve seen him several times since, and he was just the same as ever, so
sympathetic and amusing; such a “pal,” and with something about him that
made me quite certain he’d be ready to become something more, the minute
I encouraged him.

“Encouraging” him wouldn’t be too unpleasant either, though I never was
in love with Sydney. By this time I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m
not a bit the falling-in-love type of girl. Major Montresor, of father’s
regiment in the old days, told my brother Jack once that “little Monica
had the makings of a first-class flirt; she belonged to the successful
Order of the Cold Coquette.” After listening to the dodderings and
drivels and despairs of girls who _aren’t_ cold, I’m rather thankful that
I _am_. At least I can be fond enough of people in a sensible sort of
way. I could be of Sydney.

I suppose it will end in my getting him to marry me....

But not yet. I haven’t even got his address! He and his mother have gone
on a tour to Japan, and they won’t be within reach for so much as a
dinner for about a year. Whereas it’s to-day, _this afternoon_, that I’m
to get the sack without knowing what else is to happen to me!

A pretty depressing outlook!

       *       *       *       *       *

At one o’clock I went out to lunch at what the typists here call “The Den
of Lyons,” with Miss Holt and Miss Robinson.

Our fourth typist, pretty, anæmic Miss Smith, had evidently made other
arrangements to-day. She wore another hat; a fresh bunch of violets was
tucked into her long coat, and she monopolized the looking-glass while
she attended to her complexion with a pot of face-cream, a clean hankie,
and a book of _papiers poudrés_.

“We’re extremely smart to-day, Smithie,” said Miss Robinson. “What’s on?”

“I’m going out to lunch with Still Waters.”

This was “the” office joke at the Near Oriental.

“Still Waters” meant no one less than Mr. William Waters, Junior, the
head of the firm, who acted as General Manager, and from whom I had just
received that fatal summons. He would as soon think of having a word to
say to one of his typists out of business-hours as of giving a dance in
the office itself. So that the excuse “_I’m going out with Still Waters_”
always means that the speaker intends to keep her engagement to herself.
It’s an open secret in the office that Smithie, who keeps a manicure-set
in her hand-bag and who blushes twice daily down the telephone, has “got
some sort of boy.”

“Oh, all right, haughty! Don’t bother to apologize,” said Miss Holt. And
we left Miss Smith to her preparations.

Presently we caught sight of her again in the crowd outside. She didn’t
see us, or anything else, I think. She was smiling and sparkling and
flushed, and “looked as different as a fortnight’s holiday,” as Miss
Robinson said. All three of us glanced from her to the young man she was
with. To bring _that_ transfiguring light into a girl’s face, wouldn’t
you have expected him to be a mixture of some Greek God and Bombardier
Billy Wells?—Far from it. “Smithie’s boy” was scarcely taller than she;
narrow-chested office-shouldered, with a face as pale and peaked as a
long envelope.

“What a kid!” criticized Miss Holt as we passed.

“All men _are_ awful kids,” pronounced Miss Robinson, “but you do bar
them looking it. Of the two, I don’t know that I wouldn’t rather have ’em
like graven images!”

Which brought us back to the horrible subject of that graven image, our
Governor.

Over glasses of hot milk and the poached-eggs-on-toast, the plates of
which rasped on the marble-topped table of the shop that _always_ smells
of steak-and-kidney pie, the other girls made themselves specially
agreeable to the colleague who was preparing for the sack in another hour.

“It is too bad. We shall miss you from our room,” said good-natured
little Miss Holt. “Still—(Here, miss! I said egg, I didn’t say
sardine-sandwich! I wish you’d attend when anyone speaks!... She would,
if I’d a boy with me! Such is life!)—Still, it isn’t as if there wasn’t
other posts you could get. Easily. Don’t you look so hopeless, Miss
Trant. You’ve a taking way with you, and a nice smile; wasn’t I passing
the remark, only the other day, about what a pretty smile Miss Trant’d
got? And, say what you like, looks _do_ count when a young lady’s in
business!”

“Yes, it’s a pity Miss Trant don’t know she’s good-looking. We ought
to have told her about that, before,” said Miss Robinson dryly. “But
you’re all right. _You’ll_ get taken on somewhere where they don’t make
an international affair of it over one misplaced comma or a tiny smudge
off a new ribbon. _You’ll_ get round the men. I don’t mean Still Waters.
He’s not a man, of course. He’s a machine that can say ‘_Now, Miss
Trant!_’”—here she broke into perfect mimicry of the Governor’s curtest
tone. “And’ _What is the meaning of this evening’s cables being one-fifth
of a second after time?_’ He doesn’t count. You try for something where
there’s a human being at the head of affairs——”

“And if it’s near she can come out to lunch with us just the same as
before she left,” suggested Miss Holt.

“She hasn’t even left yet,” said Miss Robinson encouragingly. “What price
one of those fancy cakes, Miss Trant? Choose the least poisonous-looking,
and I’ll treat you—for luck!”

       *       *       *       *       *

At a quarter to two we got back to the office.

I went and washed in the dressing-room. I took down all my hair. My
hair’s my pet vanity; it’s very long and thick and silky, and “just
the colour of massed black pansies against her honeysuckle-coloured
flesh-tints,” as Sydney Vandeleur once said. He “puts” everything like
the artist that he is. (Oh, why wasn’t it to meet _him_ that I was
preparing, instead of that young frozen ogre of a Governor?) I wound the
long swathe smoothly round my head again, pinned it firm, and made sure
it was all right at the back, _not_ with any idea of impressing Still
Waters (who would scarcely have noticed the fact had all his typists been
completely bald, so long as they were efficient), but merely because to
feel perfectly neat made me a little less painfully nervous.

The clock, striking two, chimed in with my humble tap at the door of Mr.
Waters’ private room.

“Come in!” called the dreaded voice of our Governor.

And, trembling inwardly, in I went.




CHAPTER II

THE PROPOSAL


The large, light room, with its handsome furniture, seemed to stretch
for miles between the door and the big writing-desk, covered with green
leather, at which Mr. Waters himself sat, frowning over a letter. The
desk was generally bare but for the note of his day’s appointments, with
the hours, on the turnover date-ticket.

“Two o’clock,” and a heavy “X” marked this coming interview, as I could
not help seeing when I finished what seemed like a long and tiring walk
over the thick crimson carpet, and stood meekly at his elbow.

He looked up, alert, clean-shaven, his fair hair brushed as sleek and
shiny as the nap of his own silk hat, his mouth closed as tightly as his
own cash-box; he was the very picture of a successful young City man,
whose one and only interest is his business.

“Ah! That you, Miss Trant?” he said, in the quick, curt, business-like
voice that Miss Robinson can imitate so perfectly.

He wheeled round in the chair to face me.

“Sit down, please.”

I was thankful to sit down. Although I don’t think my panic showed in
my face, my knees were actually beginning to give under me. Mr. Waters
pointed to a plump, green morocco-covered chair. Down I sat, on the very
edge of it. I set my teeth to listen to what this office tyrant had to
say.

(How extraordinary that he and Sydney Vandeleur should _both_ be “men”!)

If he only wouldn’t keep me; if he’d only just tell me to go, and get it
over....

But his first remark took me absolutely by surprise.

“Now, Miss Trant. If you don’t mind, I want to ask you a few questions.
Don’t think them impertinent, for they are not so intended, and they are
necessary to the matter in hand. And—please don’t misunderstand them.”

Here his alert face grew even more business-like. His keen grey eyes
met my startled brown ones steadily for a moment. Then he added, in an
emphatic, “_underlined_” sort of tone:

“There is nothing in these questions to which your father, or anyone
belonging to you, could take any exception. You understand?”

“Understand”—No! I certainly didn’t. What could he mean me to understand?
I hadn’t grasped it even when he repeated the question a trifle
impatiently.

“You do understand that, Miss Trant?”

“Oh—er—yes—of course,” I murmured, in duty bound.

But I was so utterly dazed by this unlooked-for flight-off-at-a-tangent
of the Governor’s that I heard myself answering as if in a dream the
questions he put next.

“Twenty-one. You’re of age, then,” I heard him saying through the daze.
“Both parents dead: m’m. No one else belonging to you?”

“One brother in South Africa,” my lips answered mechanically. And my
inward wonder, “_What on earth has that got to do with Mr. Waters?_” was
mingled with an added dull twinge of anxiety. For I haven’t heard from
poor old rolling-stoney Jack for three months or more.

“No one belonging to you in London? M’m. And you’re dependent for your
living upon what you earn here?”

(Yes! or else I shouldn’t have to sit here answering questions about
things that are absolutely no business of yours! was what I thought
rebelliously.) I said aloud, reluctantly, “Yes.”

“Where do you live, then—alone?”

“I share rooms with another girl in Battersea,” I had to tell him,
still wondering resentfully what in the world might be the meaning of
this catechism. _Wasn’t_ it the prelude to dismissal, after all, then?
_Wasn’t_ he preparing to be hateful and sarcastic, and to tell me he felt
my talents were being wasted at the Near Oriental (this is one of Mr.
Dundonald’s pet _clichés_), and that he advised me to look out elsewhere
for a better position at a higher salary—if I could get it? What _would_
be the next question, then?

It was _the_ last thing that I should have dreamed of his asking.

“Do you mind telling me, Miss Trant, whether you are engaged to be
married?”

Engaged? I? What _could_ he want to know that for?

That was less his business, even, than any of the other questions he’d
put!

It seemed doubly odd, since I _had_ been meditating on the possibility
of “getting engaged” that very morning. Ever since twelve o’clock, the
mental image of Sydney Vandeleur’s picturesque, dark face, with his
small Vandyke beard and gentle, adoring brown eyes, had been very near
me. There was always Sydney in the background, of course. Backgrounds
don’t count, presumably. Even if they did, though, what concern was it
of my business employer’s? I did wish I had enough self-assurance to
announce frankly, “Well, I _do_ mind telling you, as a matter of fact!”
But ... twenty-five shillings a week don’t provide a girl with much
self-assurance!

I could only let him have the literal answer in return for his direct
(and unwarrantable) question.

“Oh, no; I’m not engaged.”

“Good!” said Still Waters briskly. (Why “good”?)

“Now, Miss Trant, I can tell you the reason—or part of the reason—I
sent for you this afternoon. I must begin by impressing upon you very
definitely that”—here he paused, and at each word of the announcement
tapped solemnly on the big desk with his finger—“I don’t want to get
married myself.”

“Of course not!” I almost gasped, wondering what in the world this very
obvious truth (for one _could_ not imagine Still Waters in connection
with marriage or engagements) had got to do with me?

“At the same time, there are reasons why for a time, at least—say a
year—it should appear that I was going to be married. I may tell you
those reasons later on; that depends. At present I’ll merely tell
you that it is important to me that I should be officially, that is
nominally, engaged.”

I gazed at him. There was no more expression in his face than in the
pearl pin in his expensive-looking grey tie. What could he mean?

“I wish it to appear to everybody—to my family, to my acquaintances, to
the people in this office—that I am actually engaged,” he explained. “I
wish to find someone who, to outward appearances, could take the place of
my _fiancée_; could go about with me, stay at my home, and be introduced
all round as the girl I meant to marry. She must understand from the very
beginning that it was absolutely a matter of business; that the so-called
‘engagement’ would terminate at the end of the year, and that there could
be no possible question of its ending in marriage. If I found this lady,
I would make it worth her while; paying her at the rate of ten pounds a
week for her services. You follow me, Miss Trant?”

I began to “follow,” but I could scarcely believe that he really intended
to carry out this mysterious scheme. It was more like the plot of a
Gilbert and Sullivan opera than any “business” I’d ever heard of in real
life. Still more incredible was what came next.

“It seemed to me from the first that the most suitable person for the
post would be—yourself.”

“Me?” I echoed, aghast. Oh, this was getting out of comic opera, and into
the realms of nightmare! Was he _really_ suggesting that I——

“Yes; you, Miss Trant. You are a lady in every essential, if I may say
so, of looks and manner. You seem to possess the gift of making yourself
generally liked. You’re distinctly intelligent, in spite of your work,
which is——” here for one instant a gleam of what looked almost like
humour seemed to flash from the Governor’s eyes. But it was gone again
so swiftly that I couldn’t be sure whether it had ever been there. I
must have been mistaken. He went on imperturbably: “I am a very fair
judge of character, and I believe you to be trustworthy. As a mark of my
confidence in you, I shall pay into your account the whole sum of five
hundred pounds so soon as you let me know that you consent to enter into
this arrangement.”

“Five hundred pounds?” I echoed stupidly.

“Yes; that is payment for the entire year at the rate of ten pounds
weekly. I hope you will see your way to accepting it. Think it over
to-night, please,” said Still Waters, in his curtest, most business-like
tone, “and let me have your answer here—if you can, that is” (meaning
“you must!”) “at eleven-fifteen to-morrow morning. I need hardly tell you
that this must remain strictly between ourselves. I think that’s all.”

He glanced at the round-topped mahogany clock above the fireplace, then
put his hand out to the row of electric-bell pushes on his desk. Our
interview was over.

“Good afternoon, Miss Trant.”

“Good afternoon,” I murmured rather feebly, as I retraced my steps over
that long, long stretch of carpet to the door.

I felt furious with myself for lacking the ordinary pluck to tell the
Governor then and there:

“I shan’t need to-night to think the question over. My answer is ‘No!’ I
can’t possibly undertake such an arrangement.”

For how can I? How can I accept such an extraordinary position?
“Officially” engaged to the Governor—the office tyrant, the mummy, the
fault-finding automaton! Fancy “going about” with him, letting everyone
imagine that I was actually going to marry him! Fancy playing that
Gilbertian part, with no rouge and no fun and no footlights to carry
me through it, in a “piece” that went on all day and every day! And
fancy—this was almost the most appalling thought of all—fancy having to
face all the other girls in the office.

Oh, impossible; quite impossible! I can’t do it. I must summon up all my
courage and tell him so to-morrow.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Well?” whispered Miss Robinson, from the next typing-table. “What _did_
the graven image say? Was he a brute? _Is_ it the sack? Or is he giving
you another chance?”

“I think he means to give me another chance,” I murmured. (Such a
chance!) “I am——”

“_Talking_, ladies!” broke in the warning. “Miss Trant, it’s generally
you, I notice!”

And Mr. Dundonald’s voice brought back the bugbear that has haunted me
since twelve this morning—the terror of being penniless and out of work
once more.

Oh, if I could only attain to some job, _some other job_, that would
bring me in that princely salary of ten pounds a week! Imagine the
blessed relief, the security of knowing that one had five hundred pounds
in one glorious, solid lump at one’s back. But then, imagine accepting
the Governor’s terms before one earned it! Oh, no!

The bogey “_out of work_” haunted me down into the Tube lift, along the
Embankment, all the way back up our grey Battersea street, with the
red-faced pavement-artist who always touches his cap to me, smiles and
points to his lurid chalk-drawing of a wreck with the legend: “_Like the
Artist—On the Rocks!_”

“I’m on the rocks myself, Blossom. This is probably the last penny I
shall be able to give you!” I told him, with a desperate little laugh.

Then I turned in at the entrance to Marconi Mansions, and climbed up our
stone stairs to the cheap but cosy little top-flat which has for six
months meant “Home” to us two bachelor girls.

How long should _I_ be able to afford to share it?




CHAPTER III

THINKING IT OVER——


I always expect to be in long before Cicely Harradine, the girl who
shares the place with me. We first made friends in a ten-shillings-a-week
bedroom at the Twentieth Century Club, when she was left much as I was,
a waif without any friends that counted, and with just a tiny lump
of capital. This she used up in paying her fees at the Slade School
of Art, where she’d gone, in her innocence, with a view to taking up
fashion-drawing. They all used to say at home that she’d “a gift” for
sketching, and she’d heard—we’ve all heard!—that there are fortunes to be
made out of fashion-plates. Only she hadn’t realized that for a girl of
her sort, lovely and good-hearted and “gormless,” there’s only one way
of getting a fortune; namely, by marrying it. And how _can_ you marry,
as she often says plaintively, if you never even _see_ any “possible”
men? All the people she seems to see nowadays—besides Slade students—are
the gorgeous Jewesses who deal at the “studio” where Cicely’s one real
“gift” (that of a tall, willowy figure) is now turned to advantage by
showing off the evening-frocks and opera-wraps of Madame Chérisette, in
Bond Street, in the show-rooms she can seldom leave until well after
seven o’clock.

So to-day I was astonished to find the second-hand, cretonne-covered
couch in our sitting-room already occupied by what looked like a bundle
of rugs, dishevelled red curls, and arnica bandages, whence proceeded the
sound of dismal sobs.

“Cicely!” I cried, alarmed. “You back already? Why, what’s happened?”

“Oh, my dear, such an _awful_ catastrophe!” wailed the voice of Cicely,
while the willowy figure twisted itself into sitting up against our cheap
flock cushions. “What do you think? When I went out to lunch this morning
I managed to slip on a bit of banana-skin that some perfect _pig_ had
flung down at the crossing—No, Tots! it _wasn’t_ those shoes I will wear,
so you needn’t say that!—and I twisted my ankle and cut my head on the
kerb, and I had to be brought home in a taxi, and the doctor’s been, and
he says I’m to keep my foot up for a fortnight, and what—what on earth’s
to become of my job?” wept Cicely. “Chérisette won’t take me on again,
for there’s a girl waiting _now_ for my place! A _niece_ of somebody’s!
She’ll _snap_ it up! And _what_ am I to do? Hurp, hurp!”

She could only sob, and I could only stroke her pretty, incompetent
fingers.

“There’ll be that _doctor_ to pay! And it’ll be the _rent_ again in
three weeks’ time! It’s _always_ being the rent, in this place, Tots! It
_never_ was at home. And _I_ haven’t got any money saved now that I’ve
bought that bicycle for Saturday afternoons. Isn’t it perfectly awful?
Hurp, hurp! Oh, girls at home who get doctors and dentists and washing
and everything _f-found_ for them, hurp! are so fond of _envying_ girls
who earn their own livings because it’s so free and independent—how _can_
they? _They_ wouldn’t want to earn their horrible livings if they _only_
knew how ghastly it was as soon as you got ill and hadn’t anything but a
few shillings between you and goodness knows!”

“‘_Earned increment is sweet, but that unearned is sweeter_,’” I quoted
bitterly.

“Oh, you laugh at everything, Tots! This is serious.
_S-s-s-seven-and-sixpence!_ That’s all I’ve got left in the whole wide
world! And _you’ve_ nothing but your twenty-five bob a week!”

(Yes! I thought; and even that modest salary will be lost to me
to-morrow. For when I tell the Governor that I find I can’t accept his
offer, he’s pretty certain to sack me. After his allusion to my “work,”
after Mr. Dundonald’s “warrrnings,” what else need I expect? But this
wasn’t the moment to tell my poor, distracted chum my own bit of bad
luck. Even if we _were_ both out of work and on those rocks together, it
must, for the present at least, be kept from _her_.)

“Now look here, don’t you worry,” I said, more cheerfully than I felt.
“You _know_ you’re no end of a ‘find’ as a mannequin, because you’ve
got the voice that goes with the figure. It must be rather a shock when
Madame’s clients ask something that looks like a young duchess in a dream
of a gown ‘_What did you say the price was?_’ and get told in the accents
of Whitechapel ‘_Twenty-ite paounds, Madam!_’ That’s the pull _you’ve_
got, so you know you’re sure of another good place as soon as your foot’s
right. Until then I—I can manage perfectly well for the two of us. What
about something to eat? Mrs. Skinner coming back to cook to-night?”—Mrs.
Skinner is _supposed_ to “do” for us. I often think that, in another
sense, she _will_!

“No. She’s off for the whole day to go to a funeral. You said she might,
this morning.”

“So I did. I thought it was a week ago—it feels like it. Well, I’ll get
supper.”

       *       *       *       *       *

As I passed into our little dark cubby-hole of a kitchen, I saw something
that I’d overlooked before—a letter left lying on the mat, as it had
dropped through the letter-box. I picked it up. It was addressed to me.
And at the sight of the thin foreign envelope and the South African stamp
my heart sank even lower. I had a presentiment that I hadn’t come to the
worst yet.

It was a letter from my brother in Cape Town; poor old ne’er-do-weel
Jack, who scarcely ever writes anything more than a picture postcard with
a view of the Cape of Good Hope, or something of that kind, unless he’s
in trouble and wants something.

With a sigh I took out the crackling, scrawled sheet; and my eyes fell on
the last sentences first.

    “_You’ll have to get the money for me, old girl. You know
    you can if you try. Ask Vandeleur to lend it to us; he’d do
    anything for you. Haven’t got his address, or I would have
    written to him myself. I am absolutely on the rocks, so don’t
    wait. You’ll have to wire a hundred pounds to the Bank here——_”

A hundred pounds? Mightn’t he just as well have said “a million”? What
was all this about? I took the letter into my own little room and sat
down on the camp-bed to read it through....

In five minutes I have grasped all that I can take in at present of the
situation; an old one.

Jack is in trouble, worse trouble than ever before. Debts; an I O U that
was to fall due in six weeks. Threatened exposure of—_something_ that he
doesn’t explain. “_A business affair?_”

Yes; Mr. Dundonald is quite right. I _have_ “no head for business
routine.” My head’s going round with the bewilderment of it. It _can’t_
mean that Jack, my own brother, Father’s only son—one of the _Trants_—has
been “not quite straight” with the accounts that are in his care? He must
be mad! It must be the hot sun in that awful country. Not _Jack_——!

But to suggest that I should turn to Sydney Vandeleur for the money, even
supposing that I knew where the Vandeleurs were to be found just now—oh!
As if I wouldn’t rather die! Yet there’s nothing else that I can do——

Stop. There is one thing.

For, as if flashed in letters of fire over the dim purple sky over the
London roofs outside my window, I seem to see the words—

    “FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS!”

And they mean, not only a solution of the difficulties of Miss Trant,
typist, not only comforts and security for Cicely, the show-girl out of
work, but the saving of our family name and honour from disgrace. Help
instead of ruin for that poor dear weak-kneed broken reed of a brother of
mine.

It’s Providence, that wildly eccentric scheme of the Governor’s. I don’t
care what its object may be. I only know that now—_now_—I daren’t refuse
to fall in with it. Never mind the details. The main fact is that _I must
have that hundred pounds, and this is the only way to it_.

       *       *       *       *       *

I’ve just taken supper into our sitting-room, and I’ve been able to smile
quite recklessly down into the woe-begone, girlish face under the arnica
bandages.

“Buck up, Cis, and eat some really good scrambled eggs with little bits
of ham chopped up in them. And then there’s some glass loganberries,
hot; and somebody’d been what Mrs. Skinner calls ‘pampering the milk,’
so I got a brown jar of cream for them. _One_ comfort of living in a
_ménage_ without any _men_ (a joke, so please laugh) is that we can eat
what we _like_, instead of stodging horrible, gristly chops and steaks
and potatoes every night of our lives. And I brought in some red ink—not
Veuve Emu this time, but really decent Burgundy to cheer us up——”

“But, my _dear_—!” protested Cicely, with the scared glance of the
business-girl who knows what it costs to eat and drink.

“It’s not extravagance. I can afford it.”

“You can’t! You can only _just_ manage to scrape along for yourself—and
you know your poor darling hat’s awful, and you told me you couldn’t get
another—you haven’t managed to put by a penny for ‘extras’—you told me
yesterday——”

“Ah, yesterday! But I shall have some more money—_now_.”

“What?—and you never told me when you came in? What, have Waters and Son
actually given you a _rise_?”

“Supplementary duties,” I explained briefly, drawing a wooden chair up
beside Cicely’s couch and laying a clean towel over it for a tablecloth
before I set down the plate of ham-scramble. “Pretty well-paid, too. Yes.
I got the job to-day. And,” I concluded with resolution, “I begin it
to-morrow.”




CHAPTER IV

ACCEPTED!


“And when do you think the ‘engagement’ had better be announced? At once?”

This was what the Governor said to me this morning when I again presented
myself at his desk; this time with the timid “acceptance” which, after
poor Jack’s desperate appeal, is my only alternative.

“At _once_?” I gasped. “Oh, but—How could it? The—well—people would think
it so”—I checked a hysterical laugh—“so _funny_!”

“Funny? What’s funny about it?” took up the Governor, as sharply as if
he didn’t see anything at all odd in the whole situation. But he does.
He _must_! What a hateful trick men have of pretending they’re _not_
pretending—when you’re unable to prove, in so many words, that they
_are_! People talk about women being more complicated; good gracious!
It’s we who are simple and straightforward. What was I to make of the
Governor, when he asked me, in quite an annoyed tone of voice, “I suppose
men at the heads of offices have become engaged to their employees before
now Miss Trant?”

“Y-yes—of course—_Become engaged_.”—He was talking now as if _this_ were
_that_!—“But not if——”

“Not if what?”

“Well, not if they have never seen them to speak to!” I explained
falteringly. “You see, Mr. Waters, the three other typists in my room——”

“Oh! Those girls!” said Mr. Waters casually, and I caught my breath.

For in the tone of those two words from the Head of Affairs I heard the
rest of his meaning—“If _they_ think it odd—if _they_ make difficulties,
they can go, at once.”

I saw that nightmare threat of “the sack” looming again, this time over
the heads of three girls who had worked with and always been very decent
to me. They—if they stood the least bit in this young office tyrant’s
way—could go!

“It’s not only the girls,” I urged, clenching my hands to keep them from
shaking, and hating the man who made me so nervous. “It’s—everybody. Mr.
Dundonald, Mr. Alexander, they must all know that you scarcely exchanged
a word with me until you sent for me yesterday, when we—they all thought
you were going to dismiss me——”

“Ah?” said the Governor coolly.

“—S-so I can’t tell them, right on the top of _that_, that we are
actually engaged to be married! There’ll have to be—some—some other sort
of warning!”

“Don’t see the necessity myself,” said Still Waters, fixing those keen
grey eyes upon me as if I were a letter-file or a paper-weight, or some
other inanimate object that they’d happened to fall upon while he was
meditating on other things. I wondered if he were thinking that, sooner
than be bothered over this affair, he would sack Mr. Dundonald, Mr.
Alexander and his whole staff! “Still, if you prefer it. You mean that
there had better be some intermediate stages; that I ought to begin by
singling you out from the others, seeing more of you, and so on. Quite
so.”

It was uncanny, the cut-and-dried way in which he spoke of proceedings
which—well, are always looked upon as so intensely the opposite of
cut-and-dried! This affair was the imitation of something very different;
still, one hardly expected him to be able to map it all out, like the
diagrams in scientific dressmaking!

“Now, how am I supposed to ‘see more’ of you?” he went on, in the same
tone as he might have asked, “_Where must I join this dotted line to
section D?_”

“Ah, I have it.” (The sections were beginning to fit in neatly.) “You
will come into my room here each afternoon in Mr. Alexander’s place, and
take down my letters.”

“Very well,” I agreed, relapsing into my usual outward meekness and
inward rebelliousness.

What a _fearful_ nuisance, to be banished to the Siberia of the
Governor’s private room, after the murky but cheery atmosphere of the
typists’ “glory-hole,” and the society of three other girls!

A couple of years ago I should have used the shibboleth of my set at
home to describe these same girls—“Terrible!—Impossible!” I should
have noticed nothing about them beyond their cheap “stock” clothes and
the Cockney accents that used to be such an hourly jar to my nerves.
I shouldn’t have differentiated the sentimental “Smithie” from Miss
Robinson, who has more capacity in her carbon-stained little finger than
most of the girls who were with me at Wycombe Abbey had in their heads. I
should scarcely have considered them of the same race of being as myself,
and as for being on friendly, talkative terms with them—Well, having
to fend for oneself in the labour-market does knock a good deal of the
nonsense out of one. Here I was, quite annoyed at the prospect of giving
up the companionship of the three for the afternoons!

Still, it would be worth it. My employer would be as good as his word
about the five hundred pounds. He’d open an account for me. And at
lunch-time I shall be able to cable that much-needed hundred to Cape Town.

I’m to begin earning it as private clerk—to a living tape-machine!

“Yes. That will be quite the best plan,” he went on. “That will pave
the way for it.” His tone became if anything more “scientifically
diagrammatic” still as he said, “To-day is May fourteen; let me see—How
long do you suppose it would take before it would be considered the
natural thing for me to fall in love with you?”

“‘Natural’? How could it ever be considered natural” was on the tip of my
tongue, “for you to fall in love with anybody?—You, who think it ought to
be mapped out into a certain number of days, like that sum about ‘_twenty
reapers reaping so many acres in a week_.’”

Primly I answered aloud, “I should think you could please yourself, Mr.
Waters.”

“Well, we will see about that presently,” said my employer, turning to
the desk. “And now there is this——” After speaking about “the time it
took to fall in love,” I thought he’d reached his limit. But no. He went
further.

From a drawer that he unlocked he took out a paper that he handed to me.

“I have taken the precaution of having our whole arrangement put down in
black-and-white, if you will kindly sign it here.”

—“In _black-and-white!_”—“_sign——!_”

I felt the angry colour surging up into my face; I was all the more
furious because I dare not show the real rage I was in.

“Oh, yes. I’ll sign it,” I said, with desperate meekness, “if you really
think it’s necessary. If you imagine that I am the kind of girl who might
take advantage of our—our contract afterwards, sue you for breach of
promise, or——”

“Come, come!” Still Waters interrupted briskly, peremptorily. “It’s
just because I didn’t think you were ‘that kind of girl,’ amongst other
reasons, that I selected you for my post. This instrument is drawn up
largely on your own account. You have a pen——?”

I took it out of the case fastened to the front of my very utilitarian
blue delaine blouse. I hate wearing it there. I always look upon it as
the sign of servitude and the mark of the beast, but it’s the custom—and
business-like.

“Right. Now, Miss Trant, I think that’s all for this morning. You can
arrange to come in and take down my letters each afternoon at a quarter
to three, beginning to-morrow.”

“Yes,” I said, in my meekest tone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Loud were the murmurs of commiseration that broke from my three friends
in my own room when they heard of this novel arrangement.

“What, my dear? _You_ to take down his old letters? That’s the Governor’s
idea of giving you one more chance, I suppose,” sniffed Miss Robinson,
“before he sacks you! Pity he didn’t tell you to go, and get it over
yesterday!”

“He’s simply impossible to please. Why, when I come here first,” said
Miss Holt, “he had had three girls at it in one week and they all came
out in tears because the Machine had snapped their heads off. For one
thing, he dictates at such a rate that I don’t know how he expects anyone
to follow him without they have to ask him to repeat it, and _then_ he
glowers at you like a Gordian! See if he doesn’t!”

“It’ll be ‘_Now, Miss Trant!_’” mimicked Miss Robinson, gabbling at
top-speed. “‘_Got that? Go on_—

“‘_We can offer no further explanation of same beyond facts already
supplied, and are of opinion that there is nothing to be gained by
prolonging this correspondence._’ Certainly nothing to be gained by you,
my poor dear!”

“No, he’ll be sending for that stolid Scotch Sandy back before the
afternoon’s over!”

“Don’t discourage the girl too much before she starts. Still, I wish you
weren’t forsaking our room for the afternoons, Miss Trant. We shall miss
your merry prattle and your footstep on the stair.”

“Yes, and there won’t be much prattling for you in there,” said Miss
Smith. “More like sitting among the mummies and sphinxes and things in
the British Museum. Girls, can you imagine Still Waters ‘prattling’ to
anybody, even as a little boy?”

“That man was never anything so human as a little boy,” declared Miss
Robinson. “He was created grown-up and ready-made and put together like a
Remington. Probably in the very act of clicking out—

“‘_Contract B.954. Our buyers advise us as under_,’ and so on.

“I wouldn’t mind what I betted that _he_ never cried over going to school
for the first time, or began to fancy himself more when he’d sat out at a
dance and flirted——”

“_Flirted!_ The Governor!” I put in—quite forgetting What would
presumably be my cue very soon, and laughing with the others.

“You might just as well think of him falling really desperately in love
with——”

“_Talk_-ing, ladies,” broke in the usual voice, followed by the usual
lull.

But the usual twinge of fear didn’t visit me this time.

Let Mr. Dundonald report me; let him complain of me, bitterly, to the
Governor if he likes! All Caledonia, stern and wild, can’t get me turned
out of the Near Oriental _now_. To-morrow sees me unshakably installed
as—the Governor’s private clerk!

       *       *       *       *       *

I must say Mr. Waters is even more paralysingly alarming to work for in
this capacity.

His dictation—Well! Miss Robinson described it. He simply doesn’t
realize, doesn’t _mean_ to realize, that “a clerk” is composed of
anything more than a pad and a scurrying pencil. He literally does not
_see_ that these objects may be trembling in the grasp of the anxious
slip of a young woman, who has to guide them! He’s excruciatingly
particular about the transcribing of his sheaf of letters. And I
shudder—that is, I _should_ have shuddered only last week—to think what
would happen to Miss Trant, typist, if she brought in anything to be
signed one second after four-thirty, which is his time for leaving.

But now I’m secure in the knowledge that however much that machine of a
young man with the closed cash-box of a mouth may long to sack me as a
typist, my other, more lucrative, post could not be so easily filled.

Hurray!

       *       *       *       *       *

To-day is Friday: that Day of Terror in the office, the day of the
outward mails. But it’s brought no terror to me. My week’s salary, if you
please, has amounted to eleven pounds, five shillings.

Twenty-five shillings of that was paid out to me in the usual way by Mr.
Wallis, our cashier—little dreaming that my purse was already bulging
with ten more than welcome sovereigns that I got in exchange for my own
cheque (The grandeur of that!) at the Bank where that providential five
hundred pounds (four hundred since) has been put down to the account of
“Miss M. Trant.”

I daren’t allow myself to think what would have happened if it hadn’t
been for that.

As it is, I am able to take home quite a lot of invalid dainties to
Cicely (left to the tender mercies of Mrs. Skinner) as well as a lovely
lemon-coloured azalea in a pot, and a brand-new novel (four-and-six—half
her share of the house-keeping money!).

Spending this fortune will come fatally easily to me, I know. But I’ve
a dim presentiment that the earning of it isn’t going to be as easy as
that!

This morning, which now seems about a year since I began my
“supplementary duties,” Harold summoned me to appear at twelve o’clock,
instead of after lunch, before the Governor.

First of all I was seized with nervous flurry, wondering what on earth
I’d done. Then I remembered that it wouldn’t really matter about that.
What mattered was what I should _have_ to do next?

There was another cut-and-dried plan for this in the very tone of
the Governor’s “Good morning” when he glanced up to see me standing
submissively beside his desk again.

“Now, Miss Trant, you have been working in here exactly a fortnight,” he
reminded me.

“Exactly a fortnight.” I wonder if he is going to keep count of every
one of the three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of the year which must
elapse before I shall be able to say a gleeful good-bye to him and his
diagrammatic “engagement?” I expect so: I expect there’s a time-table for
each one, drawn up and carefully put away for reference in one of the
locked drawers of his big cleared desk.

“I think that something more might be done at once about this arrangement
of ours.”

“Oh, yes?”

(A fortnight! Neither too long nor too short a time, he probably
considered, for some “fresh development” to take place.)

“So what about my taking you out to lunch to-day?”

What about it? A vivid mental picture of the expression on the faces of
Miss Robinson, Miss Holt and Smithie rose before me. What—_what_ would
they look like when——Well! They’ve _got_ to look it sooner or later, so
it might as well _begin_ to-day.

“Certainly,” I nearly said. Then I hesitated. No! Why _should_ he be able
to “fit in” every single detail of his plans, with the ease of a born
jig-saw genius? Why shouldn’t he have to make some rearrangement, consult
someone else’s convenience for _once_ in his life? I would just try to
put my tiny little spoke in his wheel here, to _see_.

“Mr. Waters, would you mind making it to-morrow instead?”

“Much the same to me,” returned my employer rather unexpectedly—still,
I suppose he _would_ allow a twenty-four hours’ margin in these
arrangements, in case of accidents. “But why wait?”

“Oh, because”—No woman ever does anything for _one_ unadulterated motive;
a thing men won’t understand! So I had my second choice of reasons quite
ready, and it was quite naturally, as well as truthfully (for I _was_
thinking of Smithie’s preparations for an outing), that I suggested—“it
would seem more ‘natural’ if I were to have on a new—my best hat to go
out to lunch in instead of the little old cap I put on because of this
drizzle to-day.”

“Ah! Very well,” said Mr. Waters, with his succinct nod. He added, “I
suppose that sort of thing is what they mean when they say—when _women_
say—that women have a much better eye to detail in business than men
have?”

(I don’t _quite_ know how he meant that. But never mind, Mr.
Cut-and-Dried. I _have_ altered your time-table by a day, at least!)

“To-morrow, then,” said Mr. Waters, after I had said “Is that all?” And I
went.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day was a regular “new-hat” day. Just the sort of day to go out
to lunch with a “hovering” _fiancé_—a real one!—I thought, as I set off
down the Embankment, leaving Cicely, whose foot isn’t quite right even
yet, at the open sitting-room window with a novel.

It was brightly sunny, but, although we’re nearly in June now, there was
a nip of cold in the breeze; the smile of a flirt—of a “cold coquette,”
as Major Montresor described me once. I wonder what _he’d_ think if ever
he met me again? Probably that it was just like little Monica to “pull
off” making a good match with another froggy-natured person.

I laughed at this as I was walking along to the corner where I get the
motor-bus. After all, there’s nothing to do but laugh at it—at the whole
affair. Actually, it was a momentous choice to have thrust upon any girl;
and it might have cruelly embarrassing side-issues. But what’s the good
of dwelling on momentous and cruel aspects of subjects that _have_ a
comic side to them? The only way is to look hard at that comic side—to
see the joke, the whole joke, and, most important of all, _nothing but
the joke_.

I felt satisfactorily strung up to the coming “fun” of the situation when
I got into the typists’ dressing-room at the Near Oriental.

Here I found Miss Holt listening to Miss Smith, evidently a little
headachy and nervous, attempting to “stand up” to Miss Robinson in some
argument.

“The matter with _you_,” she was saying pettishly, “is that you’re
setting up to be a _man_-hater!”

“Setting up? No such luck,” said Miss Robinson, maddeningly
good-tempered. “If _I_ could ever see a fellow I didn’t think was awful,
I’d begin thinking of setting up. But where _are_ all the men, good
gracious? What does a girl ever see, working in holes of offices? Weeds!
Indoor weeds, smelling of stale Virginians and wearing Number Thirteen
collars.”

“Collars aren’t anything!” Miss Smith flushed an angry pink.

“No; but what they go round are. And I must say I like to see a chap with
a good, thick, strong-looking one (that’s why all the _nice_ girls love a
sailor, Smithie) with plenty of sunburn and no spots on it, and—Hul-_lo_,
Miss Trant!”

I had turned up at the right moment to prevent a squabble—I and my
brand-new hat bought out of Chérisette’s window, no less! and provided by
the princely salary.

“I say, Miss Trant, my child, you’re blossoming out!” commented Miss
Holt, all eyes and envy. “How much did that roof cost you? It’s a good
one.”

“It _is_ rather a good one,” I admitted quietly. “I’m so glad you like
it.”

But I said no more until the morning’s work was over and we had trooped
back into the dressing-room to get ready for going out at one o’clock.
Then:

“I can’t come to lunch to-day,” I said, drawing on the deliciously
“fresh”-feeling white gloves I’d bought for myself at the same time as
the hat, and giving a glance round the dressing-room to make sure that
they all took in the next announcement. “I’m going out.”

“Who with?” seemed to burst, of its own accord, from three pairs of lips
at once.

Drawing myself up to what there is of my full height, I smothered an
inclination to giggle foolishly, and answered with starchy dignity,
“Since you _must_ know, I’m going out to lunch with Still Waters.”

“Oh, my dear, give that old joke a rest,” urged the most frequent user
of “the old joke,” Miss Smith, flushing anew with interest, “and tell us
who HE is! This is something quite new, Miss Trant, isn’t it? Doesn’t
she look conscious, girls? Didn’t I know that hat meant something? How
exciting! I’m _so_ glad, dear; but, do tell us! Not his name, of course——”

For in the code of these girls, it’s not fair to ask for names.

“—but just his _Christian_ name!”

“William,” I admitted, smiling as “coyly” as I could.

“William! Sounds a bit—stand-offish,” objected Miss Holt. “D’you call him
‘_Billy_,’ by any chance?”

“Never,” I said solemnly, “not by any chance.”

“Of course not. ‘Billy’s’ no class,” said Miss Robinson. “‘William? Ahem!
_William!_’” in a pompous bass voice. “Dark or fair, Miss Trant?”

“Fair.”

“M’m. Well, I suppose Miss Trant _would_ pick a fair one, her being such
a reel brunette,” commented Miss Holt, “but as for me, I never could
take to a fair man. Puts me in mind of weak tea. About as fair ’s the
Governor, Miss Trant?”

“Ye-es; just about.”

“Anything for a bit of a change,” said Miss Robinson satirically. “I
should have thought you’d have liked another colour to sit opposite to
at lunch, after having to have the same sort of thing staring you in the
face all the afternoon. However!—no accounting for ’em!... I hope he’s
tall, though?”

“Over six foot, I should think.”

“Ah! Well grown, William! Is the young gentleman in the City, may I ask?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Isn’t she a good sort, answering all our impertinent questions like
this! One more, Miss Trant, and we won’t bother you. Where are you going
to meet him?”

I don’t think she expected that I _would_ answer this. But I said quite
frankly, “I am to meet him just outside the front entrance in Leadenhall
Street.” And I whisked out of the room to the lift. I didn’t tell the
girls “Look out of that window on the other side of the landing and
you’ll see him.”

I knew it wasn’t necessary.

In two minutes’ time I was being helped into a taxi by the august hand of
our Governor himself.

I lifted my head and looked straight up at the landing window. Yes, there
they were, all three of them, flattening their noses against the pane.
I nodded and smiled with bravado. My three colleagues were too utterly
taken by surprise to even smile back at me. The expression on their three
faces was even more pronounced than as I had foreseen it. Miss Holt was
standing in front, and as we drove away I saw her eyebrows rise to her
netted hair, while her mouth dropped open.

I could almost _hear_ the gasp that came from it, of:

“_Girls!_ Did you _ever_? She really _is_!—with Still Waters! Well! What
_ever_ next?”




CHAPTER V

THE FIRST LUNCH TOGETHER


“To the Carlton,” ordered Mr. Waters; and off we drove.

I hadn’t been inside the Carlton since the days before the “smash”—the
days when I was a young lady of leisure, without an idea that I should
presently be toiling in the grimy typists’ room at the Near Oriental from
nine o’clock until six, wearing home-made delaine shirts, and trembling
lest I might lose my hard-earned twenty-five shillings a week!

The last time I’d been taken there to tea, after a matinée, by my brother
Jack and Sydney Vandeleur, who had ordered roses of a very special pink
to match the frock I’d worn then, and had sent a message to the band to
play my favourite waltzes. Yes, as Jack said, Sydney would do anything
for me, always. I expect Jack thought that the hundred pounds which saved
his name came, as he suggested, from the Vandeleurs. Well, I couldn’t
possibly “give away” the truth about the anomalous position his sister
accepted in order to earn the money!

Thank goodness, the Vandeleurs were at the other end of the world, and
wouldn’t be home for a year, thought I. By then my time would be up, and
they needn’t know of my make-believe “engagement”—except that it was
“broken off”!

“I telephoned for a table,” said Mr. Waters, as we left the ordinary
work-a-day world of hurrying people and crowded, petrol-breathing
motor-buses in the Haymarket, and entered the restaurant—warm, perfumed,
bright with dainty clothes and pretty faces that smiled above the little
tables.

Ours was in a delightfully cosy corner, next to an empty table reserved
for three persons. The decorations were of pink hothouse roses, almost
the same as Sydney’s! How very different from that marble-topped table in
the crowded “Den of Lyons” above which Miss Robinson, Smithie and little
Miss Holt were probably even now gossiping excitedly over this event; but
_how_ much rather I would have been with them!

“Now, Miss Trant, what do you prefer for lunch?”

(_My_ only variation of lunch for the last year having been from “Bovril
and a baked apple” to “Poached-egg-on-toast, with a glass of hot milk.”)

“I don’t mind at all.”

“Then I’ll order.”

And very delicious were the things he did order. Apparently even a
machine liked perfect _bisque de homard_, and crisp whitebait—his one
touch of nature, in fact.

I longed for Cicely—who does love nice food, poor child!—to be there to
help me enjoy this. In fact, I wished that Cicely and I could have had
the lunch to our two gossiping selves. How we should have enjoyed all
the luxuries, from the pretty glass to the freedom to chat, softly but
unrestrainedly, about everyone we noticed in the place. I have heard it
said that “Women would rather talk to other _women_ than to _men_, even
when they would rather talk to a _man_ than to a _woman_.” I don’t think
I’ve often met any single man I’d rather talk to than to a fairly amusing
member of my own sex. You have to say most things twice to men, and then
they don’t really understand....

Still Waters, of course (as his typists explain to each other at least
four times in a morning), isn’t what you could call a man. Somehow, in
surroundings that used to be more familiar to me than offices and City
streets, I lost a little of that awe-struck nervousness of my employer.
For a time I could almost forget he was that. He became—Well! he made me
feel as I did in the old days when I had got someone very heavy-in-hand
to take me in to dinner, or as if I were sitting out a dance with some
rather hopeless partner. I mean that was about as far as any conversation
between us went—a few stilted, distrait remarks, punctuating long
stretches of silence.

Meanwhile, I glanced round the big place at the other luncheon-parties,
people laughing and chatting together—out evidently for amusement, not
“business”!

Several times I caught glances directed at our own table. I wondered
what the people were thinking of us—of the enormously tall, fair young
man with “City” stamped all over him, from his smooth head to his glossy
boots, and the small, dark-eyed girl in the black velours hat which
looked so very much more expensive and stylish than her neatly-cut but
ancient serge costume would lead them to expect.

Perhaps they thought that the big young man with the face as
expressionless as a fireproof curtain was slightly bored by taking his
country cousin round the sights of London? Perhaps they thought we were
really engaged? It didn’t matter. There was no one in the restaurant
who knew either of us. Idly I wondered who would come in and take the
“reserved” table close to us.

“Miss Trant, you took good care that the other typists knew for a fact
with whom you were coming out?”

“Oh, yes. They were all looking out of the landing window as we drove
off.”

“Good!” said Still Waters.

And again I almost fancied that I caught that flash of something like
humour in his granite-grey eyes, as I’d fancied it before, when he spoke
about my “intelligence” and my work. But again it was gone before I could
make sure. I was glad. One doesn’t want a machine to have any sense of
humour. And I shouldn’t find it so easy and unembarrassing to be on terms
of “official fiancéedom” with anything but a machine.

“I shall take you out to lunch two or three times this week,” he
announced, in his orders-for-the-day voice, “and perhaps to tea. On
Saturday I shall ask you to come with me to a matinée that you can talk
about, and so on, to the others.”

“Very well, Mr. Waters,” I said meekly.

“And now that we’ve led up to it in this way, I see no point in waiting.
So next week, Miss Trant, the ‘engagement’ had better be announced.”

“Certainly,” I agreed, again picturing to myself the stupefaction of
everybody at the Near Oriental, from Mr. Dundonald (a pity the shock
can’t incapacitate him for life!) down to Harold.

At home there’d be Cicely. I’m fond of her, but I dread this. She
takes such an _exasperating_ interest in anything that can be called a
love-affair. I myself can’t see what there is so thrilling about “Who is
going to marry whom, and why?”

But Cicely positively “collects,” just as some people collect
book-plates, all she can find out on this hackneyed subject. I know
she’ll insist on treating this arrangement between my employer and myself
as a real, romantic “_affaire de cœur_.” Well, I suppose I shall _have_
to keep from slapping her!

Then there’ll be Mr. Waters’ friends, whoever they are, to whom I shall
have to be introduced as the girl he’s going to marry. (Oh, _lor’!_ as
Mrs. Skinner puts it.)

“After which,” pursued the Governor, “I think I shall have to ask you
to——What is it, Miss Trant? Just seen somebody you know?”

“Yes,” I managed to murmur; “I know the lady who has just come in—at the
next table.”

For at the table which had been reserved for three, two of the party had
just turned up.

One was a fair-haired young girl, expensively frocked in blue velvet, but
still looking like school-room tea. The other—how well I knew the slim,
well-preserved silhouette of her figure, the carefully-graded bloom of
her face!

It was Lady Vandeleur, whom I’d imagined to be in Japan!

She is a charming woman, but she has two faults. One is that, with a son
of thirty-two, she insists on remaining twenty-five. The other is that,
unlike dear old Sydney, to whom the downfall of the Trant fortunes made
absolutely no difference, she’s never really liked me since the “smash.”

Before that, she was quite eager to explain that I was “already” like
a young daughter to her. But it’s two years since I heard the tone of
effusive affection with which Sydney’s mother was speaking to the girl
beside her.

“My dear child, aren’t you _starving_? I vote we begin. That naughty boy
of mine is so late. We really can’t wait for Sydney!”

“For Sydney!” Goodness! Then presently Sydney himself would join them. He
would take the chair that faced our table—to which his mother sat with
her back turned. He would see me—he’d be sure to come across and speak!

My mind was in a whirl of wondering what Sydney Vandeleur would think
when he saw the girl he admired lunching _tête-à-tête_ at the Carlton
with that big, imperturbable stranger. And then Sydney himself came in.

I was in the middle of a particularly ambrosial _pêche Melba_, and anyone
would have thought I didn’t raise my eyes from it. But thank goodness,
my eyelashes are long enough for the purpose they’re given a girl—to be
looked up through, without a man seeing. In a flash I’d taken in all
of Sydney that one could see; his general appearance of a Cavalier’s
portrait; his look at the girl, his mood, a slightly different way he’d
had his hair (longish) and his little Vandyke beard trimmed since I saw
him last, the clothes he was wearing....

Of course nine girls out of ten never notice a man’s ordinary clothes.
Evening-dress they recognize; and, of course, flannels, because those are
white, and allow the man (especially after a hard game) to look a decent
shape if he is one. Anything else is lost on them. But I’m the tenth
girl. As Major Montresor once said, when he was huffy with me for telling
him his new Norfolk jacket was “too undergraduatey” for him, “Little
Monica notices like a valet!”

Sydney’s clothes one couldn’t _help_ noticing; he’s so well-turned-out,
but never in a stereotyped style; in fact, he refuses to be dressed, as
he calls it, “through a stencil.” I’m sure he’d rather put on a false
nose and walk down St. James’s Street in it than appear in that hideous
conventional “rig” of the Governor’s. To-day, for the Carlton, Sydney
wore grey of such an exquisite soft stuff that it was hard to believe it
came from any ordinary man’s tailor; the tie below his bare throat was
dove-colour shot with heliotrope, and his silk socks and the line in his
shirt with its soft collar matched it exactly. There was one dark Russian
violet in his button-hole.

All these details were familiar to me before Sydney so much as cast a
glance at our table. Then, in a lull, when I refused coffee, he seemed
to prick up his ears. With a quick turn from the girl in blue velvet, he
looked straight across and saw me at last.

“_Monica——!_”

I heard the quick, delighted, recognizing exclamation break from my old
admirer’s lips. (I _know_ he admires me, so why not say so?)

For the life of me, I couldn’t help raising my eyes and meeting his own
fixed upon me.

He half rose. Then his glance fell upon my companion. Mr. Waters was then
in the act of putting money down upon the little tray the waiter handed.

And then I saw the expression of eager delight on Sydney’s dark, rather
dreamy-looking, face give place to a hurt surprise, as he sat back again
in his chair.

At the same moment Lady Vandeleur turned quickly, fixing her own gaze
upon our table.

Immediately the gaze became a blank stare, while her
exquisitely-pencilled eyebrows rose almost to the edge of her costly
“transformation.” She’d recognized me, of course. But stony displeasure
and outraged convention gleamed in the eyes that she instantly averted.

You see, in her world a girl of my age is not supposed to lunch at the
Carlton without a chaperon of some sort, and with an unspecified young
man.

Up to this occasion I, Colonel Trant’s daughter, had been of that world,
of those conventions. The Vandeleurs were evidently shocked at the lapse.

Dear old Sydney, old-fashionedly chivalrous towards women, was also
old-fashionedly strict; and his mother—well! she was merely glad of the
excuse to cut me.

Under the circumstances I need not have minded. But one is not
consistent. I minded horribly the idea of what they might be thinking
about me—that I had become horrid, forward, fast.

Something that seemed as hard and hot as a baked paving-stone seemed to
settle between my chest and my throat as I fumbled at the last button of
my long white gloves, and, in answer to Mr. Waters’ business-like “Ready,
Miss Trant?” I rose to follow him out.

Lady Vandeleur’s tortoiseshell-handled lorgnette rose also. I saw her
turn a searching scrutiny upon my blond, glossily-groomed, well-to-do
looking escort.

Again a horrible hint of what she might be thinking of me passed through
my mind. She knew I worked now in the City; she would think—Sydney would
think—I had made it an excuse for “picking up” the attentions of a
wealthy business-man, perhaps my employer. From every point of view it is
considered “bad form” for the head of a firm to have anything to say to
his typist out of business-hours.

All this she would say to Sydney, and to that girl. No, I couldn’t stand
that! There seemed only one thing in the world for me to do. “I’m forced
into it,” I thought rapidly, “so here goes.”

I touched Mr. Waters’s sleeve, murmuring:

“Please wait a moment.”

He stopped, looking down at me inquiringly. I turned, smiling, to that
slim, expensively-gowned figure of outraged propriety at the other table.
I accosted her as if I thought she had not seen me.

“Lady Vandeleur, don’t you know me?”

My own voice sounded strangely artificial in my ears, but, thank
goodness, it was steady enough, with every syllable distinct.

“Will you allow me to introduce Mr. Waters, my fiancé?”

There! It was said!

Transformation scene upon that carefully-preserved face at the table!
Gone, vanished, was the icy displeasure. A radiant smile, a gracious bow
to the imperturbable Mr. Waters met my announcement. An effusive clasp of
both my own hands.

“My dear child, what surprising, what delightful news! How glad I am for
you,” cooed Lady Vandeleur.

How glad she was for herself—glad to think that a hopelessly ineligible
girl, for whom Sydney had always displayed a regrettable weakness, was
now safely out of harm’s way—and his!

Her gratification at this made her quite as affectionate as she had been
in the days when the Trant family was still worth marrying into.

“So long since we heard anything of you, you naughty child! But this
quite makes up. Yes, we _were_ away; but there were alterations in our
plans”—with a quick gesture, a quick glance, towards the pretty débutante
opposite to her, evidently her latest “plan” for Sydney. “Now we are back
in town for the season. The old address, you know, in Belgrave Square.
Wednesday is my afternoon. Now, promise you will come and see us. A
‘soon’ Wednesday, mind! Do bring your _fiancé_!”

“I shall be delighted.” It was the Governor’s imperturbable voice that
answered her. At that moment I could not have spoken.

For as Sydney was murmuring conventional congratulations I had caught
sight of the look in his eyes. They are handsome eyes, deep and brown
and soft, like the eyes of some spaniels; and just then they looked so
bitterly hurt that I felt as if I had been cruel to some nice dog or some
helpless child. Perhaps Sydney cared more than I had ever imagined.

I felt quite miserable when at last the purring farewells and the “so
very glad, dear childs” were left behind us, and we passed out of the
restaurant, through the wheeling glass doors into the Haymarket once more.

As we walked up to Piccadilly Circus I turned to the Governor with the
apologies I felt I owed him.

“I’m so very sorry, Mr. Waters! There seemed nothing else to be done.
Those people—they were old friends of my father’s; they would have
thought it so odd for me to be lunching alone with you.”

“Oh, quite so, quite so!” put in the Governor, matter-of-fact and
reassuring. “I quite realized the situation.”

Did he?

Not all of it! Poor Sydney! I have never felt nearer the possibility
of falling in love with Sydney in my life. But the Governor was still
speaking.

“In fact, I was not at all sorry that the occasion happened to come up.
It means, of course, that the announcement will have to be made rather
earlier.”

“Oh, yes,” I agreed, with the usual sinking of the heart.

We had reached the Circus now, and before I knew what he was going to do,
Mr. Waters had stepped quickly across to those sailor-hatted, shawled
flower-women, whose baskets make such a gorgeous splash of colour against
the stone background of the fountain.

Back he came with a cluster of great red, fragrant carnations, which he
handed to me.

“Oh, but really you should not have——” I was beginning, when I realized
that this also was part of the business—that never had flowers been
offered from man to maid under quite such unromantic circumstances
before, and that I had better take Still Waters’ gift as ostentatiously
as I could.

I tucked the sweet crimson blooms into the breast of my blue serge coat.

As we whizzed citywards in a taxi, the Governor spoke again.

“Now, Miss Trant, there is another suggestion I have to make to you,” he
began. “To begin with, if I may say so, I like the way you dress.”

Crisp, concise, business-like syllables; no girl could have interpreted
them into a _compliment_!

“I like the way you go to business—always neat, always ladylike. No
ear-rings, no dingle-dangles and low necks like some of them; always
a very clean collar and a quiet tie, I notice—just the thing for the
office. But when I take you out rather more, I suppose you will have to
have one or two rather special evening gowns and afternoon frocks, and
theatre-wraps, and so on. I don’t know what they’re called. No doubt
you know the kind of thing to order. All part of the arrangement, you
understand. I’ll get a friend of mine in the City, whose wife runs a
really first-class dressmaking business, to let me have the address; and
then you will go to her—”

All cut-and-dried, like all his other schemes! But this was something
different—very different as well.

—“have yourself fitted out with all that is necessary, and send in the
bills to me.”

“Please, no. Not that,” I heard myself say quickly.

My employer turned upon me a face with some of the imperturbability quite
jerked out of it by surprise.

“What’s that?”

“If you don’t mind, I can’t—I would rather not do so as you suggest
about that,” said I, holding my head very high, but feeling myself turn
as crimson as the flowers in my coat, and speaking rather shakily, for
this was the first time I had ever asserted my own feelings in even the
mildest way before him. “I—I know it seems like straining at a gnat after
all the camels that I am preparing to swallow. Of course I will _get_ the
frocks and things. Only—please, you must allow me to pay for them out of
my allowance—my salary.”

He looked at me doubtfully.

“That seems scarcely fair—to you. It means paying out your own money on
things, that—well! I thought that would obviously come out as ‘_business
expenses_.’”

I said, feeling miserably uncomfortable, “Don’t you see that I can’t
possibly allow you to pay for—to give me _frocks_?”

“But—don’t you understand that—in the way of business, you will have to
allow me to give you other things?”

“Other things? What?”

“Why, presents. I don’t know what, exactly. You will probably have to
come round the shops with me yourself, and tell me. You are the best
judge of what a girl would like to show, as gifts, keepsakes, what-nots,
from the man to whom she is, presumably, engaged. It is part of this
affair!” explained Mr. Waters, a little impatiently, as the taxi was held
up at a crossing and waited panting for the signal to get on. “It would
‘look odd,’ as you yourself expressed it once, if I did _not_ offer you
presents.”

“Presents,” I said, feeling really indignant with him for being so
obtuse, “are very different. For one thing, I should not have to keep
_them_ always. They would go back to you at the end of the year, as soon
as that paper I signed for you is torn up. But—girls don’t take _clothes_
as presents, _ever_!”

“I don’t see why not,” he said obstinately. “Besides—don’t they! A cousin
of my own, a girl” (fancy his having a girl-cousin!) “who was staying
with us last winter used to wear a magnificent stole and a muff of
leopard-skin—the leopards had been shot by her _fiancé_.”

“Those were _furs_,” I explained. “Furs are different.”

“A great many things would seem to be ‘different’ from what I imagined,”
he said, in a tone of voice that was almost petulant. I felt inclined
to say, “Yes! _You_ imagined that because you’re as infallible as a
tape-machine in business-hours, you can’t make mistakes outside the
office!”

Whereas Sydney Vandeleur, who has no “business” outside his amateur art
criticism, with an occasional design for hand-wrought jewellery, would
never have made the _faux pas_ this man had done. It was so absurdly
ignorant and _gauche_ of him not to see it. And even now he seemed
inclined to dispute the point.

“Feathers, now,” he said a little satirically. “Might not a girl wear
a couple of really good, expensive ostrich plumes, or whatever you
call them—the things that hang down the back like a sort of Niagara of
fluff—if they were sent to her by a man with facilities for buying direct
from South Africa?”

“Oh, yes,” I said readily, feeling as if I were an editress answering
“_Queries on Etiquette_.” “Feathers are _quite_ as permissible as furs.”

“Even supposing them to be very costly? Worth as much, say, as five times
the amount of the rest of the lady’s wardrobe?”

“It’s nothing to do with the cost,” I explained patiently. “A
twenty-guinea fox stole a girl _might_ accept from a man. A four-pound
frock she _couldn’t_.”

“I confess I don’t understand these _nuances_,” said Mr. Waters, almost
absent-mindedly.

I said, “Any _girl_ would.”

“Possibly. I can’t help wondering what held good instead of the
fur-and-feathers edict in the days when they composed——What I was going
to say,” he broke off quickly, “was that I always imagined that young
French girls were brought up to be more strict in these matters than
English ones. Yet I know a French girl—”

(Surprising! He knows a girl!)

—“her father’s an old business acquaintance of mine—”

(Ah, that explains it.)

—“and neither her father nor the young lady seemed to find anything
curious about the matter, when, in payment of some bet made at a
flying-meeting, I bought her quite a large boxful of pairs of gloves.”

“Oh, gloves! Anybody can give gloves to anybody,” I told him. “_Gloves_
aren’t like clothes.”

“No, but I see some clothes about nowadays that are uncommonly like
gloves!”

_Could_ it have been the Governor who muttered this _sotto voce_ to
himself?

No! It must have been the comment that flashed through my own mind, and
that I imagined spoken aloud as the burly policeman whose back I had been
studying during this interlude dropped his hand and allowed our taxi to
whizz forward into the writhing tangle of traffic.

There was no further stopping or talking until at last we reached the
imposing entrance of the Near Oriental Shipping Agency offices.

I noticed that the Governor’s level eyebrows rose a trifle as he looked
at the indicator of the fares before paying the driver. Yes, I am sure
that many fifteen shillings’ worth of taxi-drive haven’t seemed as long.
I only hope this florin’s worth was as endless to him as it was to me!

Then, just as I was turning away, my employer surprised me by saying
brusquely but quite nicely, “Miss Trant, you must do just as you like in
the matter of—of which we’ve been speaking. I didn’t mean to hurt your
feelings. I am sorry if I did—You understand that?”

“Oh, of course,” I said, all meekness again.

And then I set my teeth before I ran up the stairs into the typists’
dressing-room and prepared to face the eyes of my three friends, Miss
Robinson, Miss Holt and Miss Smith.




CHAPTER VI

WHAT THEY SAID


In the dressing-room, where Miss Robinson was rinsing out the sooty basin
before washing her hands in it, Miss Holt “smarming” her hair-net down
over her little brown chocolate of a head, and Miss Smith tearing yet
another leaf out of the inevitable book of _papiers poudrés_, the silence
that met me was quite as death-like as if the girls had just been pulled
up by Mr. Dundonald’s “_Talk_-ing, ladies!”

Talking? I didn’t need to be told that, _from_ the moment they’d seen,
out of the landing window, the last of that taxi in which the Governor
and his private clerk had driven off, _to_ the moment they had heard my
returning footstep on the stairs, they had done nothing _but_ talk about
me and my incredible, my epic lunch.

As I drew the hat-pins from the admired new hat, I prepared for a
hurricane of comments and questions.

None came. Not one of the girls seemed to have a word to say to me!

Perhaps they thought they would hear more by seeming not too eager.
(That’s rather Miss Robinson’s style of “drawing out” her companions.)

Perhaps they considered the subject too vast for immediate discussion.
Perhaps, for they are all good-natured girls, they had come to the
conclusion that it wasn’t fair to “rag” me about it—that I might be
feeling too utterly nervous and flurried over the unexpected (?) event.

They didn’t even ask me whether I had enjoyed myself! I even saw them,
distinctly, avoid looking at me.

Only Miss Holt’s eyes seemed drawn, as if in spite of herself, to the
flowers I was taking out of my coat to put in water in the grimy jam-jar
on the dressing-table that so often holds Smithie’s bunch of violets; and
it was Miss Holt who breathed an involuntary—

“I say, what lovely carnations!”

“Do have some,” I said, as a matter of course, dividing the cluster and
holding out half to her.

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t deprive you for the world, Miss Trant,” murmured Miss
Holt, stiffly drawing back.

I realized from her tone that she considered I had made a mistake.

Of course! Those flowers ought to have been thought “too precious” to
share with anybody. Smithie would never think of giving one of her
“boy’s” violets away. Dear me, I thought, what an added bore, having to
remember to keep up the correctly sentimental attitude about every trifle
of this kind.... _Ah!_

I broke off what I was thinking at that moment with quite a sudden start.

For, just as she turned away, I had caught Miss Smith’s glance at that
cluster of fresh, crimson carnations. It might have been a bunch of
withered wall-flowers that had been left too long in water, for the
disgusted wrinkle that lifted the prettiest typist’s small, powdered nose.

“_I_ wouldn’t touch them,” it seemed to say.

“Not _those_ flowers.” ...

And at last I saw why.

The reason my three colleagues had forborne to question, or chaff, or
even look at me when I came in from that expedition with the Governor was
_not_ because they were too considerate, too puzzled, or too wily.

It was merely because they were shocked—scandalized!

They were thinking worse things of me than I thought I saw behind Lady
Vandeleur’s lifted lorgnette. I found myself suspected—probably more
than suspected!—of having run counter to the standards of a class which
is perhaps more innately virtuous than Lady Vandeleur’s and my own and
Cicely’s, and certainly more rigid in its judgments. I remembered gossip
about typists and their employers, gossip from the days when I was taking
my training at Pitman’s. And out of this I could imagine for myself the
tone of the talk about me that had passed across that marble-topped table
in the “Den of Lyons” at lunch-time.

“Well, Still Waters have been running deep, with a vengeance! This is the
meaning of her taking down his letters for a whole fortnight—_without any
complaints_, girls! We might have seen there was something funny in that!”

“She’s been pretty artful, too, not letting on that there was anything
at all, until to-day!—And there must have been some sort of beginning. A
girl’s boss doesn’t take her out to a swagger lunch, with flowers and a
new hat and all, without there’s been some sort of a leading up to it!”

Perhaps Miss Robinson might suggest—“Well, I should never have thought
she’d been that kind of girl. Fact of the matter is, I suppose she funked
losing her job if she didn’t.”

But Smithie and Miss Holt would chorus vehemently, “She ought to have
lost her job, first! I would!—And chance it!”

Yes; according to this jury of maidens, I was already pronounced
“_Guilty_.”

And, innocent as I was of anything they would have thought “mattered” in
the least—for I don’t think the keeping-up of a false engagement would
have outraged their conventions at all in comparison—I felt myself turn
hot and cold with shame over the false position.

I was even thankful not to have to stay in the same room with these
other girls that afternoon—thankful to be able to beat a retreat to the
large, light office where I took down letters from the Governor’s rapid
dictation as if my whole life depended on it—thankful that he did make
such claims on the whole of my attention and capabilities; thankful that
the boring “dinner-partner,” who had allowed a glimpse of a slightly
more human personality in the cab when he’d discussed the difference
between frocks and furs, had been entirely swallowed up again in the
business-employer.

       *       *       *       *       *

As he was leaving, he gave me the last of his orders for the following
day.

“I should be glad if you would have lunch with me again to-morrow.”

“Very well, Mr. Waters.”

That means another ordeal in the dressing-room, where the ill-ventilated
atmosphere will again be set simmering with the unspoken—and the
unspeakable. I never did think that this ten pounds a week was going
to be exactly easy to earn. But I hadn’t bargained for this—This is
outrageous! It makes me hate everybody: Mr. Waters, to begin with, for
making the proposal; Jack next, for making it necessary for me to accept
it; the girls at the office here, for so hideously misconstruing the
position!

My ordinary work, which had for two or three hours pushed my complicated
“supernumerary duties” to the back of my mind, has come to an end, and
the other thing looms well into the foreground again. I’ve walked nearly
all the way back to Battersea, but that hasn’t worked off my simmering
indignation even yet.

I shall spend the evening ironing out washing-ribbon and oddments in our
tiny kitchen; I can’t stay with Cicely—I should only snap at her, and she
would wonder why.

The one relief that I have been able to give to my feelings was when,
in crossing the bridge, I tore those glorious crimson carnations (which
I wouldn’t leave at the Near Oriental!) out of my coat again, and flung
them far, far down into the sluggish brown waters of the river below me.
How soon they were out of sight! How I wish that I could put them and
everything connected with them, out of mind!

       *       *       *       *       *

To-day, the day of my second lunch with Mr. Waters, has been one
that I don’t think I shall ever forget, even when I’m a white-haired
maiden-lady, with no one to lunch with but a parrot or a tabby-cat, and
no man’s “appointments” to consult but those of the individual who has to
pay me over my Old Age Pension!

Silence—a silence that ought to have rejoiced the heart of Mr. Dundonald,
reigned throughout the whole long morning. I knew that the girls meant me
to realize that Miss Trant, for outraging the code of the self-respecting
business-girl, had been “sent to Coventry.”

This was what helped me to that stiffness of spine, that Suffragette-like
defiance of eye, and that unnatural clearness of diction which I felt
myself assuming at one o’clock in the dressing-room as I announced, “I
think it is at the Savoy that I am lunching with Mr. Waters to-day.” For
I flung it down like a gauntlet.

It was Miss Robinson who accepted the challenge with a particularly icy
“Gracious!”

The two others stared hard; while Miss Robinson, clearing her throat,
fixed her shrewd eyes on me and plucked up courage to add what Smithie
and Miss Holt were probably thinking.

“Miss Trant! D’you mind me asking you if you’re going out with Mr. Waters
because you like it, or because you can’t say ‘No’?”

“Who would say ‘No’”—I fenced flippantly—“to a Savoy lunch?”

“Some girls might,” murmured Miss Smith. Miss Robinson, answering not my
words, but my tone, said, “Of course it’s none of my business—except
that while you’re here you are supposed to be one of us. And I can’t
say——”

“Can’t say what?” I demanded, meeting her shrewd eyes squarely with my
defiant ones. She flushed a little, and I was glad. But she stuck to her
guns.

“I can’t say that it looks any too well! A man in his position, and a
girl in yours! Under those circumstances——”

“You know nothing,” I said, deliberately and coldly, “about the
circumstances.”

Still more deliberately I tossed a glance into the inevitably
soap-splashed mirror at the set of my hat. Then, without another word, I
turned out of the open door and walked to the lift, humming a tune just
loud enough for them all to hear.

This time I didn’t trouble to glance up from the entrance, where my
employer joined me, to the landing window. The girls would not be
watching me off this time.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Savoy!”

The taxi-driver touched his peaked cap with a quite unusual suggestion of
deference. I suppose he had found Savoy luncheon-escorts were generous
tippers. I wondered if he had ever before driven a couple in quite these
“circumstances.”

Miss Robinson’s sincerely-meant reproof, “_It doesn’t look any too well!
A girl in your position. A man in his!_” echoed in my ears louder than
the whirring of the wheels and the noise of the traffic. It rankled
poisonously throughout the drive, throughout the whole luncheon.

We lunched outside, which Mr. Waters said laconically would be
“more amusing for me than inside.” Personally I felt that nothing
would ever amuse me less than this duty-lunch with its hateful
obbligato-accompaniment of what those other girls were thinking, what
they were saying.

Oh, it’s all very well to quote that French axiom—

“_They say—What do they say?—Let them say!_” The average person will
always find that a counsel of perfection.—Especially the average girl.
The impulse _not_ to let them “say” if we can help it is nearly as
strong in us as the instinct of self-preservation, and of touching our
hair when we pass a mirror. So that there must be some really important
basic reason for it. I do wish I knew what would happen if that suddenly
crumbled away ...?

But it isn’t “away” yet: it spoiled every trace of amusement that I
might otherwise have enjoyed in the lunch and the people that passed.
I’ve merely a vague impression of cab-whistles, of taxis whirling
up beyond the trellis of the low balustrade, of obviously American
figures appearing and disappearing among the evergreens; of a small,
unhappy-looking face with dark eyes that stared resentfully at me out of
the bowls of spoons, and of a voice that said half-absently, “I’m afraid
you’ve made a very poor lunch, Miss Trant.”

“Oh, not at all.”

“Perhaps you are tired?”

“Oh, not in the least, thank you.”

“Not too tired to come on somewhere? I thought if you didn’t mind”—this
always preludes an order—“we’d drive to Gemmer’s in Bond Street, and
choose that ring for you.”

“Ring?” I repeated vaguely, as I put on my gloves.

“You will have to have one, you know. An engagement ring, as the outward
and visible sign of the new conditions,” he said nonchalantly, as we
rose. “Must have a ring to clinch the effect!”

Yes, I thought resentfully, that “clinches” it—for him. He doesn’t think
of my side of the affair at all! He doesn’t see that his accurately
mapped-out time-table includes any unpleasantness—just because _he_
doesn’t choose to admit it!

I turned to him as we sat in the cab. I felt like “the turning worm” as I
pulled myself together for what I meant to say.




CHAPTER VII

CHOOSING THE RING


“About that—engagement ring, Mr. Waters——”

“Yes?”

“You want me to take to wearing it, as soon as you have got it, I
suppose?”

“That’s the idea,” he said, turning a little to look at me while I stared
straight at the big white-and-blue buses lumbering up the Strand, but
saw, clearer than the traffic, the faces of Miss Robinson, Miss Holt, and
Smithie wearing that partly contemptuous, but more angry, expression with
which I suppose a decent Trades-Unionist on strike might be entitled to
look down upon a blackleg. “Yes, of course it’s for you to wear at once.
What else?”

“And—to show the others?”

“Of course!” He looked still more surprised; a little impatient, too. I
suppose he felt that again an irritating spoke was being thrust into the
well-oiled wheel of his plan.

“I am to show it to them and let them know, in that way, that I am
supposed to be engaged to you?”

He answered this with another question.

“Tell me, Miss Trant, have you been having any unpleasantness in the
office about this—coming out to lunch with me?”

“N-no,” I said. “Of course,” I added more quickly, “it’s been awkward!
You could not expect it _not_ to have been awkward—at least, for me!”

“Ah? Made awkward for you by those girls—what?”

“No! Oh, no!” I fibbed swiftly. For again I could conclude his comment
with that relentless “_Well, then, they can go!_” And I couldn’t have the
girls sacked, calmly as I felt I could have seen them all three strangled
an hour before. “Only—a little difficult to explain.”

“This will explain it,” said my employer coolly, as the taxi stopped
outside the glass door of the great jeweller’s. A page-boy in
green-and-silver swung it open for us. And Mr. Waters made me precede him
into the softly-carpeted shop with the long glass counters and the white
velvet stands curved to the shape of a woman’s neck, on which winked
and flashed, gleamed and glowed, diamonds—rubies—pearls—jewels of every
description.

“The sight of flowers soothes and softens a woman’s mood. Jewels, on the
other hand, stimulate, excite and irritate her. Possibly because they
generally signify longings unattainable combined with the knowledge that,
given _that_ necklace, or gems like those, or _such_ a pair of ear-rings,
and any beauty she has would be tenfold increased.” ... That is how
Sydney Vandeleur explained it to me. He’s interested in jewels ever since
he won that Arts and Crafts competition for the design of a girdle in
silver, mother-o’-pearl, and peridot. And Cicely, of the red curls, once
confessed that she would marry an octogenarian if he could give her a
really lovely rope of black pearls!

But that was in fun. This was business....

A small, olive-faced shopman in a frock-coat and with curls like a
retriever’s back bowed over the counter and flashed his teeth at us.
Mentally I nicknamed him Mr. Levi Smarm. It would have taken all Miss
Robinson’s powers of mimicry to reproduce the suavity of his “Sir? What
may I have the pleasure?”

“We want to see some rings,” said my employer brusquely.

“Engagement rings, sir, of course?”

“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Waters, fixing a cold granite-grey stare just
above the retriever’s back—or rather, the jeweller’s head. “Now—”

I felt that he had nearly rapped out his usual “Now, Miss Trant!” but
checked himself under the sympathetically intrusive eye of that Jewish
salesman as he turned to me—“what stones do you prefer?”

“I? Oh! What does it matter?—I mean, I don’t mind in the least!”

I was remembering things that various girl-friends had told me, in the
old days, of the choosing of their engagement rings; of various rings
I had seen. One girl, whose _fiancé_ had gipsy blood in his veins, had
chosen a gipsy’s silver wedding-ring. Another had a tiny enamel circlet
with the posy:

    “_The Gift is Small_
    _But Love is All._”

If I _were_ the falling-in-love type of girl, which thank goodness
I’m not, this scene at Gemmer’s, so utterly opposed to all canons of
Romance and tradition, might have seemed a “desecration”—might have got
thoroughly on my nerves.

But what _was_ on my nerves, which actually were jangled enough for the
moment, was—first, the attitude of the girls towards me ever since I
came back from the Carlton yesterday—and, secondly, the Governor’s blind
tactlessness, his intention of turning me loose among them, so to speak,
alone, to flaunt his ring on my finger!

A positive rage against Still Waters boiled up in me as suddenly as hot
milk in the saucepan when you don’t watch it. So, when he suggested,
casually, “Let us say diamonds, then, shall we?” I heard myself retort
quickly, almost before I knew what I meant:

“Yes, diamonds. Diamonds are always money afterwards, you know!”

As soon as it was out of my mouth I realized that it was an appalling
thing to say under any circumstances. Mr. Levi Smarm, however, seemed to
consider it an extremely witty remark.

He threw back his curly head and laughed quite pleasantly as he suggested
that surely the young lady was not thinking of an “afterwards” already?

“It is always well to be provided for every contingency,” put in Mr.
Waters dryly. “I should like to see those diamond rings in that show-case
over there, please.”

“There” was at the other end of the shop—which meant that our salesman
had to turn his frock-coated back upon us, and that he was out of earshot
of the next remarks between his “newly-engaged” customers.

“Miss Trant!”—the Governor spoke curtly and hurriedly—“What was your
meaning just now when you said that ‘diamonds were always money
afterwards’?”

“Well—I—I understood that they were! Perhaps I ought not to have said it
with the man there. I meant that you would not lose anything on it when I
return that ring to you in a year’s time from now!”

“Who said anything about ‘returning’ the ring when the so-called
engagement is up?” asked Mr. Waters, looking directly at me.

I was aghast.

“But ... naturally I send it back!”

“I had not intended that at all. You will have ... expenses connected
with this affair—railway-journeys, and so on, I mean.” He _meant_ clothes
again, I suspect, but could not say so. “I intended whatever value the
ring might have to stand for those.”

“Thank you,” I said, nearly boiling up again. “In that case I won’t have
diamonds, please.”

“This is a very pretty design, madam,” insinuated the returning Mr.
Smarm. “The colour of these stones is very beautiful.”

“Yes, but I don’t think I’m going to have diamonds,” I persisted, feeling
quite amazed at my own boldness. I meant, however, to carry my point.
“I’d rather have pearls—or opals——”

“Very seldom a young lady chooses opals for her engagement ring,” smiled
the shopman. “That superstition against opals loses our firm thousands
of pounds’ business a year; the majority of ladies considering them so
unlucky.”

“I am not superstitious,” I said. “I would like—I am going to have an
opal ring, with very small stones in it.”

“We are going to have diamonds,” remarked my employer quietly. “Fetch me
some other diamond rings to look at.”

“I would rather not have them,” I urged, in the temporary absence of the
black curls and white teeth.

“And I would rather that you had,” ordered my employer. “After all,
diamonds are the show-stones; everybody notices them. They look so
unmistakably _like_ an engagement, don’t you see?”

“Yes—I see,” I said reluctantly, my nerves feeling more jangled than
ever. “But, Mr. Waters, if I must have them, I shall insist upon sending
back that ring when——”

“When the time comes we can discuss that,” the Governor cut me short
just as Mr. Levi Smarm bent over us with his wave-offering of jewels on
a tray. “Yes. That’s a good one, that big fellow with the stones going
nearly all round. Those seem a fine colour.”

“A perfect colour, sir; perfectly matched. I am sure that you will——”

“Try it on,” said Mr. Waters, holding the winking, flashing circlet out
to me.

I pulled off my left-hand glove, but here the suave shopman, evidently
accustomed to shopping couples who showed more appreciation of his
sympathy and understanding, interposed again.

“Oh, pardon me, sir, but that will never do. That would be most
incorrect! No young lady would keep on an engagement ring that had not
been first slipped on to her finger by her _fiancé_ himself!”

Mr. Waters’ glance of contempt at the shopman would have shrivelled up
the entire staff at the Near Oriental. But several little things had
shown me already that the man who is a Grand Mogul in his own offices can
go down several degrees in importance when he leaves the City. Mr. Levi
Smarm met that glance with another flashing smile, and evidently waited
for us to take this last hint on bridal or betrothal etiquette as it was
meant.

I believe Mr. Waters was going to do so. A slight shrug of his broad,
sloping shoulders seemed to say, “We may as well have everything _en
règle_ while we’re about it,” as he turned to me. But I wasn’t going to
have any masquerading “frills” about this business that could possibly
be avoided, and this particular development in our “romance” _was_
avoidable. I said very quickly and decidedly, “Oh, but I don’t believe in
anything of _that_ sort, you know.” Then quietly I took the ring, before
he knew what I was about, out of my employer’s hand, and slipped it on to
my own “wedding-finger.”

There was a faint purple smudge off a new ribbon on my knuckle just above
the ring. I couldn’t help thinking how entirely characteristic of the
whole affair this was: the stain of my daily labour, showing side by side
with these wonderful stones—that must also be worn as part of the gaining
of my daily bread.

The ring fitted as if measured for me.

“You wish me to keep this?” I said briskly to the Governor.

“Yes, I think that one will do perfectly,” he replied; and he turned to
the young jeweller again.

It was to ask the price, I knew. I was seized with that ineradicable
feeling of distress that claims a woman under any circumstances
whatsoever—when mention is made of payment for her, by another. She loves
to be paid for—with all thought of price ignored. So I rose and turned to
bend over another glass counter under which gleamed pendants of pearls
and emeralds—which I scarcely saw, for another couple had strayed into
the shop—a plainish girl, simply and rather dowdily dressed; a man like
dozens of others—and they interested me. Their two faces were as radiant
as if they had come into a fortune sufficient to buy up the whole of
Gemmer’s six times over, but I heard the girl whisper, awe-struck and
ecstatic, “Oh, Harry, _no_! I _won’t_ let you! It’s _absurd_, for people
like us.” ...

“People like us aren’t going to be married every day! Considering I
nearly wrecked my constitution and made myself unspeakably ill-tempered
by giving up smoking for eight months,” growled the young man, “just to
save up enough to _be_ absurd, you won’t catch me wasting it on being
_sensible_.”

“I’ll write you out the cheque now, and wait while you ring up my
bank, then,” the Governor’s voice was saying; then came purrs from Mr.
Levi Smarm, of “Shall not detain you a moment, sir ... Thank you, sir;
perfectly all right. Much obliged. _Good_ afternoon, sir” (with a bend
to the waist). “Good _afternoon_, madam” (with an even lower bend). Then
he turned the eyes and teeth and curls on the young couple who had saved
up to be “absurd.” I wondered whether he would notice the difference
between them and—his last customers. Probably. Ah, but he could hardly be
expected to know quite _what_ it was!

“I hope,” said Mr. Waters, civilly, on our way back to the office, “that
that little Hebrew bounder didn’t annoy you. That sort of thing is all
part of his business, you understand.”

“Of course I understand,” said I submissively.

“I am glad you—didn’t mind it,” said Mr. Waters.

I longed to be able to retort, “_Mind?_ Why on earth should I? Please
try to understand that there’s no reason I need ‘mind,’ any more than
one of those curved white velvet stands at Gemmer’s should mind whose
hand clasps and unclasps the necklace of amethysts and peridots that it
displays. I’m quite content to let my finger be a ‘stand,’ to show off
these diamonds, for which—for some unexplained reason—you’ve got to pay
someone to be the ‘official’ wearer! All I ‘mind’ is the way you do these
things—it’s clumsy beyond belief!”

One comfort that remains to me is that I need only wear this hateful ring
of his while I _am_ on show—and not at other times.

No tightly-corseted Victorian has ever so longed to be alone in her
bedroom again and undo her torturing case of whalebone and coutil as I
shall long to get away, every time I’m wearing this “engagement” ring—to
the mere pleasure of taking it off!




CHAPTER VIII

THE ENGAGEMENT IS ANNOUNCED!


“Ten past three, by Jove; later than I thought again,” muttered my
employer as we reached the office again. “And I’ve got all those letters
to get through yet.... Miss Trant, I shall have to ask you to come
straight through to my room, please, and take these down at once, as I’m
off early this afternoon.”

So, still in my hat and coat, I walked straight through to Mr. Waters’
own office, sat down at the clerk’s table, and stripped off my gloves to
the afternoon’s work. (It’s alarming to see how “twice-on” white gloves
become impossible in London. I’m afraid quite a lot of my hard-earned ten
pounds a week will go on those items alone, now that I’m constrained to
lunch at these haunts of the well-dressed!)

All through the stress of following the Governor’s top-speed dictation
with my scurrying shorthand, I was conscious of the bulge of that
newly-bought ring—heavy as a door-knob, it seemed now!—on my engagement
finger, and shooting its arrogant glances of orange and emerald and
rose-colour over the dull pages of my pad.

I was glad that it had not had to be displayed at once in the
dressing-room; glad of the respite of my hour’s toil. But that seemed to
come to an end before I had even begun to set my teeth, mentally, to the
next ordeal.

—“_and beg to remain, gentlemen, yours, etc._—Yes; that’ll do, Miss
Trant, thank you,” came the Governor’s dismissal.

I put back my chair and stood up. Now for it! Now for the announcement
of this engagement! I supposed that I need not _begin_ by saying a
word to those three other girls. I should only have to walk over to my
typing-table, sit down and open my machine, and the flash of the electric
light on those marvellous stones above the keyboard would draw three pair
of eyes upon me at once. Should I have to answer that clamouring gaze, or
would the girls put it into questions of so many words?

“Miss Trant?—Look, girls!—I say, tell us, tell us? It’s not a joke? It’s
an engagement ring all right? You’re not trying to have us on, now? Are
you going to tell us——?”

Whichever way it happened, it was going to be perfectly awful. Never
mind. It had got to be. It was part of the price of that five hundred
pounds, of Jack’s salvation.

“What’s the matter, Miss Trant?” asked the Governor, with a quick glance
up at me as I passed his chair.

“Nothing, thank you. I am going to let the others know, now, about
this”—I moved that detested ring on my hand into another challenging
flash. “And I suppose you will require me to-morrow at lunch again?”

“No—yes—that is——About telling the others of this engagement of ours,”
took up Mr. Waters unexpectedly. “Would you, by any chance, prefer that I
did that myself?”

_Would_ I? I nearly gasped with relief! Why couldn’t he have seen before
what a difference this would make to the situation? There isn’t much
dignity in it, goodness knows. But this would save some appearance of it,
at all events! I said quietly, “If it is the same to you, I certainly
should prefer it.”

“Then please wait here while I see them. I won’t keep you a moment,” said
Still Waters, and he walked quickly out of the room.

It seemed an hour to me, but I suppose the minute-hand of the
round-topped clock on the broad marble mantelpiece had only moved on two
steps before the door opened again to admit my employer.

“That’s all right,” he told me, with his succinct nod. “I have announced
the ‘engagement’ to the three other typists, and shall let Mr. Dundonald
and Mr. Alexander know before I leave. I won’t keep you, Miss Trant. Good
afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” I said. “Thank you.”

For the first time in my life I really felt like thanking him. And yet
he’d only done the most ordinary thing that one would expect the most
ordinary man to take as a matter of course. Only the custom-honoured
practice of the Near Oriental is to refuse to regard its head as an
ordinary man. Of course, he _isn’t_. There are advantages in making a
presupposition of this kind, perfectly clear from the very start!

Feeling comparatively at ease and my own mistress again, I entered the
typists’ room with my head as high as it had been when I marched out to
the lift at lunch-time after Miss Robinson’s voicing of what they all
thought of me.

Miss Robinson, with her shrewd face startled into the likeness of someone
much younger and less astute, broke away from the other two—they had
been all three chattering and knotted up together in the corner by the
cupboard where the tea-things are kept—and came frankly towards me.

“Well, Miss Trant! _Here’s_ some news we’ve just had sprung on us,” said
she, speaking as if she found great difficulty in sorting out her words.
“I must say—well, really! Gracious! Are you going to shake hands and let
us congratulate you, as I suppose is the right thing, or are you feeling
wild with me about this morning? We didn’t know, you know. We never
dreamed——! How was anyone to guess, after all——!”

“Of course you couldn’t,” I said, shaking hands with one after the other.
“And of course I’m not feeling ‘wild!’” My revenge was to hand if I
wanted it. But somehow I didn’t feel it would be worth it, now. Though,
as a matter of fact, the reminder of what I had felt that morning had
brought some of it surging back over me again. And this feeling was not
improved by the wording of little Miss Holt’s felicitations.

“‘Wild?’ I should think Miss Trant was ready to pat herself on the back
for the next week, eh? Who’d ’a thought of this, that day we were all
trying to buck her up at lunch when she was afraid she was going to get
the sack? Didn’t I say then, though, that Miss Trant would do all right
because she’d got a taking way with men? But—the Governor himself—that we
never did look upon as just a ‘man!’ Well, you never can tell!”

“I shall never try to, after _this_ afternoon,” announced Miss Robinson.
“Not after his marching in at that door there, and saying, in quite a
human sort of voice—not his own voice at all—that is, you’ll excuse me,
Miss Trant! You know what I mean!—saying, ‘_I have some news to tell you
ladies. Miss Trant and I are engaged to be married!_’”

“Married to the head of the firm—my hat!” breathed Miss Holt, devouring
me with her eyes, as if she thought that by staring hard enough she might
discover the secret of how one achieved this giddy height. “Too grand to
speak to any of us after this! Look at that ring of hers! Think of all
_that_ means!”—

Yes! If she only could!

—“No more turning out to get to business every morning, wet or dry, with
the mud still stiff on your skirt that you haven’t had time to brush! No
more lining up with the crowd to wait for that beastly old workman’s tram
at the ‘Elephant!’ No more strap-hanging! No more packed motor-buses with
flower-women, and goodness knows what, shoving their baskets into you and
trampling on your feet as they get in!” She took breath, and then, for
fear one of the others should interrupt before she finished this harangue
upon the Dignity of Labour, she hurried on—“No more having to keep on
at it if you _are_ ready to drop and your eyes popping out of your
head—no more A.B.C. girls not taking the slightest notice of your order
and _then_ giving you sauce because you’ve waited half an hour for your
lunch—no more slaving from har’-past nine to six for _her_ any more!...
I suppose you know you’re _most awfully lucky_?”

“In some ways,” murmured Miss Smith softly. “But having stacks of money
and never having to work again isn’t _everything_!”

And the dreamy look that came into her eyes irritated me worse than
the loudly-expressed envy of the other girl. Miss Holt’s type of mind,
that cares only for the things that she can see and handle and wear and
eat and drink, _is_ so much easier to tackle than an _un_-practical
person’s point of view. I’m glad I’m rather like Miss Holt, myself. These
sentimental people are too tiresome!

I simply couldn’t help one snap at Miss Smith as I turned to her.

“I suppose _nothing’s_ ‘everything’ except wasting _years_ waiting for
Love in a flat? I suppose you despise any hard-up girl who’s sick of the
struggle and who marries for comfort and a home?”

“I don’t despise anybody, Miss Trant, as it happens!” protested Smithie,
facing me with the sudden defiance of a mild nature touched in its
tenderest spot. “_You_ didn’t ought to speak sarcastically to me, just
because _you_ can get married at once instead of waiting—years—till he
can afford——”

“Well, and you needn’t despise me for that other reason, at all events,”
I said, a little mollified by the tears that were now welling up in the
dreamy eyes, “for, whatever else I may be going to do, Miss Smith, I am
not going to marry Mr. Waters for his money!”

I didn’t add that I shouldn’t ever marry him at all, but that his money
was quite good enough to get engaged to him on. However, had I openly
announced this, I don’t think she could have looked more surprised.

“Not for his money—marry him for _love_, then? _Him?_” screamed little
Miss Holt before she could stop herself. Then she clapped her hand over
her wide-open mouth, another involuntary gesture, caused partly, I
suppose, by the impulse to keep back anything further that might offend
me, and partly by the appearance at the door of Mr. Dundonald.

It was to everybody’s amazement that this was not immediately followed by
the inevitable “_Talk_-ing, ladies!” and the scowl.

But an extensive smile creased Mr. Dundonald’s shut fist of a face into
unfamiliar lines of benevolence; he beamed upon us all as he announced in
a voice as suavely unfamiliar as the smile, “Miss Trant! I am sorry to
interrupt your conversation, but Mr. Waters would be much obliged if you
would go back to his room again for a moment, as he wishes to say a few
words to you!”

“Oh, certainly,” I said, wondering what in the world this additional
“order” might be. The girls didn’t “wonder.” I know they thought it
was for another good-bye—especially Smithie, one-idea’d simpleton! I
felt her demure little smile in the small of my back as I turned to the
door. Mr. Dundonald—oh, unprecedented occurrence!—held it open for me,
murmuring, as I passed out, “Miss Trant! May I be permitted to proffer
my very heartiest good wishes on the occasion of this—this delightful
announcement?”

“Oh! Thank you so much,” I said pleasantly. (“Worm!” I thought.)

So the Governor had told Mr. Dundonald while I was receiving the
congratulations of my colleagues....

I saw in his eye—grey, fishy, and always looking as if “the Main Chance”
were plainly visible just ahead of any person he addressed—that already
my personality had changed from that of the twenty-five-shillings-a-week
typist, clad in her “all-I’ve-got” serge costume and liable to dismissal
at his hands, to that of young Mrs. William Waters, who, gorgeous in
silk, satin and sables, would one of these days be calling at the office
to pick up the head of the firm and to motor him home with her! Mr.
Dundonald’s new manner was a forecast of his reception of me when that
day should dawn!

If _he_ only knew!

“Sorry to trouble you again,” said the Governor as I presented myself
before him once more. “I forgot, in the middle of all that other
business”—this, I suppose, might have applied to either the dictating of
his letters, or the choosing of his betrothal ring—“to tell you that I
intend to let my mother know, to-night, about this engagement of ours.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You will probably hear from her to-morrow, inviting you to stay at our
house—it’s near Sevenoaks. You had better send in your formal resignation
to the office at once, and make your arrangements to come on for a
fortnight’s visit or so, in a few days. Will that be convenient to you?”

“Oh, perfectly,” I said obediently, hoping that I did not show any
outward symptoms of that sick feeling of panic that possessed me. To
stay at the Governor’s house? So soon? Horrors! With the Governor’s
mother? What _will_ she be like? Exactly like him, probably, only far
more forbidding; women can always be more alarming than even the most
terrifying of men. An elderly feminine edition of Still Waters! Ye gods!
And she will hate me, of course; look upon me as that designing minx of
a typist who had “got round” her son in business-hours and prevented him
from “doing well for himself” in some other direction. People with money
always want their children to marry people with more! It will be Lady
Vandeleur over again, only worse. How appalling! Perhaps she will make
herself as disagreeable to me as possible, in the hope of inducing me to
feel that I should never be able to stand such a mother-in-law, and that
I should simply have to break it off!—which, under the circumstances, I’m
powerless to do!

“And—er—that will be all, this afternoon, thank you. You will hand your
notes of my letters to Mr. Alexander. If you have arrangements to make,
you can leave as early as you choose to-day.”

“Thank you, Mr. Waters.”

Feeling that I couldn’t have stood another minute of him and his
“arrangements,” I walked quickly out of the room and down the passage.

Round a corner, I heard the voice of our office mimic, who had slipped
out on some pretext, in full flow of narrating to one of the telephone
girls the amazing news that I know was being buzzed all over the Near
Oriental offices.

—“but, my dear, the little Trant gives out she’s madly in love with him!
She says”—here a most successful imitation of my own voice—“‘Whatever
else I may be doing, I am NOT marrying him for his money!’”

“P’raps it’s for his kind heart and his charm of manner, I don’t think,”
suggested the telephone girl. “Or his good looks, eh?”

“Nothing actually the matter with his looks, my girl. Anyhow, he does
always look as if he went in for no end of cold water, and week-end
tramps, and golf, and the windows wide open, and decent soap—cuticura,
I’ve smelt it,” said Miss Robinson. “And as if he could _heave_
things—which nobody else does, in this establishment. And if you _can_
get over the general effect of ‘the stern-and-solemn-Nelson’s column——’”

“Well, I can’t. But she’s quite pretty if she’d only make a little more
_of_ herself; p’raps she will now,” said the telephone girl, who wears
long coral drop-earrings and pins brown-paper cuffs over her sleeves in
business-hours. “What on earth do you suppose he said when he proposed to
her?”

“‘_Now, Miss Trant, when you have taken down that Buenos Ayres order,
there is something I have to consult you about personally. Now, Miss
Trant, are you prepared to consider_——’”

It was so exactly our employer’s voice that I, standing there unnoticed,
burst out laughing. The girls, caught out, laughed too.

“You didn’t know you were the talk of the place, did you, Miss Trant? May
as well make up your mind to it,” said Miss Robinson. “And do show Miss
Harris your ring!”

“I could see it from here. I thought it was something being done to the
electric lights. My! but they are sparklers! I shouldn’t half swank,
wearing jewellery like this. Did you choose it to-day, Miss Trant? My
word! Some people do have all the luck. It’ll be a very short engagement,
I presume?”

“I don’t think so,” said I, thinking of the nearly twelve complicated and
weary months that stretched before me. “Some time yet.”

“No doubt any time’ll seem long _na-ow_,” said the telephone girl archly.
“Can’t you tell us _about_ when it’s likely to be?”

Oh, dear! It seemed to me as if I passed through hours of this sort
of thing before I could break away and set out for Battersea and our
bachelor-girl flat.

Wearily, and without any “spring” left in me, I climbed the four flights
of stone steps. I felt positively dragged down by the thought of that
awful fortnight with the Governor’s mother at their house near Sevenoaks.
It had clung to me all the way back. Only as I put my key into the door
did I remember something else.

There would be Cicely to break the news of my engagement to, now!




CHAPTER IX

THE LOVER WHO CAME TOO LATE


But here, in our flat, I found to my amazement that someone had been
before me with the news.

Cicely’s marigold-coloured hair and flushed face reared themselves up
excitedly from the faded couch cushions as I came in.

“I say! _Tots!_ What’s all this?—Look here, what _is_ the meaning of it?”
she cried breathlessly. “What’s this wild story about you being engaged
to be married? Do say it isn’t true;—it can’t be! is it?”

“Who in the world,” I demanded, standing by our rickety old table in the
middle of the room and staring at her as she sat up leaning on her elbow,
“told you anything about it?”

“Well, who d’you suppose? Who would?”

I glanced quickly at the tray on the table, crowded with the _débris_ of
what had been tea for two, one saucer piled high with cigarette-ends that
told their own tale. Who had been? One of Cicely’s Slade girls? But how
would _they_ know? Whoever it was must have stayed _hours_!

“It was your friend”—Cicely announced this even as the cork hurls itself
from an unwired bottle of champagne—“Mr. Sydney Vandeleur!”

“Sydney—he’s been here?”

“Well, of course!”

“What on earth for?”

“What _for_, Tots? Why, to see _you_! And, I say! How awfully charming
and clever and delightful he is! And so handsome! Such a real artist’s
head, I call it! _Exactly_ like a Vandyke of Charles the First! Oh, my
dear! _Don’t_ tell me you’ve gone and got engaged to somebody else, when
there’s such a really _wonderful_ person so desperately in love with you!”

“Who says he’s in love with me?”

“Why, he does, of course. Didn’t you _know_? You must have. _Didn’t_ you?”

“N-no.”

Slowly I dropped my gloves and umbrella and vanity-bag and paper on to
the table. Of course I have “known,” at the back of my mind, all the
time about Sydney. But however positive a girl may be that a man cares
for her, _until he’s told her so she’s never certain_. This may sound
Irish—to a man. Any _girl_ understands....

To hear the fact proclaimed by Cicely’s lips—which really, I do believe,
would blurt out anything that came into her red head!—gave me the same
shock of surprise that it would have done even if I’d never received
little attentions from Sydney, never heard his neatly-turned compliments,
never seen those handsome brown eyes of his fixed upon me in unmistakable
admiration, or noticed the blank mask that had suddenly fallen over
them yesterday, when I broke to the Vandeleurs the news of my so-called
engagement. Cicely went on with her tale, enjoying it thoroughly.

“My dear Tots, you must have known. He’s wanted to marry you ever since
you were a slip of a schoolgirl with a little proud pearl of a face and
that lovely dark hair of yours in a great mane down to your waist. Even
then he always meant to propose to you.”

“And he tells _you_ that? Not me?”

Here I sat down suddenly in the elbow-chair with the one arm “that’s
always a-comin’ off, drat it!” as Mrs. Skinner says.

It came off now.

“_Drat_ it!” I quoted, through my teeth, and hurled the broken arm into
a corner with a violence that did some—not much—good to my feelings. “He
never told me, Cicely.”

“Because he was too tactful, too nice. He’d too much fine feeling,”
she explained eagerly. “He couldn’t possibly ask you so soon after the
‘smash’ in your affairs, and after Colonel Trant’s death, and all. It
_would_ have looked too much as if he were taking advantage of that to
rush the position. He determined to wait until you—until he—well, to
wait,” said Cicely. “He saw I was sympathetic; he didn’t mind telling me
all this. But he was going to ask you when he and his mother came back
from abroad. All the time, he was simply longing to come and carry you
off bodily from that hateful typewriter where he kept thinking of you
chained, he said, like Andromeda (who _was_ she, exactly?) to her rock.
Only he just wouldn’t. Wasn’t it _sweet_ of him, Tots!”

“To wait and tell all this to another girl?”

“But it was you he was coming round to tell!”

“He didn’t stop to see me.”

“He _had_ to get back to Belgrave Square and dress for a theatre-party of
his mother’s.”

“What he came for at all, after yesterday, I don’t see!”

“It was _about_ yesterday he came to see you, Tots! You see, he says he
met you, and you seem to have made him understand that you were engaged
to be married.”

“Well? Didn’t he believe me? Did he come round here and sit here filling
the place with that abominable reek of Egyptian cigarettes—and, yes!
finishing _all_ that nice peach jelly I got in specially for you—to find
out whether it was true?”

“Is it true, then?” gasped Cicely.

“_Yes!_ I told him so. I told Lady Vandeleur so. I am engaged.”

“And not—to _him_!” Cicely seemed utterly unable to grasp how this
could be. “What? After all he’s said—and _with_ his photograph on your
dressing-table—not that it’s nearly good enough for him! And after what I
told him I hoped——”

“What DID you tell him?” I groaned resignedly.

Cicely twisted the long, slender figure, upon which her equally slender
salary as a mannequin depends, into a more comfortable curve against the
cushions.

“Well! _Poor_ Mr. Vandeleur! When he said he’d seen you lunching at the
Carlton alone with a young man, I told him it must be a mistake. You
never _did_ lunch there, or with young men. It was just what I admired
you for, when it’s _so_ easy to get into the other way of being rather
nice to people just for the sake of their giving you a good time and
a change from being at work all day! And even though you’re not a bit
stuffy with me because I sometimes do it, you——”

“Never mind me. What did he say?”

“He said: ‘But how _could_ there be a mistake? She brought up this
self-satisfied-looking individual and introduced him to my mother as
her _fiancé_. She let us congratulate him!’ I said, ‘Well, but she
hasn’t _got_ a _fiancé_—or I should have known about it! I’ve never
heard a syllable. She didn’t even tell me she was going out to lunch.
She must have been taken out at a moment’s notice—by a friend of Jack
Trant’s, perhaps. Or,’ I said, ‘it may have been someone she absolutely
had to meet, on business!’” she continued vaguely—much she knows about
business!—“‘Getting a better post, or something of that sort. And
when she met you unexpectedly, she was flurried, and didn’t know how
to explain. Is your mother rather particular, or strait-laced?’ Mr.
Vandeleur said, ‘Very, I am afraid!’ So I said, ‘Well, that’s what must
have happened!—Tots, in her nervousness, and not wishing your mother to
be shocked, just blurted out ‘_fiancé_’——”

“Thank you,” I muttered. “I didn’t know _I_ was a blurter-out!”

“You mean _I_ am! I daresay! Well, I don’t care! I thought that _must_
have been it—I didn’t see what else it could have been! And the poor man
was so thirsting to hear anything I could tell him about you, that I
should have been a brute not to!” declared my chum, plaintively defiant.
“So I just said everything I could—about that photograph, and all!”

“What photograph?” I snapped.

“Why, that one of Mr. Vandeleur. I recognized him from that, the moment
Mrs. Skinner let him in. And I told him that it was the one and only
portrait of a young man that you seemed to possess, and that you always
keep it in a silver frame beside your looking-glass. Now, Tots, you can’t
say you don’t!”

No; I couldn’t.

“And that cheered him up so, poor fellow! He said—Oh, _isn’t_ it a
tragedy?” interpolated Cicely with zest—“that I’d given him fresh hope to
go away with!”

“Fresh fiddlesticks,” I muttered, still more savagely.

“You mean there isn’t any?”

“I mean,” I explained as patiently as I could, “that a girl can’t be
engaged to two men at once.”

“Then _who’s_ this other, Tots, that you’ve never said a word about? He
can’t possibly be fit to hold a candle to—I mean, who _is_ it?”

“It is the managing director and head of the firm where I’ve been
working,” I told her bluntly. “His name is Mr. William Waters.”

“_What?_ Not the man you all call ‘_Still Waters_’? The one you all
detest, who’s so impossible to please? Engaged to him? Oh, now you’re
pretending! Tell me, Tots. Of course you are only joking, after all?”

A nice idea of “joking” my chum has got!

“_Does_ this look like a joke?” I demanded suddenly. The newly-bought
diamonds flashed under her widely-opened eyes. “Don’t you admire my
engagement ring, Cis?”

Cicely Harradine’s soft bud of a face faded from pink to pale, and her
big eyes clouded dolefully. She said nothing for a moment but “Oh, Tots!”
(she’s quite as hopeless as Miss Smith). Then, in a tone of the timidest
reproach, she faltered, “Mr. Vandeleur _said_ he was ‘big and blonde
and City-fied and extremely prosperous-looking.’ I said I’d never seen
any friend of yours who was like that. No wonder! The head of the firm!
But—Tots!—I should—should hate to think of you, of all girls, marrying
anyone because of his—money?”

“Then don’t think it. You may do me that justice!” I said sharply. She
was nearly as bad in her way as the typists at the Near Oriental had
been in theirs—and the same prevarication had to be used to “head off”
_her_ comments on a marriage for money. After which, the accusation in
my chum’s big eyes melted suddenly into tears. Impulsively she flung her
slim arms round my neck—and I had to let her.

“Forgive me, Tots. Dear old girl, but how _was_ I to know? It’s all so
unexpected, and I never met him, and you never gave me a hint! I _didn’t_
see how you could possibly prefer anyone to Mr. Vandeleur, who _is_ so
wonderful! But of course I know Love’s blind—I mean, you can’t _make_
yourself not care for this Mr. Waters, just because another man wants
so badly to marry you! Oh, Tots, it’s all my fault, but I’m afraid he’s
going to write to you about that——”

“Mr. Vandeleur is?” (This, too!)

“Yes! It’s all because of what I said to him. I have been putting my foot
in it,” she admitted, as if this were quite a new idea to me too, “but
_do_ forgive me—Since you do really care for this Mr. Waters I’m only too
delighted, darling. Oh, I’m so glad for your happiness, you can’t think!
When did it happen? He’s _madly_ in love with you, of course?”

Here I thought grimly of Miss Robinson’s version: “_My dears, the little
Trant makes out she’s madly in love with him!_” All this about two people
who, as far as I can make out, have only one thing in common—both being
absolutely falling-in-love-_proof_!

Poor, well-meaning, warm-hearted Cicely was still effusing; eager to make
up for her first suspicion that I _wasn’t_ engaged for the only right
reason.

“I ought to have seen! Of course! It was he who gave you this extra work
about a fortnight ago?”

“Exactly!” (Extra work with a vengeance! More than I’ve bargained for!)

—“And that we were so thankful for, just when I lost my own job and was
ill, and there were all those extra things to get.... It was your ‘rise’
that got them all, I knew. Only I didn’t know ... this other. It _began_
then, I suppose, Tots?”

“Yes, it began then.”

“How romantic! Well! And I did notice that you’ve been absent-minded and
not saying much these last few days, and I _ought_ to have known why it
was. _Especially_ yesterday. Did HE take you out to lunch again to-day?
Oh, doesn’t it make the whole world different for you?”

“It makes the menu jolly different, anyhow,” I admitted.

“Ah, yes; you may pretend to be as flippant as you like about it, but I
know that’s ‘all put on’ to hide what you’re really feeling!” declared
Cicely.

Such a convenient conviction! I made up my mind, then and there, that
this was just the line I should adopt with my chum. And laughing merrily
for her benefit, I fled to my own little room.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here, left to my own thoughts at last, I flung myself down on my creaky
little camp bedstead and raged as I reviewed this new aspect of the
situation. Put crudely, it is this: It’s not _until_ I tie myself up with
this wretched sham “engagement” to the Governor that I have the chance
of cutting everything to do with him and his odious office, and becoming
safely, happily and _genuinely_ engaged!

Or, in the jargon of the Near Oriental, it’s just after I’ve sold out at
a loss that I get an advantageous offer!

Why on earth couldn’t Sydney Vandeleur have said all that _before_? A
year ago—even a month ago—and, to _think_ what it would have saved!
I shouldn’t have minded getting that money for Jack—from his own
brother-in-law! Yes; if he’s cared for me all this time, why couldn’t he
have proposed to and married me before I’d so much as seen that hateful
Near Oriental, with that “Andromeda’s rock” of a typewriter, watched over
by what Miss Holt calls “that Gordian” of a Governor! Why couldn’t Sydney
have hurried up, for once in his life, to play Perseus?

“Too much tact!” Good gracious! Why must men have this absurd code of
ethics about “the right thing” when there’s a _woman_ in the case?
Why does a man who’s hard-up, for instance, consider it so much more
“honourable” to “ride away” without a word to the girl whose heart he
knows is his, just because he “feels he oughtn’t to propose before he’s
in a position to marry?”

He “feels he ought not to stand in the girl’s way of better offers.”
... But he _does_ that, more often than not, with her first sight of
him! Never mind. He’d _rather_ leave her fretting her heart out for life
over the belief that he was only flirting after all, or let her make
a miserable marriage with someone else—rather than be “dishonourable”
enough to own up that he cares and wants her to wait perhaps three or
four years for him. He’s saved his precious “code,” just as I suppose
Sydney wished to save his.

Oh, men’s “fine feelings,” men’s delicacy and tact, men’s sense of
honour! What infinitely greater damage these do in the world than all
women’s lack of principle!

That sounds sweeping, but _isn’t_ this enough to make a girl storm at the
scruples—or whatever they may call them—which have pretty well messed up
her own life for her?

I ought to be safely and happily married, by now, to Sydney Vandeleur.
He’d make a charming husband, I know; not a wish of his wife’s that he
wouldn’t immediately try to gratify, from the pattern of the drawing-room
carpets to where she would wish to live most of the time—Pont Street—Park
Lane—or the perfectly gorgeous, old-fashioned castle with all modern
conveniences that he owns in Ireland—Ballycool, they call it. Oh, for
the deep sighing woods and the silver lakes over there—miles and miles
from anywhere else—scented solitude, with all the drawbacks of solitude
removed by motors _ad lib._—by big house-parties of amusing people as
often as one chose!—Yes, I suppose I do share Miss Holt’s type of mind,
but then I never pretend to be romantic, or to cherish illusions about
being able to fall in love.... I should be really, genuinely fond of
Sydney himself—I mean I _should_ have been. He’d be so devoted—how could
one help feeling pleased to have him about, approving of everything one
did and said and looked? He’s what I’d call companionable; not too lofty
and masculine to take an interest in the details that mean so much more
to a woman than what this country is coming to, by Gad, or what on earth
McKenna or Asquith or someone is driving at when he says—(here yards,
droned aloud, out of the _Times_)—or whether Kent is going to do any
better this year; which is all the conversation that any married women
_I’ve_ ever met seem to get out of _their_ husbands. Sydney would always
know what anyone had had on at a party, including his wife. He’d be able
to help her think out her frocks—and what heavenly frocks they would
be! Then he’s so undeniably good-looking himself. One wouldn’t be able
to help appreciating the fact that the other women would always notice
it with envy, and would put it down as such a score to the credit of
the one he’d married! His dark, “interesting” face with the Vandyke
beard and the melancholy brown eyes seems watching me now out of the big
silver frame in which he sent it to me. Yes; it certainly does hold the
place of honour on the narrow painted-pine chest-of-drawers that has
two handles missing, but is still spread with ivory-topped brushes, a
monogrammed hand-mirror and long crystal scent flagons—relics from the
wreck of the Trant fortunes!—the place of honour usually reserved in a
girl’s room for the portrait of HIM—whoever “he” may be! Why did I put it
there? Partly for the sake of old times, I suppose; I’ve tried to keep
everything of that sort which was in my room at home.... Partly to remind
myself, whenever I’ve felt extra-downhearted, that there was at least
one eminently presentable young man who was accustomed to say pretty
things of the face and hair that I saw reflected in the somewhat wavy
looking-glass near by.... Sentiment, vanity, or a mixture of both, but
_not_ the motive with which Cicely had credited me and which she’d seen
fit to impart to the original.

That idiot of a Sydney! If I could hope he’d feel it, I’d smash the
glass of that frame and run red-hot hat-pins into his portrait. I have
been furiously angry to-day, in turns with the three typists, with Still
Waters, and with Cicely—but none of this counts, compared with my fury
against the lover who has come too late!

It’s his fault. It’s all his fault—all that’s just happened—all that
will happen during the mad “arrangement” of this next year. And when
that year’s up, where will it find me? A little richer, perhaps, by
what’s left of my desperately-won salary, but back in the over-crowded
labour-market, the world of working-women who lose looks and youth
and spirits in the struggle for daily bread. Oh, it’s all very well
to be plucky, and to treat everything as a joke, and to live from one
Saturday matinée to another, making the most of life in London as a
bachelor-girl—while you’re twenty-one.

What becomes of the “bachelor-girl” of forty-five? And fifty?

That, I suppose, I shall have to wait and find out for myself, thanks to
Mr. Sydney Vandeleur!

Why couldn’t he have left things as they were at the Carlton?—

But I’ve had enough of this. It has “done me up” completely.

I am going to bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

This morning I feel, if anything, angrier with Sydney Vandeleur than I
did before.

He’s done it now! He _has_ written.

His note lies before me on our wobbly little breakfast-table with the
metal coffee-pot and the green Bruges crock full of lilac (bought out of
my “rise”!) screening me from Cicely’s anxious eyes as I read:

    “_My dearest Monica_,

    “_I have never called you so before. That was a mistake.
    Anything is a mistake that keeps us two apart. Dear, I want to
    come and see you at once, but cannot get out of some odious
    ‘arrangements’ of the Mamma’s for this week-end._

    “_Let me come on Monday afternoon, and, though I don’t deserve
    it, be kind to me then._

                      “_Till then, and ever_,

                                             “_Your devoted S. V._”

Now _I_ have written; and pretty quickly too.

    “_My dear Sydney_,

    “_It was kind of you to write to me to congratulate me again on
    my engagement to Mr. Waters, which I suppose is the meaning of
    your note. You suggest calling; is this to congratulate me for
    the third time? If so, I can only hope that my happiness will
    keep pace with your good wishes for it! But I am afraid that I
    shall not be able to receive them in person on Monday, as it
    is the very day that I hope to be going off to Sevenoaks, on a
    visit to my fiancé’s mother._

    “_Please give my very kindest regards to Lady Vandeleur, and
    believe me_

                        “_Sincerely yours_,

                                                  “_Monica Trant_.”

There!




CHAPTER X

“HIS” MOTHER’S INVITATION


The note of invitation from “my _fiancé’s_ mother” is purely formal
and absolutely non-committal; in fact, exactly the note I should have
imagined that a Mrs. Waters would write.

I’ve got a perfectly clear mental image of this mother of an animated
tape-machine. Handsome, in a regular-profiled, stately, mid-Victorian
style, with steely grey eyes that “corkscrew” all the self-possession
out of you, and—oh, the manner! She won’t be openly disagreeable after
all, I’ve decided. Worse; she’ll be rigidly, frigidly polite; clothing in
irreproachable civilities the obvious wonder whether her son has taken
leave of his senses, to propose to one of his own employees.

She writes that she looks forward (of course!) with pleasure
(_dis_-pleasure, she means) to making my acquaintance (_will_ she!) at
The Lawn (well, I suppose they can’t _call_ their house The Sarcophagus.
But that’s what it ought to be. A glorified edition of the Governor’s
private office. Marble halls and chilly statuary—brr!) on Monday next. I
expect she guesses that “this Miss Trant,” or “that young woman,” or “the
horrid little typist-person,” or whatever she calls me in her own mind,
will be rather overwhelmed by the prospect; and no doubt Mrs. Waters
means to see that I shall continue being overwhelmed—“kept in my place,”
indeed—during the whole of the fortnight that the Governor specified. But
she can’t realize the positive panic with which I anticipate the meeting.
And, if I can steel myself to help it, she _shall not_ realize it.

“I should think you can hardly wait until you get there, Tots,” said
Cicely, watching me pack new clothes in the new dress-basket bought
specially for the dread occasion, for I’ve spent every minute of two days
in shopping. “Aren’t you _dying_ to see what everything is going to be
like?”

“I shall have to survive until to-morrow, anyhow.”

“‘His’ home! His father’s dead, you said. Is there only his mother?”

“I suppose so. Quite enough too. _I_ think all engaged men ought to be
orphans and only children before they begin, for the sake of the girl.
‘Only’ his mother, indeed!”

“Well, she’s _bound_ to be pleased with you, Tots! You’re so pretty and
ripping, especially now you’ve got all these lovely new things. What a
mercy that you had that little windfall of a legacy just in time to let
you buy all fresh!”

(This is how I’ve been obliged to account for that.)

“You could go and stay anywhere now, meet anybody! He’ll be so proud of
you. It must be such a comfort for an engaged man when he knows that his
people and his friends _can see what he means_ when he shows off his
_fiancée_ to them for the first time, instead of their wondering what on
earth he finds to admire!”

“Do you think Mrs. Waters will ‘see what he means’ by his getting
himself engaged to his clerk?” I said, with a private giggle at my own
bitterness. “I wish _I_ did!”

“Now, Tots, don’t fish for any more compliments. You know how people
must admire you. Why, as Mr. Vandel—I mean, it’s so obvious! Don’t look
so depressed, my dear. Of course I suppose going to meet ‘his’ people is
always a fearful ordeal, but it ought to be less so for you than for most
engaged girls!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps—though Cicely doesn’t know why—_it ought_!

Anyhow, these encouraging words of my chum’s were still echoing in
my ears as a late afternoon train bore me off from Victoria towards
Sevenoaks and that terrifying visit to my (official) mother-in-law
elect. For the first time since the days when it was a matter of
course for me to do so, I travelled first class. It wouldn’t do for me
to alight at Sevenoaks station under the eyes of some pompous Waters
domestic, all crumpled and dusty and warm from a compartment crowded
with market-baskets and moist babies. I am taking this man’s money to
pose as his _fiancée_, and it’s only fair to him that I should do him no
discredit in any way.

So I travelled down in expensive seclusion, wearing for the first time
one of my new costumes, a real success in thick tobacco-brown silk, with
a duck of a little brown hat to match. Cicely chose that out of a big
boxful “on approval” from Madame Chérisette’s.

Even without Cicely’s gratifying gush on the subject, I can’t
help knowing that the smoky-cream underlining and the trimming—a
cream-coloured feathery mount and a knot of dull-pink buds—are
delightfully becoming to a clear brunette complexion and glossy black
hair.

Thanks to my being an easy-to-fit small “stock size,” I’ve got a really
charming little trousseau together at very short notice. As it’s probably
the only trousseau of any sort that I shall ever possess now (I wonder
what Sydney Vandeleur thought of my note?), I selected it with gusto, and
I mean to enjoy the wearing of every stitch of it, from the fur-lined
motor-wrap to those American-pattern nighties that the girl in the shop
said were “so sweetly bridal-looking, Moddam.”

It’s been such ages since I was able to choose and arrange a kit with
garments for separate occasions and with a definite colour-scheme; it’s
so long I’ve been, not “dressed,” but “covered”—yes! covered in patches
with something in navy-blue that I’ve managed to afford at one time;
something in brown that I’ve “had to have” at another time; something
black that I’ve just “had by me.”

But now I shall be able to look “together” once more in my favourite
harmonies of soft browns, creams and pinks. A dream of mine on my way to
the office has come true at last; it’s a dream of a thick, clover-pink
linen suit, with touches of heavy creamy lace in just the right places.
In just the right places, too, it fits or falls away from me; and I don’t
think even the feminine edition of Still Waters will be able to help
being _rather_ impressed by it!

As for Sydney Vandeleur, I know _he_ would have said——

       *       *       *       *       *

I’ve been wondering whether after all I need have sent that curt note to
Sydney? Of course, I _was_ furious with him, first for coming too late,
and secondly for proposing at all after I was powerless to accept him—he
didn’t know that; but what a position he put me into!

_Could_ I have put an end to it? (My thoughts raced on with the train.)

_Could_ I have written that very evening to Mr. Waters, cancelling that
preposterous arrangement with him, returning that lump sum of salary, and
saying——

Impossible! A hundred pounds of that salary had had to go, irrevocably,
as soon as I got it. And already I’d broken into that remaining four
hundred in the bank! I couldn’t make up even that.

How would it have been if when Sydney proposed to me, I had replied:

    “_I can’t see you. I can’t even tell you anything more, yet.
    But wait a year, and then ask me again_”?

Since he’s “waited” _so_ long——!

But no.

That wouldn’t have done either. It wouldn’t be keeping my bargain. It
would be “giving away” my compact with that other, that detestable man,
who trusts after all to my word—and after all, Sydney _has_ got himself
to thank for the fact that I haven’t been choosing a trousseau to please
_him_....

       *       *       *       *       *

Well! There’s nothing in _this_ outfit, I hope, that won’t pass the
censorship of the most critical glances in any big house—those of the
servants. Men-servants, I suspect, are almost harder to “impress” than
maid-servants.

But it was no lordly groom or supercilious chauffeur who met me at
Sevenoaks Station as I stepped out of the train.

The tall, broad-shouldered figure that strode towards me looked, in a
big, grey, loose motor-coat, so utterly different from the mind-picture
of the slimly-built, dark, Vandyke-bearded young man that had travelled
most of the way down with me, so different, too, from the other
apparition I know only too well in immaculate “City” get-up, that at
first I didn’t recognize him.

Then a cap was lifted. I saw the fair hair, brushed sleek as satin, and
the keen, blonde face of my employer.

Several people on the platform were glancing at him as if he were almost
as well known down here in the country as in Leadenhall Street.

Then eagerly inquisitive glances were turned to me. I caught a whisper
of “Mr. William Waters’ young lady!” I wondered if the speaker—a
prosperous-looking sort of butcher—expected to overhear some tender
greeting? How “sold” he’d have been!

“Ah, there you are, Miss Trant!”—briskly as ever. “Good afternoon. What
luggage have you? Porter, bring these things across to the car. I’m
motoring you up to the house myself,” added Mr. Waters to me, as we left
the station, “because there’s a little supplementary detail I wanted to
‘put you on to,’ so to speak, before you meet my people.”

“Oh, yes?” I said inquiringly, and I mentally reached for my pencil and
pad.

But as I sat beside him on the comfortably padded seat with a lovely rug
drawn up over my knees, and with a thick glass screen keeping my _chic_
little new hat from getting blown about, I felt the pad-and-pencil side
of my life slipping away from me as swiftly and steadily as the green
hawthorn hedges that lined the road seemed slipping past this gliding car.

I had had a brute of a time just lately—now came the reaction. I suppose
it was partly the entirely feminine sensation, thrilling every scrap of
my body, that it was once more decently dressed! Partly, too, it was the
influence of skimming over a country road again, breathing in untainted
breezes under a blue sky with rolling white cauliflower clouds; having a
whole smiling landscape to myself again!—for the moment I lost count of
_how_ this had happened. The thoughts of the last hour were left behind
with those of the last two years—with the mean streets and the City
smells and noises, and those Battersea rooms, and that utter lack of
space and privacy, and that crushing sense of being just one unit out of
millions that didn’t matter!

Before I’d experienced these things, I’d lived for nineteen years,
another sort of life; and this seemed almost like coming home to it.
I felt as if I were the fish that, having been left stranded on the
proverbial gravel path, has somehow succeeded in flopping back to his
native element.

I gave myself up to the luxury of the feeling—to the exhilarating rush
through the clear air.

And I’d practically forgotten who was driving me, when his business-like
voice sounded once more in my ear.

“Miss Trant! Your Christian name, as I saw by your note to my mother, is
Monica?”

“Yes.”

I supposed he was now going to ask me if I had any objection to his
addressing me thus as long as I was his mother’s guest. Why, of course,
he’d _have_ to! Just as I should have to bring myself to use his own
name of “William.” (“_Ahem!_ _Wil_-liam!” as Miss Robinson pronounced it
pompously.) How queer to have to be asked to accord one’s Christian name
under such terms! Really, he might have taken it as a matter of course
that he must, for the next fortnight or so, call me “Monica.” Therefore I
was rather taken aback by his next remark.

“I shall have to ask you if you would mind very much, while you are
staying at The Lawn, being called ‘_Nancy_’?”

“Nancy!” I echoed, opening my eyes. “Oh, yes—no—I mean—anything you
like; but why _Nancy_?”

Mr. Waters turned to me for a moment as the car sped smoothly down a
level, empty stretch of the white highway.

“I’d better explain to you ‘why Nancy,’” he said dryly. In those keen
grey eyes of his, where some time before I had suspected a gleam of
humour, I now saw a quite unmistakable twinkle of fun!

There was even a twitch at the corner of those tightly-fitted lips.
But he went on still more dryly. “When I informed my mother that I was
engaged to be married to a lady in the office, she had a good many
questions to put.”

(Well, I should think so! The Longer Catechism, in fact!) “Really?” I
said meekly.

“And almost the first thing she asked me was what her Christian name was.”

(M’m, “almost”—I wonder what the _very first_ thing was? What is it
generally?)

“Of course, I ought to have foreseen that——”

(And _hadn’t_ he? Good gracious! The mapped-out scheme with _another_
flaw in it!)

—“but curiously enough, I’d overlooked it, and wasn’t prepared for it.
Now, I couldn’t very well tell my mother the truth, namely, that I did
not know. I have never been able to make out whether your usual initials
were ‘M’ or ‘N.T.’ I had taken it for ‘N.’ So, on the spur of the
moment, I gave her the first girl’s name that began with N that I could
think of.”

N or M! Yes! _Exactly_ like the catechism!

For the first time in my life in Still Waters’ presence I laughed aloud.
Surely the country air and the rush through it in the car must have gone
to my head. Amazed at myself, but even then laughing a little still, I
pulled myself together to inquire, “And what did you say to Mrs. Waters
when she received my note signed by my real name?”

“Oh!—I said—something or other about ‘Nancy’ being the usual abbreviation
for ‘Monica’ in some places!”

“How _quick_ of you!” I retorted—while my Near Oriental self sat back and
gasped at my new boldness. He _must_ have wondered at it too; thought it
bravado, the recklessness of despair, I suppose.

“_Something_ had to be said! And I am afraid, Miss Trant, that, for the
matter in hand, ‘_Nancy_’ it will have to be. A sort of _nom-de-guerre_,
you know—if you can call it ‘_guerre_.’”

He was actually laughing himself now. This made his face look at least
ten years younger, changing him so that I felt him to be even more of a
stranger to me than the machine-like autocrat who rapped out his “_Now,
Miss Trant!_” and his “_Take this down_” at the Near Oriental. But in
a moment he was serious again. He seemed, for the first time, to feel
something of what _I’ve_ been feeling ever since we’ve been—so to speak,
“engaged.”

“It’s asking a good deal, but I have to trust to you to meet all these
awkwardnesses as well as you can,” he said gravely. “And I’ll do all in
my power to avoid them, I assure you. A good deal of the strangeness can
be put down to the—er—natural shyness of people who are—so—er—recently
engaged.”

“Oh, of course,” I murmured, struggling not to laugh any more.

But I wondered what other wild fictions about “_Nancy_” he’d had to
improvise for his mother. Supposing she’d wanted to know what I was like
to _look_ at? Well, _he_ wouldn’t know! Dark or fair—short or tall? As
likely as not he’d tell her—as _something_ had to be said—that I was
six foot high and a radiant blonde. And what would she think of his not
possessing a single photograph of me to show her? Really, he was almost
benighted enough, since he’d given me another girl’s name, to pass off as
mine another girl’s portrait!

Even as I was laughing to myself again, the car turned in at a
stone-pillared entrance, and its plumply-tyred wheels purred on a
perfectly-gravelled drive between tall laurel-hedges.

Oh! we were nearly there, then. I didn’t want to laugh any more. Now for
it....




CHAPTER XI

MEETING “HIS” PEOPLE


We skirted what seemed like an ocean of green velvet turf. We swept round
another corner.

“There’s the house,” announced Mr. Waters.

“_That_——?”

It was long and low and white and homely—yes! _homely_-looking—overgrown
with purple wistaria, and swept at one end by a fountain of gold from an
immense laburnum-tree. A deep, shady verandah was flung like a protecting
arm about the waist of the house.

The late sunlight flashed on a scurry of something all goldeny-white, as
there rushed out of the shade of this verandah what looked like a mix-up
of several dogs and flying skirts....

“_Girls?_” I thought, as two slender, white-clad figures came towards me.
“Who are _these_?”

“My sisters, Theodora and Blanche,” said the Governor quickly to me.
“_Down_, Cariad! Down, sir,” to the little dog—there was only one of him,
it appeared, when he stopped frisking for a moment about the man who was
helping me to alight.

The taller of the two girls came forward first, murmured timidly, “So
glad you’ve come!” held out both hands with an awkward, diffident little
smile that was quite charming, and bent very shyly to kiss me. She
was about eighteen, with fair hair, and features very cleanly-cut and
something like her brother’s.

“_I_ am Blanche,” she murmured. “This is Theo.”

“Theo,” seemed to be about fifteen. My first impression of her showed me
a pair of long coltish legs and a round cowslip-bell of a head, covered
with short yellow curls. She said nothing, but she _looked_, looked at
me out of a pair of the largest and brightest brown eyes that I had ever
met; they seemed almost the size of the goggles in a diver’s helmet, and
I felt them following me devouringly as I was led into the hall.

“Here is Nancy, Mother,” called Mr. Waters.

Another figure came forward to meet me. This—his mother? A startling
contrast indeed to what I’d pictured her. She was dressed in the
soft, lacy, unshaped black that best suits an elderly lady; and her
soft, puffed-out hair was grey all over. But that was as far as the
“elderliness” of the Governor’s mother went. Her figure was as tall and
seemed nearly as slender as Blanche’s; she had the long-armed, free
movements that I’ve heard my father praise in Miss Ellen Terry; her
face was pink and irregular-featured and mobile, her expression shy and
smiling. She seemed like some girl who had fallen into a trance in the
“Eighties,” from which she had just woken up to find that her hair was no
longer brown, and that the world, which puzzled her a little, had gone on
without her. Her voice was soft and hesitating, and full of unexpected
half-tones.

“Oh, have you come? Nancy! You are so welcome, my dear! I called you
‘Miss Trant’ in my note, because I thought it was the right thing when I
hadn’t ever seen you. But I needn’t go on being so stiff, need I? Billy
said he thought I needn’t.”

The Governor had disappeared towards the car again.

“Your boxes have gone upstairs, dear, and you might like to rest before
it’s time to get ready for dinner. _Blanche_ will take you to your room,”
added Mrs. Waters, holding back Theo, whose yellow head and whose long
legs seemed just about to precipitate themselves after me—for that child
to enjoy another good look, no doubt. “_No_, Cariad, you can’t go either!
_Come_, Missis’s little dog”—the long white body was frolicking about
just ahead of me. “He _knows_ he never enters the house!”

And I knew the pet dogs who are supposed to cherish these rules. Cariad
flung himself gleefully in front of the diffident, fair-haired Blanche as
she escorted me upstairs.

We were on the landing when the sound of a voice that I hadn’t heard
before, clear as a bell and distinct as a choir-boy’s solo, rang up to us
from below.

“No _won_-der, Mother! Mother, I say, no _won_-der! _Is_-n’t she pretty?
Billy never _told_ us! He never——.”

Here an abrupt full-stop.

“Oh, I do hope you won’t mind Theo; she _is_ rather awful sometimes,”
murmured Blanche Waters, as apologetically scarlet as if she had done
something to offend me. “She will say things—and so _loud_! It’s _only_
because she’s so pleased—and she’s only thirteen really—it’s awful being
so tall. People always expect you to be so much more sensible, somehow!
This is your room.” She opened a white door. “Outside, Cariad! (He
_knows_ he never comes upstairs.) Do let me unpack for you, Nancy.”

“Oh! Thank you so much, but——”

I felt I must, _must_ be left to myself for the present. At the risk of
seeming ungracious, I added hastily, “I can manage, really!”

Even though I’m _not_ fated to be a sister-in-law, I should like this
nice girl to like me. So I smiled up at her, and she put out a long,
rather bony young finger, and just touched my coat-collar. I realized
that I needn’t have “fussed” so over my “trousseau.”

“Ah! I daresay you’re tired, too.”

“I am, rather.” (Strictly speaking, I am ready to drop, though not
entirely with fatigue.)

“Then I’ll send up some hot water presently, Nancy. (_Come_, Cariad!)”

And she left me to what I felt I must have or perish—the solitude of my
own room, leisure to gasp over the series of additional shocks I had just
received.

       *       *       *       *       *

First and foremost, though it seems a funny detail to push itself in
front of all the other things, there’s “_Billy!_”

To think that Still Waters should be “Billy” to anyone—even if it’s only
to his mother!

After Miss Holt’s “Do you ever call him _Billy_, by any chance?” and my
solemn “Never!” to realize that the man who Miss Robinson vowed “could
never have been anything so human as a little boy” does actually possess
that characteristically little-boyish pet-name! And I suppose I shall be
expected to call him that while I’m here? My goodness! “William” I was
prepared for. “William,” with its touch of stiffness—and—stateliness, I
might manage. But——Still, if I must, I must. In for a penny, in for a
pound. (Only in this case it’s meant being in for five hundred pounds!)

And then that he should have that unexpected, that utterly
uncharacteristic, that un-Waters-like sort of mother! Welcoming me like
that! All I can say is that he—the Governor—_must_ take after his father
exactly!

And the house! Not in the least like a sarcophagus—or even the corner of
the British Museum with Near Oriental fittings, as _I’d_ pictured it!

Looking round this bedroom they’ve put me into, I see it’s exactly the
sort that I’ve always loved, particularly since my lot has been cast in
that poky little egg-box of a Battersea flat, with one skimpy strip of
bedroom window giving on a view of grimy-grey back-yard, a kennel made
out of a packing-case, and lines of washing hanging out to dry.

Here, at The Lawn, my quarters do seem so palatially big and airy!
There’s _miles_ of wardrobe space for my new things, I see. And
_what_ a lovely long mirror! That delicious scent of lavender and
pot-pourri comes from the big china bowl on the window-ledge.
There’s a wide bay of casement-windows looking out on to that
wonderful lawn, sprays of feathery mauve wistaria tap against the
panes outside. Inside, rose-peonies and giant tulips riot over the
cream-and-red-and-pink-patterned chintzes of hangings and upholstery.
The wallpaper is sprinkled with bouquets of rosebuds caught up with
ribbons; and the bed-spread is of glowing rose-colour. No trace anywhere
of those “Art-muds” and sad sage-greens that even well-off people get
into their rooms so often now. Why can’t they realize that greens, to be
successful, must be kept out of doors? Green as an indoor background,
_no!_ I’d have chosen just these gay, dainty patterns and colours for my
bedroom, if——

But _what’s_ the use of thinking over the house I might have had? I’m not
going to. I ought to be breathlessly thankful that this one where I have
to spend a fortnight is turning out to be so much more congenial than I’d
hoped, and that “his” people are quite unlike “him!”

How suddenly “right” my dear old silver-and-crystal toilette things look
against the setting of the Sheraton dressing-table with the plate-glass
top! To think that one dismal wet day I nearly packed them all up and
sent them off by Mrs. Skinner to be “put away,” and the price thereof
turned into new boots! “Boots a poor typist must have,” I argued.
“Silver-topped bottles and luxuries of that sort she doesn’t need any
more.” How frightfully glad I am, now, that I hadn’t the heart to do
it after all, that I sent my shoes to be re-soled instead—and that all
my own monogrammed brushes are mirrored in the oval glass beside that
lustre jar of rich, mahogany-coloured wall-flowers that, next to my own
dark head and its moving reflections, seem to give the deepest touch
of colour in the room. I suppose the girls put those there—Yes! That’s
another shock. The _sisters_! That _he_ should have sisters like——

A tap at the door.

“Come in!”

Enter, explosively, the excited little white dog, followed by a large
and shiny copper can, and the eyes—they seem to dominate everything else
about that child!—of Theodora.

“Brought you some hot water”—in a meek and muffled voice. “Dinner is—(Put
those _down_, Cariad! He _knows_ people’s slippers aren’t for him to
eat!) Dinner is at eight. _I’m_ not supposed to come down.”

Here the huge brown eyes turned ruefully for a moment from me to the
gleaming sheath of the new frock that I’d just thrown over the brass rail
of the bed. I guessed the thought behind them. They longed for another
satisfying stare at it—_on_ me.

Why shouldn’t I have this child fond of me?

“Shall I say good-night now, then, Theo?” I suggested. “Or—if you tell me
which your room is, shall I come in after I’m dressed?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Theo, bell-mouthed. “_Gem!_” Then, carefully muffling the
voice again, “That’s the school-room door opposite—between the corridor
window and the picture of ‘Delia in Arcady.’ Thanks _awf’ly_, Nancy.
(_Come_ along, Cariad!)”

Not every engaged girl has such a walk-over with “his” people! But I
think Theo would approve of me as a sister-in-law, if she were going to
have the chance! I shouldn’t mind _her_!... On second thoughts, I don’t
know whether I am so pleased after all that these people are so kind and
welcoming and different from what I had expected.

Wouldn’t it be almost easier for me in some ways if his mother and
his sisters _were_ the “collection of frosty-faces” (as Miss Robinson
expresses it) whom I’d anticipated meeting? I was prepared; I could have
coped with _them_. Why has he got sisters like these—just the kind of
girls I could imagine sisters of _mine_?

Why _must_ his mother be so sweet to me, without a gleam of the
“designing-little-minx-of-a-typist” look in her eyes, without—I verily
believe—a thought of it in her heart? Ready to take to her arms the
stranger within her gates whom she looks upon as her son’s lady-love—oh,
it’s too embarrassing!

For the first time since this sham engagement was arranged between my
employer and myself, I feel what I did not feel when I confronted my
fellow-typists, the Vandeleurs or Cicely with the news that I was Mr.
Waters’ _fiancée_; what I did not feel when I first slipped these lying
diamonds on to my finger; what I didn’t feel when I cabled that money to
Jack, or even when I wrote to Sydney.

I feel—there is no other word to express it—downright _mean_!

How am I going to stand a whole fortnight of it? How _am_ I to keep up
this incessant pose and pretence under the gentle, unsuspecting eyes of
Mrs. Waters?

I believe I could have calmly invented fib after fib for the benefit of
Lady Vandeleur——

Now, now! Thoughts beginning with “Vandeleur” have got to be sternly
suppressed unless I mean to give myself a fit of the blues and make some
terrible _faux pas_ presently, at dinner, in the bosom of the Governor’s
family.

So come, Monica Trant, my child—“Nancy,” I mean, of course, _Nancy_!
(How I hope I shall remember to answer to that name when I hear it,
instead of forgetting who they mean and imagining it’s the little white
dog!) You pull yourself together, Nancy, and dive into the pretty new
evening-frock—it will be gorgeous to have proper lights and a real glass
to dress by once again!—then go and show it off to that avid-eyed child
in the school-room. And then downstairs with you, to earn some more of
your five hundred pounds!




CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST DINNER


Well! the first evening is over.

It hasn’t been nearly as bad as it might, though it certainly has
produced several more quite unexpected developments.

We dined; for the first time for well over a year I sat down at a
luxuriously-appointed round dinner-table with all its conventional
daintiness of perfect napery, silver and glass—instead of the
picnic-supper affair, with every single plate and fork an “oddment,” cast
by the hands of Mrs. Skinner upon the rickety table at Marconi Mansions.
Instead of gossiping with Cicely Harradine clad in the faded green
Japanese kimono that she finds “such a rest to slop into” after all the
fashionable dressing-up at Chérisette’s—for Cicely is rather the type of
girl whom work demoralizes instead of bracing—I was of a party of two
other women and a man in evening-dress.

That dinner-jacket does make the Governor look so much younger—it’s
positively laughable! For another thing, it seems to take him right out
of his isolated Near Oriental niche, and to put him in the same rank of
human beings as men who used to dine at our house when my father was
alive. Positively, I have begun to look upon my once-dreaded employer as
quite an ordinary—though certainly _not_ a likable—sort of young man!
Never again need _he_ expect to keep up, with me, the attitude of a
metallic species of Business-deity who disappears after business-hours to
some vague, chilly and unknown Olympus, of which no glimpse would ever be
vouchsafed to any of us, his grovelling subordinates. Oh, no!

Not now that I’ve seen his people, the pretty things out of which his
mother has made such a nest of a home for him; not after making the
acquaintance of Blanche and of that gift of God, Theodora, and of Cariad.
That little outdoor dog spent the whole of dinner-time cosily curled
up under the table on his “Missis’s” black satin skirt, and not all
the flappings of the Governor’s table-napkin or his curtest “Here! Out
of that, Cariad! Outside, sir!” had the slightest effect in dislodging
him. I would have given at least five of my as yet unearned five hundred
pounds for Miss Robinson to have been granted the sight of Still Waters
cheerfully defied by that small Sealyham! I can see her “potting” the
scene, with Miss Holt’s white feather neck-ruffle commandeered to
represent the little dog who “_knows_ that skirts aren’t there for him
to sit upon!” And _I’m_ not “there to be sat upon” any more, either!
I’m beginning to wonder how the Governor managed to “take me in” for
so long! Why, he is a regular _fraud_! And a fraud found out is never
terrifying—even if it’s exasperating.

If anyone is going to be alarmed now, it’s not his official _fiancée_,
but he himself; for he was—yes, positively!—nervous and embarrassed at
dinner. If that had been the first time I’d met him I should have thought
that the big and blonde and silent young man opposite was _deadly shy
of me_! Of _me_; after all that he had handed out to me in the way of
orders and commands and arrangements during the past fortnight. It is
a good thing if, as he says, a good deal of the “strangeness” will be
put down to the “natural awkwardness of people so recently engaged”—but
it’s a still better thing that I contrived to be rather less “awkward”
and speechless than _he_ was! To myself I seemed to be sitting a little
apart, watching another Mon—Nancy, I mean—smiling and chatting gaily with
his mother and the younger girls.

What dears they are! and how one sees their feminine touch in everything
about the room, from the arrangement of the many and becoming lights, to
the graceful massing of sulphur-coloured pansies and gypsophila in the
centre of the round table!

At dinner it was chiefly, I think, of flowers that we talked—such a
nice, safe subject. It seems that the Governor is actually interested in
gardening. _How_ amazed the staff would be if it were hinted that Still
Waters took the vaguest gleam of interest in anything outside making
money for the firm!

After dinner, when he remained behind in the dining-room to smoke,
his mother slipped one white hand into Blanche’s arm, the other into
mine; and the gesture, I know, was meant to imply that she had “another
daughter now.”

We stepped together across the black-and-white-tiled hall into the
drawing-room, with its ordered chaos of pretty, old-fashioned furniture
and dainty new things, and the unmistakable atmosphere of a homey room
that is lived in.

Mrs. Waters drew me down beside her on the wide, shallow sofa, and I
saw her eyes dwelling on every line of my face, as if she were trying
to learn fresh knowledge of her son from the girl who presumably was
permitted to see him as his own mother never sees a man.

That brought a lump into my throat. I bent my head over my work—a bit of
Richelieu embroidery with which I had taken care to provide myself. I had
remembered some axioms of Miss Robinson at the office:

“_Never you be without a hit of fancy-work, girls, when you wish to
impress. Men seem to think a girl must be so sweet and womanly who can
sit for hours wagging a crochet-hook and a bit of thread at them. As
for the future mother-in-law, she always imagines a girl is more likely
to turn out domesticated if she cannot keep her hands still for ten
minutes. Besides, a bit of drawn-thread work, or whatever it is, gives
you something to look at when you don’t exactly know what to say next._”

The last reason was mine. I certainly did not know what to say when the
Governor’s mother remarked softly:

“You know, Nancy, you are just what I hoped you would be.”

“Am I?”

I felt an unutterable little _cad_.

Yes, Mr. William Waters! And who forced me into the position of feeling
like this?

“So pretty and gentle and quiet, and yet you ‘see’ things with those
brown eyes of yours,” pronounced Mrs. Waters. “At first I feared it was
impossible that any girl who had only met my boy just in business-hours,
and wearing that office-mask he has to put on, could grow to care for
him as we do; but I see you could understand. You guessed that all
that brusqueness and peremptory manner were just the armour for his
sensitiveness; you would see that he has to put on that manner to hide
the awful truth that at the bottom of his heart he is naturally as shy
and nervous as Blanche and I are. _I_ believe,” she laughed softly, “that
that’s why he _never_ allows us to call at the office while we’re in
town! The staff _might_ suspect, seeing _us_, that he _has_ another sort
of manner than the terrible one he speaks through the telephone with! I
dare say that even you were taken in by it at first, weren’t you? Until
he began to reveal his real self to you, I expect you looked upon him
merely as a business-machine, didn’t you, Nancy?”

“I suppose I did,” I murmured, feeling more uncomfortable at every word
uttered by this dear, innocent lady, who had created such an idealized
version of her son’s character.

“And when did you begin to find out the real Billy?”

_Here_ was a nice question! Thank goodness I was spared the answering of
it!

At that moment the drawing-room door opened to admit the tallest of the
admirable parlour-maids, with the tray bearing a silver coffee-machine
and the dainty Dresden service.

Blanche rose from the cushion where she had been sitting at my feet,
and went to the table to officiate. In her simple white dinner-gown she
looked like a tall lily bending down.

“Mother, plenty of hot milk and a little sugar? Nancy, how do you like
your coffee?”

“I don’t take it, thank you very much.”

“Oh, then here’s Billy’s—black, with plenty of sugar. Will he be coming
in for it?”

Her mother gave a little smile.

“I think perhaps Nancy won’t mind taking in Billy’s coffee to him. Will
you, dear? He’s in his ‘den’; the door just opposite, across the hall.”

Even without her gently mischievous glance I should have realized what
she meant. The unsuspecting, sympathetic creature thought she was being
kind and tactful, making an opportunity for me to have a little time
alone with my _fiancé_.

She imagined that we were longing for a lovers’ _tête-à-tête_, with all
the fond, foolish talk that one could guess at—beaming smiles at each
other, like Smithie’s—Ordinary love-making! Yes, of course, people will
have to be allowed to think that there’s that between us, too. I hadn’t
wasted many thoughts on this aspect of the case. But this “rubbed it in.”

I felt a wave of scorching scarlet rush up my face to the roots of my
hair. However, that didn’t matter: no doubt Mrs. Waters put it down to
the “natural shyness” of a girl in love. She never guessed the _furious_
mixture of feelings that sent that blush into my cheeks.

I kept my head up and my voice quite steady as I replied: “Oh, certainly!”

And I rose, taking up the green-garlanded cup with the small gilt
apostle-spoon in the saucer, and left the drawing-room to face my first
official _tête-à-tête_ with the Governor.

Ever since he’s been the unconscious cause of my having had to give up
the chance of a serene and happy future with the man who really cares for
me, I’ve looked upon my employer with a mixture of resentment and dread.
As I say, the dread’s melted rapidly. But the resentment’s growing!

“_I’ll_ make him pay, somehow,” thought I revengefully, “for all this!”
By “all this” I meant not only for the loss of Sydney, and the castle at
Ballycool, and comfort and position, but for making me look and feel so
acutely foolish before Mrs. Waters.

“I’ll see if I can’t make him rather uncomfortable over it himself,” I
determined.

I crossed the hall, forcing myself to feel as if I were back in the
office, where we typists took it in turn to carry Mr. Dundonald’s cup of
afternoon tea into the inner sanctum, where he glowered over his figures.

(How cross he was if one of us shook the cup so that some of the tea
slopped over and soaked the lump of sugar and the biscuit laid in the
saucer.)

Gingerly I carried the dainty cup of black coffee across to the door of
the “den.”

There, deliberately, I tapped twice.

The sound of my knock on the door reminded me of another occasion—on
which I’d presented myself alone before the Governor, that afternoon at
the Near Oriental; that first interview in his office.

This _tête-à-tête_—the first in his own home—was going to be very
different!




CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST TÊTE-À-TÊTE


A rather surprised voice called “Come in!”

In I went—to find the Governor smoking a cigarette and sitting on the
wide red-leather-padded club-fender of a room that was in complete
contrast to the feminine domain I had left. Almost empty, but for
its tall bookshelves, a grandfather’s clock, a couple of solid,
“man-ny-looking” arm-chairs and a grand piano.

I dropped my voice into its meekest Near Oriental tone as I announced:

“Your coffee, Mr. Waters!”

It was exactly the tone in which I’d so often said, “Your tea, Mr.
Dundonald!” and yet I knew that the man before me would guess that this
deference was, under the circumstances, only a subtle form of defiance.

I handed him the cup. Then I stood there, outwardly as mild as milk,
before him. One swift glance into the mirror over the mantelpiece beyond
his broad shoulder—his shoulders are the best thing about him—had shown
me an attractive picture enough—a big, blonde man faced by a _petite_,
graceful girl, with her night-black hair swathed in a silky garland round
her head, and her white shoulders and neck emerging from an admirably-cut
dinner-gown of creamy charmeuse and chiffon patterned by rose-pink
beadwork, whose colour echoed the soft flush in her cheeks.

Just before dinner, Theo, in the school-room, with all her eyes and half
the voice-power at her command, had told me the dress was _divine_, and
that I looked a little _angel_ in it!

“Angel?” H’m. That wasn’t how I _felt_, exactly. Still I know I looked
my best; as pretty as ever I’d looked in the dear old days before I had
anything else to do.

Looking her best always keys a girl up to doing her best.

(Or her worst, as the case may be.)

Besides, another glance at the Governor had shown me that I’d been right
in my suspicion at dinner. He _was_ embarrassed. He was—probably for the
first time in his life—_shy_!

This put the finishing touch to my feeling myself to be—also for the
first time—mistress of this situation.

Therefore, I stood there, still waiting, looking as if it were I who were
paralysed with shyness, deliberately waiting for _him_ to speak.

“Thank you,” he had murmured as he took the cup from me. There was
another pause, which was—as I fully intended—the first of many. Then
he added, in a rather uncertain sort of voice, “I suppose it was my
mother’s—my mother who sent you in here?”

“Yes! Oh, yes,” I said hastily, as if breathlessly flurried and meek
beyond all words. “She seemed to think—I didn’t know what else to do—am
I in your way?” (Here I glanced up at him with scared, appealing eyes as
much as to say, “Is it my fault if I am?”)

Pause.

“I am afraid,” said the Governor, rather as if the words were forced from
him, “that I shall have to ask you to put with up this—er—incongruity for
the next half-hour or so. Won’t you sit down, Miss Trant?” And he wheeled
forward one of those capacious arm-chairs, placing it at a mercifully
wide distance from the fender-stool—where Mrs. Waters perhaps imagined
we were at that moment sitting—Oh shade of everything that’s wildly
impossible!—sitting together like ordinary young engaged people, hand in
hand—or however they _do_ sit. My goodness!

I sat down, dropping my eyes demurely, and folding my hands in my lap.

Another pause.

“I—er——” said the Governor, then stopped and tried to look as if he
hadn’t begun a sentence.

“Yes? Is there anything that I can—that you think I ought to be able to
do for you while I am here, Mr. Waters?”

“Perhaps it might be wiser if you stopped calling me by that name”—dryly.
He seemed to have pulled himself together with a jerk, for he was looking
and speaking more like himself at this. However, it had no effect on _me_.

“Oh, of _course_,” I said obediently, “I shall _always_ remember to call
you B——by your Christian name (_that_ is an abbreviation, too, isn’t it?)
when we are with the others.”

“And then, if you use my other name when we are alone, you may forget,
and let it slip out when the others are here,” he objected, looking down
on me from his perch on the fender-stool, “and—and it’s more than likely
that my sisters might notice. Theodora notices everything.”

“Yes”—gently—“so I gather.”

“And always says out what she thinks,” her brother informed me. “That’s
why—if you don’t mind—I am going to continue calling you ‘Nancy’ even
when we are alone.”

“Oh, certainly,” I said softly. “And I suppose I must practise trying not
to feel afraid of you.”

He looked sharply at me, but I know there was no expression in my face,
and my eyes seemed fixed upon the hands in my lap, upon the ring I was
turning, idly, round my engagement-finger.

“Afraid of me?” he took up. “You?”

“Oh, Mr. Waters—I _beg_ your pardon, I didn’t mean to use that name
again. I was going to say, you know that we are all terrified to death of
you—at the office.”

I know he guessed that I meant “_but this is not the office, and I’ve
lost all the wholesome awe that I still had of you only yesterday, and
I’m no more terrified of you than Cariad is, now!_” Without looking
directly at him, I saw his keen, blonde face flush a little under its
tan—this City-fied young man is oddly sunburned—and his firmly-fitted
lips moved as if he were going to say something but thought better of it.
After a pause he opened them again and asked:

“Do you smoke—er—Nancy?”

“No, thanks very much,” I said primly.

Silence fell.

The Governor cleared his throat.

I knew he literally couldn’t think what to say next, and I exulted
inwardly. I felt as if I really were getting a little of my own
back now—not only for the awkwardness and unpleasantness due to the
“engagement,” but for everything I’ve loathed while I’ve been at the Near
Oriental—the dreary journey there morning after morning, the monotony,
the irksomeness, the daily looming terror of “the sack,” the hated
hoverings round me of Mr. Dundonald and his “_talk_-ing!”

_Oh_, how my employer was longing for me to “talk” at _that_ moment! to
say something—anything!

But I wouldn’t. I think I could have let that lagging silence last for
quite another five minutes as far as I was concerned, only I was afraid
I might break into wild laughter unless I spoke. So I gave it up, and
suggested gravely and helpfully:

“I _have_ got some fancy-work with me, but I left it in the drawing-room.
Shall I go back and fetch it? Or—wouldn’t that quite _do_?”

“Afraid not,” said the Governor grimly.

“It seems so stupid to sit here doing nothing; for you, too,” I added
sympathetically. “If you have brought any letters down here from the
office, you might, perhaps, care to dictate them to me——”

“Thank you, no,” said Mr. Waters firmly. “I seldom do any business out of
business-hours.”

I turned my ring again ostentatiously. I hope he knew I was pointing out
to him how _my_ “business” had to go on all day long—the woman’s work, in
fact, being never done!

My next mild suggestion was, “Do you play picquet?”

“Don’t know one card from another.”

I sighed, as if with mingled regret and boredom.

It was a very insincere sigh! for, to begin with, I loathe any form of
card-playing myself; _I_ don’t believe the story that cards were invented
to please a mad king. I believe he was _driven_ mad by the card-games
of the period! Secondly, I wasn’t one bit bored. I was revelling in the
spectacle of this wretched young man—imagine being able to employ such a
phrase to the Grand Panjandrum himself!—this _wretched_ young man looking
so acutely uncomfortable and at such a loss.

Gleefully I allowed yet another long and awkward pause to take place.

Then, I put my hand—the left one—up to my mouth as if to stifle a yawn.
Then I glanced at the ship in full sail that rocked to and fro on the
face of the grandfather’s clock, and murmured resignedly: “Only twenty
minutes past nine?”

“I am afraid that clock is always kept ten minutes fast,” said my host.

I sighed again, more deeply.

Then I allowed my eyes to wander, as if vainly seeking the way of
escape!—round the comfortable, masculine-looking room. Actually, my
glance was caught by an odd-looking arrangement of wires across the
ceiling.

“Oh, what are those for?” I asked. “Telegraphy?”

“No; I had those put there to improve the acoustics of this room. It was
otherwise so bad to play and sing in.”

“Oh!” I said, and wondering why Blanche didn’t use the drawing-room to
sing in, I glanced at the somber shape of the piano at the other end of
the den.

“I wonder if you would allow me to practise in here sometimes—of course,
only in the mornings?” I requested meekly. “When I go back to London, I
shall want to see about a situation as music-teacher or something of that
kind. I must have some definite work to do—besides yours, I mean!—and I
ought to furbish up my playing.”

“Ah, you play, do you?” said Mr. Waters, in a tone of the deepest relief.
“Good!”

He got up, switched on some more lights, and opened the piano.

“I wonder if you have a rarer accomplishment still. Can you accompany?”

“I should be able to,” said I, with a little bitter smile to myself.

For I’ve certainly spent hours enough at the piano with Sydney Vandeleur,
practising or transposing his lyrics. He has a gift for pretty, tender
melody-writing; he “sets” all his favourite verses....

“Will you try over a song with me, then?”

(What! It was _he_ who sang?)

“Certainly!”

This was not my subdued, Leadenhall Street office “Certainly.” It was the
way in which I might have spoken to Sydney, or to Major Montresor, or the
Somervilles, or any of the men who came to my father’s house in the old
days, and for whom I played in the evening.

“Wait a minute. This gets in the way; clicks on the keys,” said I,
glancing at those weighty diamonds that blazed on my finger. And I drew
off his ring, pushing it with a careless little flick out of my way on
the glassy black top of the piano. He had put up before me Schubert’s
“_Still wie die Nacht_.”

Appropriate enough, for Still Waters! “Still as the night, deep as the
sea——”

I took up the first chords.

Then came surprise again.

I had expected him to possess a big, bull-dog bass, full of sound and
fury, and without a touch of feeling in it. To my amazement, his voice
turned out to be a particularly sweet, true tenor. Shut your eyes, and
you could imagine that it was the most sympathetic and delightful of men
who was singing, instead of _the Governor_!

Can there be many more surprises about this man? However, I flatter
myself that I’ve given him several. The crushed-looking, deferential
typist in the ready-made delaine blouse, and with the carbon-stained
fingers, that shook with nervousness when he rattled off his
far-too-quick dictation to them, was a distinct contrast to this dainty,
well-dressed young woman, who lays her own plans for him to see that she
is laughing at him in her sleeve.

And it’s his turn to use deference to me.

“Thank you, so much—er—Nancy.” This last word brought out with a jerk of
resolution. “It’s a treat to be accompanied by someone who can do it so
unusually well; it’s like waltzing with a partner whose step just suits
one’s own.”

Good gracious! Where and when has this man learned to dance?

But he _can_ sing. I quite enjoyed playing for it. I think we went
through quite half a dozen songs—“Widdicombe Fair” was one of them—before
I remembered that this wasn’t the form I meant _my_ enjoyment to take.

So, when he put up yet another—“Drake’s Drum” this time—and said, “Shall
we try this?” I relapsed into my wickedly mild manner once more, and
replied hesitatingly: “Don’t you think that would be enough—for Mrs.
Waters? I mean, that she would consider I had stayed the right length of
time? May—mayn’t I get down, now?”

“Oh! Sorry if I have tired you,” said the Governor quietly.

He walked across the room to open the door for me.

There, with his hand on the door-knob, my employer paused and looked down
at me almost as if he were looking at me for the first time.

It was a curious sort of stare, half-amused, half-frowning. I should
think it must have lasted while one could count five. Was there a sort of
_threat_ in it? Yes! I suppose it meant that he wasn’t going to stand any
more of my masquerading impertinences, that somehow he meant to overawe
me, to keep the upper hand over me still. But he won’t. Of course it’s
rather flurrying to be looked at like that, so hard and unexpectedly....
But I wasn’t _really_ flurried——only a little glad when he opened the
door, said “Good night!” and shut it after me.

I was turning towards the haven of the drawing-room when, half-way across
the hall, I heard the door of the “den” open again, and the Governor’s
step behind me.

“I think you forgot this, didn’t you?” he said, holding out to me the
ring I had left lying on the top of the piano.

“Oh, _thank_ you,” I said apologetically. He went back into the den. I
slipped my “engagement” ring on to my finger again.

As a matter of fact I _hadn’t_ “forgotten” it.

And he needn’t imagine that he is ever going to have _me_ “quelled”
again. I intend taking it out of _him_ all the time I am here!




CHAPTER XIV

THE FIRST QUARREL


So far I have had things all my own way.

During the three days that I have now been staying at The Lawn, I
have managed to “keep up” without difficulty two utterly distinct and
different _manners_.

“Manner A.”—assumed for the benefit of the Governor’s family—the rather
shy but charming and devoted young _fiancée_.

“Manner B.”—well, to be frank, a perfect little _cat_!

But to begin with the first manner.

I should be ashamed to act it as well as I do, if it weren’t that I must
keep the whip-hand over the Governor, and that this is the only way, for
his mother and sisters are really too sweet with me.

Never, during all the palmy days of the Trant family, have I had so many
pretty and generous things said about me as I’ve heard in these three
days from my employer’s unsuspecting mother.

She told me yesterday, “When Billy was ten I’d begun to wonder whether,
somewhere, some other mother was watching a pink-lined cot that held
something which was to become very precious, later on, to my little son.
And—twenty-one, are you, dear?—it must have been so, then. How glad I
am it was you! Ten years is such a nice difference in age, too; I was
twenty-one——”

And her soft grey eyes looked at me as if they saw, through me, into the
past.

Her young daughter Blanche, on the other hand, gazes at me as wistfully
as though, through me, she could look into the future. I feel as if I
were supposed to be standing beside a wall which only I am tall enough
(for once!) to see over.

“_Sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?_” That, of course, isn’t what
she says.

“Nancy, I suppose you knew almost at once what you felt about Billy?”

“Oh, yes!” (Readily.)

“You knew he was absolutely the one and only? How lovely!” A pause. “I
suppose the way to find out is to imagine him among seventeen other young
men, all frightfully good-looking and nice and good sorts, and the right
kind of voice, and all wanting to marry you at once, and all that? Then,
if you still feel you could choose _him_ out of all those——”

“But, Blanche, I should have _had_ to,” I explained, truthfully enough,
as I thought of the five hundred pounds. “Couldn’t help myself!”

“I see,” sighed Blanche. “_Mustn’t_ it be glorious for you both?”

And thirteen-year-old Theo, pouring upon her “new sister” the wealth of
superfluous adoration which will some day be wasted, I suppose, upon some
quite ordinary young man, proclaims at frequent intervals, “Isn’t it
_ripping_ having her here?” and lives entirely in the present. Theo, by
the way, is the only one of them before whom I feel I have to be careful
not to over-do Manner A.

Manner B. is reserved for those hours which, for the sake of appearances,
his official _fiancée_ is obliged to spend alone with Mr. Waters; going
for dull walks—that is, for me they’re kept from being too deadly dull
by the certainty that I am making them so for him!—and sitting with him
in the den, where I will _not_ play accompaniments to his songs except
as a last resource after I’ve exhausted every possibility of the stilted
remark, the awkward pause, the resigned glance, and the languor that
stops short only at the visible yawn. Since that first _tête-à-tête_ I
have brought the contrasting of Manners A. and B. to a fine art. I’ve
been revelling in the idea that for a whole fortnight this is what my
employer will be forced to put up with. After all, it’s what the whole
lives of some _married_ men amount to! And, according to the terms of the
Governor’s own agreement, there’s nothing in all this of which he can
openly complain!

       *       *       *       *       *

He _has_ complained!

Really, I need not have been surprised when it occurred, though I was
scarcely expecting it.

It began this (Saturday) morning, at breakfast. Now, any outsider peeping
into the sunny dining-room might have considered that the group round the
breakfast-table made an ideal picture of English family life.

There was the gentle, grey-gowned mother pouring out coffee. The big,
blonde son of the house, dressed for the City, sitting opposite to his
_fiancée_—rather silent, but presumably only out of devotion.

The _fiancée_ herself, a small brunette in dull-pink linen, looking, I
think I may say, the picture of girlish sweetness, and being made much of
by the two younger, taller, fair-haired sisters.

For no outsider could have suspected that the small, dark girl and the
big, blonde man were secretly at daggers drawn. Nor have the family a
notion that I’m anything less than “the ideal wife for Billy.”

I had come down last, to be greeted by the clarion voice of Theo, now no
longer muffled in my presence.

“Nancy! _Here’s_ news for you! Juno what? Our celebrated Uncle Albert
Waters is coming down to inspect Billy’s sweetheart!”

“Oh!” I said smiling. I didn’t see then why I shouldn’t smile. I hadn’t
yet heard anything about this other Mr. Waters.

“It’s to be hoped that he will admire her as much as we all do,”
proclaimed Theodora; “because, if he doesn’t, won’t it be a ghastly
week-end, Mother?”

“Nonsense, dear! Don’t try and alarm poor Nancy about the new relation
she has to meet.”

“But—fancy! Meeting Uncle Albert _for the first time_! Golly!”

“Theo-dora!”

“I know. I did promise to chuck saying ‘Golly,’ but really it’s the
only word that seems at all _like_ Uncle Albert,” declared the child.
“Uncle Albert’s a terror! Talk about me-ee! Yes, talk about _me_ saying
everything that comes into my head! Why, it’s from him that I inherit
that! Only, I’m not in it with him!”

“It would be a good thing if you were, Theo,” reproachfully from Mrs.
Waters. “I am sure your uncle has a heart of gold.”

“Always means there’s something else the matter with a person”—thus the
irrepressible Theo. “People with ‘hearts of gold’ are either fearfully
rude like old Miss Crabbe, and never say ‘Thank you,’ or they don’t
care a rap what they do say, like Uncle Albert. If he doesn’t happen to
approve of Billy’s _fiancée_, he’ll think nothing of telling Billy to
break off——”

“Break off yourself, young woman. You talk a good deal too much,” put in
her brother, as he rose, big and well-groomed, from the breakfast-table.
“And keep Cariad, will you? He knows he never follows anyone but his
mistress, but I’ve had to send the station-master’s boy back with him
three times this week. Good-bye, all.”

“Good-bye,” said I sweetly. “Give my love to the Near Oriental,
especially to the typists’ room, will you? How stuffy it will be getting
there now! How thankful I am for anything that keeps _me_ out of it on
a morning like this! Still, I suppose one ought not to abuse the place
where we first met.”

This with a glance at him, expressly for Blanche’s benefit, from under
my eyelashes. For I am acquiring a taste for positively “baiting” my
employer. I’m not going to be the one made to feel all the awkwardness of
the situation. Not I!

Let _him_ redden with embarrassment before the guileless remarks or
questions that I aim at him before his mother and sisters. Serve him
right! As for my employer’s feelings towards me, I have seen them
ripening from obliviousness of my presence, through indifference and
dislike, into positive _hatred_!

I knew he’d felt the flick of my last remark. I also knew how he would
have liked to retaliate. Any time since that first evening in the den I
have seen in his eye the yearning to take me by the shoulders and shake
me.

But he said serenely: “It is a glorious morning, certainly. Too fine not
to walk down to Sevenoaks, so I’m starting a little earlier.”

Good! I thought. I always welcomed the moment that saw the last, for the
whole happy, idle day, of the only inhabitant of The Lawn with whom I’m
not on excellent terms. Once _he’s_ out of the house, I can enjoy myself
and forget (almost) why I’m in it.

So it was an annoying shock to me when he stopped short on his way to the
door and added:

“Nancy, do you care to come part of the way towards the station with me?”

He had me there. I saw there was no escape. For the first time this week
he was able to check me in having things all my own way; and, mortified
and irritated as I felt, I could only smile up at him in Manner A, and
reply, all eager delight:

“Oh, I’d love it! Give me two minutes to put on my hat.”

In five minutes—for I knew he’d loads of time for his train, and it was
still a further turning of the tables to keep the Governor waiting—I
joined him outside the front door.

Presently we were walking briskly together down the drive between the
green cliffs of laurel; the air was sweet with the scent of sun-warmed
lilac, the sky was cloudless, the morning all sunshine—everything, in
fact, was as unlike my own mood as might be.

For I’d guessed that I was “in for” something. And although I didn’t yet
know what this might be—although it seemed a whole pre-existence since
the day when the prospect of a few words from the Head of the firm made
his trembling typist feel that the end of all things was at hand!—I still
felt, amongst other emotions, a little _frightened_. Again I saw in my
mind that odd, half-amused, half-threatening stare which the Governor had
bent upon me that first evening when I said good-night at the door of his
den. Supposing I wasn’t able to keep the reins in my own hands after all?
A new nervousness mingled in me with an utterly new form of resentment.

I hadn’t long to wait for my few words from the Governor.

He began—rather to my surprise—without his traditional “Now, Miss Trant,”
but grimly and stiffly as I don’t suppose Mrs. Waters knows he can speak.

“Now! There is something I wanted to say to you. I am sorry to trouble
you, but I am afraid that I have to ask you to be a little more careful
in your manner to me.”

Which of the two manners was he going to fix upon? The one I reserved for
him alone, or the pretty one that I used to him before his people?

“My manner? Oh!” I turned a dismayed face, the face of a typist caught
out in some careless mistake, up to his as we walked along. “I am afraid
I don’t quite know what you mean.”

“You do,” said his face.

But he only said concisely: “I mean the tone you sometimes feel called
upon to adopt towards me, as just now, at breakfast. Of course when we
are alone you must please yourself entirely. But that will hardly do
before others.”

Ah, it was for Manner A, then, that he’d settled to take me to task. So
none of it had been lost upon him, then; none of the unearthly sweetness
hiding home-thrusts that only he was able to recognize as such! None
of the elaborate ways in which I’ve been pretending to think of little
things to please him; quoting (in public) bits of his songs that I call
my favourites, picking a sulphur-coloured pansy—that he daren’t _not_
wear!—for his button-hole, then making him take it out to let me change
it for a leaf of scented geranium, because there were table decorations
of those at the Savoy “the day we lunched there before you chose my ring;
do you remember?” I hope he’ll never cease to remember _and to regret_
“that day!”

For the whole nature of the grudge I have against him has changed in
these few days. The thoughts have gone into the background of all that
office drudgery and Near Oriental unpleasantness. I’ve forgotten that
I used to hate him as part of a life of being ordered about on a few
shillings a week. But when, in accepting this invitation to a house of
luxury and leisure, I had the feeling of “coming home” to my old sort
of life, I hadn’t realized how many of the feelings belonging to that
by-gone life were going to wake up again inside me, indignantly ashamed.
I was my father’s daughter. I was well accustomed to the ease and space
and comforts of such a house as The Lawn—the Waters don’t suspect that,
but I _was_ born to them. I wasn’t born, however, to taking up the
position in such a house which he has forced upon me. Dully simmering in
my mind, for some time now, has been the thought of this slight which he
has put upon me, this insult.

This was the thought that softened my voice into the timid and suppressed
“office” key, which I felt I couldn’t keep up very much longer.

“Have I been saying and doing the wrong things before your people then? I
am sorry!”

I hoped my voice was not going to run away with me, but I heard myself
beginning to lose control over that serviceable meekness as I went on.

“It is rather difficult for me, you know. Still, I did think I _seemed_
everything that your _fiancée_ ought to be! I have been trying——”

“You have,” admitted Mr. Waters grimly. “Very.”

“Do you mean I _haven’t_ been a success, then?” I heard myself demanding
quickly. “Oh! Because, if I don’t give satisfaction——”

I stopped. It wasn’t my place to finish the sentence with “I had better
give notice!”

“H’m,” said my employer curtly. “I see.”

Did he “see,” I wondered? Did he realize that, though I was bound hand
and foot by that absurd muddle of an agreement, he might break it when
he chose, and that I was longing, desperately, for him to do so then and
there?

“It’s very hard,” I explained as evenly as I could, hoping that this
explanation would give him his cue, “hard to manage to hit the right
note always, and to have to decide every minute upon the way I should
naturally behave if I really _were_ engaged; Of course _I’m_ under
contract, but——”

Here, very suddenly and unexpectedly, Still Waters broke out into a
tone I’d never heard from him before. He positively “let himself go” as
he lashed out with his walking-stick at an inoffensive dock-leaf in the
hedge-row we were passing, and exclaimed:

“By Jove! I’d pity any man who was ‘really engaged’ to _you_!”

Ah! So I had got him to speak his mind at last, his own mind that he
would have given anything not to have revealed to any employee! More than
that, I’d driven him into being inexcusably rude to a woman. His face,
where the tan had deepened to a sullen red, his lips, compressed into
what seemed like a thin, pen-drawn line, showed me that _he_ had realized
this. _I_ don’t mean him to forget what he said. I said nothing. The most
awkward of all the many awkward pauses so far, elapsed between us as we
walked along, and before he spoke again. When he did, I saw that it cost
him more than he liked me to notice.

“Yes. You see—I ought not to have said that. I beg your pardon.”

“Oh! Please don’t! I didn’t mind it at all,” said I, better able to speak
very sweetly now that I felt I had regained some of my ascendancy. But
all the fun of “scoring” off him had gone, though I must not let him see
that. “Of course you’ve every right to say exactly what you think, just
as Theo does.”

For his face, still flushed, ruffled, and without a trace of the
“office-mask,” wore a fleeting but quite laughable likeness to his
youngest sister’s. I have heard it said of some girl, “She isn’t pretty
exactly, but she has pretty looks,” and positively, if I didn’t dislike
him so intensely, I should say that the Governor, though never handsome,
has “handsome looks” himself.

I went on, still mildly: “Only, you know, Theo and Blanche and your
mother don’t happen to think—what you’ve just said. They seem to consider
that—well! that the man I was engaged to isn’t—wouldn’t be at all to be
_pitied_!”

“I know. You needn’t tell me that. You have contrived to make all three
of them ridic—extremely fond of you!” This resentfully, realizing it
as part of my insolence to him. “My mother and the girls don’t see
through it, when you are—are covertly reminding me, in a hundred small
ways, of what I don’t need to be reminded of. _That_ would be all
right, therefore—only——Other people who came to the house might not be
so unsuspecting _They_ might chance to notice that there was something
odd—unusual—unnatural in your attitude to me.”

“But—but you said any strangeness would be put down to the awkwardness of
a girl so recently engaged?”

“No one would give _you_ much credit for being ‘awkward!’” Still more
resentfully. “And something might come out. That is why I am obliged to
ask you to be a little more guarded.”

“‘More guarded,’” I repeated meekly, like a child who is learning by
heart. “Yes. I must. I must try harder to make it seem less ‘unnatural’
that we two should be engaged.”

Again the look, instantly banished, that meant he pined to shake me.

“Thank you,” he said.

“And by the ‘other people,’ I suppose you mean this other—outspoken Mr.
Waters who is coming over to ‘inspect’ me? Do you think—are you afraid
that _he_ will be sorry for the man who is supposed to be engaged to me?”

Under his breath Mr. William Waters muttered what _sounded_, at least,
like the one word, “IMP!”

I heard him.

Perhaps it was only the first syllable of the word “Impertinence!”

At all events, I heard that distinctly. And though it meant I _had_
scored another point and made His Imperturbability forget himself yet
again, I couldn’t enjoy the triumph of it, nor even laugh to myself.
There had been too much of all this.... I was suddenly tired. Tears, of
fatigue, I suppose, rushed unexpectedly into my eyes, and I was obliged
to turn my head and glare over the hedge at a may-tree in full bloom
that became a dancing blur of pink.

_He_ was pretending that he hadn’t begun to speak at all. He began again,
stiffly:

“My uncle and another man are coming over to-night. This uncle of mine is
eccentric in some ways, but extremely shrewd; and no—er—two-edged sort of
remark would be lost on him.”

“I see,” I said, blinking angrily at the next may-tree, but still
controlling my voice. “I had better not make _any_ sort of remark at all
then, before him. I could be too shy to open my lips. In fact, just as I
am—used to be, at the office. Would that be better?”

“Distinctly better than—er—recent methods,” said the Governor dryly.
“This other man is merely a business acquaintance with whom I hope to
have dealings. So——”

“You want him to be favourably impressed,” I concluded intelligently,
“with your _fiancée_ and all your other belongings.”

“If you choose to put it so. But——”

A pause.

“Above all,” said the Governor, “I don’t, on this particular occasion,
don’t want to be made to look a _fool_!”

It came out quite boyishly and slangily, and for a moment I could almost
have liked Still Waters for that. Then—yes! I thought, savagely, he
mustn’t be allowed to look a fool even for once, but I may go on looking
a fool and worse, for the next year! And then I saw that he was inwardly
rating himself for having, as he considered, played into the enemy’s
hands—having allowed me to see exactly when and where I could get the
better of him next.

He didn’t trust me.

“I will do my best,” I said, softly and bitterly. Let him suppose, if he
chose, that I meant doing my best to let him look a fool before his uncle
and his pompous fine business acquaintance, indeed. What would he amount
to, I wondered, this acquaintance of the Governor’s for whom I, Monica
Trant, was to be on my best behaviour? Probably someone Father wouldn’t
have had in the house!

We reached the turning to the station and I stopped.

“Was there anything else that you wished to speak to me about?”

“No, thank you,” said my employer at his curtest. “That was all.
Good-morning!”

He lifted his hat; his face beneath it was set with temper. Good! Let him
vent it on Mr. Dundonald at the office!

“Good-morning,” I said, and turned away. I was glad that there had been
no one in the lane to see that parting; to anyone who had watched,
knowing who that tall, blonde, savage-looking man was who had said
good-morning so frigidly to that small girl with her head held in a very
straight line with her back, it would have looked so ludicrously like the
last thing in the world that it really was—a lover’s quarrel!

How furiously he had marched off! I turned round, after walking on a few
yards, to catch another glimpse of that stampede.

Then I was sorry.

For at that very moment he had elected to turn round and see me!

It just shows that people are quite right to teach children _never_ to
turn round on the road.

I wish I hadn’t!




CHAPTER XV

“THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS”


“Nancy! I say, Nancy! Here’s Billy and this new man of his turned up
_hours_ before we expected them, and mother’s out calling somewhere,
and Blanche is in the middle of washing her hair, and just look at the
awful rip I’ve made in my frock; _I_ can’t come!” announced Theo in a
voice subdued almost to a stage whisper when I met her on the stairs this
afternoon. “So _you_ be a saint and go in and talk pretty to the visitor
till tea, will you?”

“All right,” I laughed; and passed on to the drawing-room.

It was cool and dim in there after the sunshine of the garden, where I
had been lazing over a book and forgetting this morning’s stress, and for
a moment my eyes could scarcely make out the two figures that stood with
their backs to the white-curtained French windows.

Then, beside the Governor’s tall bulk, I saw a small, dapper, masculine
silhouette with a rather too abrupt “pinch-in” at the waist of its coat,
and a perky, quick turn of the head; the general effect of Mr. Cyril
Maude in some military part that I had once seen. Was it this that seemed
so familiar, I wondered?

A monocle fell with a click against a waistcoat-button; then, as I came
forward, a voice, also vaguely familiar, cried in amazement:

“Monica Trant! Little Monica! Well, _I_ am blessed!”

Who in the world was this that knew my name? I looked harder at him.
Surely it—Was it?—yes! it _was_ one of father’s old friends, Major
Montresor. So _this_ was my employer’s “business acquaintance.” I
felt myself trying not to stare. The Governor, I know, was staring
undisguisedly at the pair of us.

“Why, bless my soul, Monica! Who’d have expected to see _you_ coming in
like this?”

“Or you, Major Montresor?” I retorted, obliged to smile at him as I held
out my hand to his always tenacious clasp.

To be frank, I can’t say I was at all pleased that the Governor’s visitor
had turned out to be someone who’d seen me so often in the old days.
I don’t want those days to be mixed up with these. Already a ghost or
so out of those days had seemed inclined to come and haunt the lovely
garden and the big, comfortable rooms at The Lawn! And now I seemed to
see a regular Richard-the-Third-like procession of those ghosts rising
up behind the little Major’s trimly-waisted figure—people with whom
I’d associated last time he’d seen me—standing in judgment, echoing
his “Who’d have expected to see _you_?”—adding their phantom stares to
those of the two men whose eyes were actually upon me. It was tiresome;
might mean all sorts of adaptations; even the assumption of a “Manner C”
for the benefit of Major Montresor! As for him, he’s a rather amusing,
tactless, talkative, would-be-man-of-the-world sort of person, who’d been
quite ready to get up what Kipling calls the “You’re-only-a-little-girl
type of flirtation” with me when I was seventeen or so. I hadn’t met him
since, nor had I wanted to; though I had been distinctly interested, five
years ago, to find that someone who possessed medals and a moustache
cared to talk to me while I was still in the school-room. He’d got to
look ever so much older since then, balder, stiffer of movement in his
slim boots and his stays—I beg his pardon, I expect he called it his
belt—and, apparently, more flirtatious than ever!

Now, any _woman_ over thirty-five has to be fairly attractive before
she’s allowed to flirt on without fear of ridicule. But a _man_ at fifty,
or fifty-five, seems to claim the right to monopolize the prettiest and
youngest girl he meets. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t a hair on his
head or a tooth of his own in it. As long as he’s single and wears
trousers, he’s an eligible bachelor—or so he thinks. A mercy he doesn’t
hear the ideas of the favoured girl on this subject!

So, quite unsuspectingly, Major Montresor beamed upon me, and declared
at least three times that this was a most _delightful_ surprise, upon
his word!—seeming almost to forget his host, who stood a little aside,
looking utterly disconcerted, as far as I could see without turning my
eyes, to discover that this “business acquaintance” knew his official
_fiancée_ better than her employer ever could!

Christian names, too!

“Monica—Bless my soul, what’s this?”

“This” was an interruption that precipitated itself through the unlatched
French window; a small white dog that bore in his mouth a large bone,
noisome-smelling and of the earth, earthy, which he dumped upon the
Major’s japanned boot.

“_Cariad!_” growled the Governor, more angrily than I’d ever heard him
speak except to me, “what do you _mean_? Here, sir.” He grabbed him by
the collar, kicking the bone violently over the shallow sill in front
of him. “Sorry, I shall have to get the little brute locked up.” And he
dragged the cheerfully resigned Cariad out and along the gravel to the
back of the house.

“Decent sort of young fellow, Waters; very clever business-man; useful to
know; quite a nice chap, too,” commented the little Major, lowering his
voice as he turned to me. “But, my dear child”—he always used the word
“child” to excuse his gesture while he patted my shoulder, or smoothed my
lace collar, or played with my silver chain—“my child, how _did_ you come
to be here?”

“I am staying with Mrs. Waters”—demurely.

“Well, well! So you knew them! Your poor father didn’t, did he? You were
at school with the girls of the house, perhaps?”

“No. I met Mr. Waters”—still more demurely—“in business.”

“Business? Upon my word! Glad you’ve got such a business-adviser. Glad
you’re in the position to need one, Monica. I heard rumours of your
poor father having left you not very well off. Odd how these untrue
bits of gossip get about!”—with an experienced eye upon the expensive
new afternoon frock of my preferred pink, with its creamy ruffle, black
velvet bow, and small paste buckle. “You look the picture of prosperity
and health and good looks, if you’ll allow an old friend to say so?”

Well, one simply _has_ to “allow” things to people who call themselves
“old.” But for that, how many “old friends” would have received the
order of “Paws off!” or “No patting, please,” or a more politely
expressed equivalent from the girls who can’t be rude to their father’s
contemporaries?

I was only just about to draw my hand away from another long and tender
squeeze of Major Montresor’s, when his host came back to us. Through the
French window, as the Governor pushed it open, a ray of sunlight caught
and blazed on the magnificent diamonds of the ring which had been bought
at Gemmer’s for me to wear.

Instantly Major Montresor pounced on that other hand.

“Hal-lo! What’s this? It isn’t——?”

“Yes,” said I, sedately.

“Little Monica engaged?”

“Yes.”

“Come, not really, what? No! You don’t say so, really?”

“I am afraid I must, Major Montresor.”

“By—Jove! And I never heard! Here’s a blow!” He sighed tempestuously.
“Well! Youth will be served! Fortunate youth!” he prattled on without a
break. “I’m sure he’s to be congratulated, the dog. Always hanging round
you in the old days, I remember. Yes! Cultured sort of young Johnny with
a beard—what was his name, now? Ah, I have it—Vandeleur, of course, young
Sydney Vandeleur!”

Pleasant for me, wasn’t it? To have this voice from the Past blurting
out—less tactful even than Cicely!—the name of the lover I had lost. In
a flash I saw my employer’s slight movement—saw by the passing look on
his face that his “business-man’s memory,” which never forgets a name,
had instantly associated that of “Vandeleur” with those people at the
Carlton to whom I’d first introduced my “_fiancé_.” What must he imagine?
Still, that wasn’t the point. The point was that he should explain to
this gossiping little Major, as quickly as possible, how things really—I
mean officially, stood! To my horror he didn’t speak. There was an
agonizing pause. I shot a glance at the Governor.... Heavens! He, of all
people, seemed utterly at a loss—fidgeting like a schoolboy; he who could
“break the news” to his staff at the office without turning a hair, was
leaving it all, here, apparently to _me_!

Well!

Hurriedly I was beginning:

“But, Major Montresor——” when the drawing-room door opened to the
entrance of Mrs. Waters, in her soft grey satin wrap and black picture
hat; Cariad, liberated and tail-wagging, in her wake.

Greetings were exchanged—what talk followed I scarcely heard, until the
gentle voice of the Governor’s mother exclaimed:

“Oh! Then you had met my son’s _fiancée_?”

“_Fiancée?_” echoed Major Montresor. His monocle dropped again, so did
his jaw. I never saw a man so utterly, so comically taken aback. He
wheeled abruptly, to stare from me to the Governor, then back to his
hostess again. “Your son’s? Am I to understand that it is _he_ who is
engaged to Miss Trant?”

Here at last the Governor did find his tongue.

“I have that honour,” he said, clearing his throat, taking a step
forward, and looking down at the little Major just as some tawny Great
Dane might have looked at Cariad—but no! No big dog can ever look as
utterly silly—there’s no other word for it—as a man who doesn’t know what
to say next. And he who had, it appeared, particularly wished to avoid
being made to look a fool on this occasion—Well! He must admit that it
was none of _my_ doing that he stood there looking like that!

“Well, well, well! I suppose I shall have to grin and bear it and
congratulate you, Waters,” rattled off Major Montresor. “I certainly _do_
congratulate you!”

“Doesn’t feel _sorry_ for you,” I added mentally, hoping the unspoken
comment showed in the one glance I allowed myself to steal at my employer
as I crossed over to sit on the low chintz couch beside his mother, while
the visitor talked on.

“Still, you might have prepared me for this, my dear fellow. You might
have given your heart-broken rival some warning. Let me down a bit
gently, eh? about how you were robbing me of the one girl I’d hoped might
solace my declining years. Met Miss Trant, Mrs. Waters? Bless my life,
rather! Used to billet myself for months at Colonel Trant’s house in
the old days—ripping old place it was, too; gorgeous beech avenue; lawn
something like your own here, but sweeping away down to the river—oh,
ripping! What’s become of the place now, Miss Monica; let, I suppose?”

“Sold,” I said, shortly.

Without looking up from the patch of carpet on which Missis’s little
dog slumbered with his muzzle resting against my shoe, I could feel the
change that came into my employer’s grey glance—the half-disconcerted
“M’m. News to _me_, all this!” expression that just flicked across his
face. His mother’s hand made a little movement towards mine—and for some
reason I felt that she was a little sorry.... I was furious! Why on earth
couldn’t this little he-gossip—though why they should understand by the
word “gossip” an old woman, I never _shall_ know—why couldn’t he allow
these people to go on thinking that the typist her employer had chosen
to honour had never been before inside any sort of house but one of a
row of seventy or eighty, all with the same sort of pot-plants hiding
what lay beyond the Nottingham lace curtained windows, with the same
neat front door, and the same metaphorical wolf crouched grimly in front
of it! Desperately I wished that something might suddenly deprive Major
Montresor of the power of speech, only I suppose nothing ever could do
_that_!

Evidently he wasn’t going to spare me anything. I was to stand full in
the limelight of other days.

“Hope the new tenants will keep it up as they should, then, that’s
all”—genially. “They took on the fishing with it, I suppose? ‘Everything
went together.’ What? I see. Hope they’ll take as much pride as your poor
father did in those magnificent hot-houses of his. Ah, I’ve never tasted
peaches like those, anywhere else! Remember how you used to race me down
to get the finest peach before breakfast, Monica? Yes, hang it all, I
think I shall have to ask your leave to go on calling her that, Waters.
Loved her from childhood’s hour, y’see. Her childhood’s, not mine, of
course!”

“Oh,” murmured the Governor.

Miss Robinson would have been kept in high spirits for the next week by
that “Oh.”

It didn’t amuse _me_ much as I sat there, carrying out to the letter
my promise to say nothing and look shy. I was feeling at least as
embarrassed as I looked by the time tea was brought in and the girls made
their appearance; Blanche with her fair hair unmanageably soft from its
washing; Theo, as usual, all eyes for the visitor. I hoped they might
distract his attention from me—they’re quite young enough!—but no! All
the time he was sipping his tea and munching slice after slice of cake,
the little Major continued to pour out comment after embarrassing comment
upon my affairs, addressing himself chiefly now to the Governor.

_He_ sat looking still more hopelessly uncomfortable and bigger
than ever in contrast to the frail china tea-cup and the slice of
wafer-like bread-and-butter in his clutch. Why do people allow men in at
drawing-room teas? Why couldn’t those two have been having theirs in the
billiard-room—the garage—_anywhere_—where I could have been saved from
Major Montresor’s relentless flow of conversation?

“And to think I should have known you all these months without suspecting
that your gain was to be my loss—no, no, I don’t mean the business part
of it, my boy. I mean this engagement of yours, ha, ha! And then—funny
thing! to be congratulating the wrong man.”

“Oh, _were_ you?” burst suddenly, irrepressibly, from Theo, unable to
check the following “Who?”

“Theo-_dora_, dear!”

“Ah, never mind, never mind!” took up the little Major, turning quickly
to the child and smiling from her to me. “I don’t tell tales out of
school, young lady. But brown eyes”—with another monocled glance at those
wide search-lights under the yellow curls—“brown eyes always stand for
fickleness! There must have been a dozen at least of us that you treated
disgracefully, Monica, eh? One comfort is I’m not the _only_ sufferer!”

He was not!

My heart sank lower and lower at the thought that this garrulous little
blunderer was to stay for dinner. And the other expected guest, the
outspoken uncle, was to be here for the whole week-end! What would
_he_ be like? Not worse than Major Montresor—that was the single ray
of comfort. Nothing _could_ be worse! Still, the two together—what a
prospect!

Even as I was shuddering over it, the sound of some confused commotion
was borne in to us from the hall; and then a loud, bluff, breezy voice
positively shouted:

“Name? My good woman, you’re pretty new to this house, or you’d know
my name. Same as your master’s. No! Don’t announce me. I’ll announce
myself.” (As if this were necessary!) “Where are they all? Tea? Good!
Young lady there too? Excellent!”

The door, this time, burst open, and in _avalanched_ (it’s the only word)
Uncle Albert Waters.




CHAPTER XVI

THE ORDEAL BY INSPECTION


In looks, Uncle Albert Waters was just like the John Bull of the
cartoons, minus the hat. In voice, he was Theo through a megaphone. In
manner, a genial form of hurricane.

“Now then, now then! How’s everybody?” he blared. “Mary! Blanche! Theo!”
(An explosive kiss to each.) “Ha! Billy, my boy!” (A violent blow on the
shoulder.) “Major Montresor, glad to see you again—how are you? Still
defying the enemy? Splendid!” (A pump-handle shake of the hand.) “Now,
Billy!” turning again to my employer. “You needn’t introduce _me_ to your
sweetheart. She knows who I am, and what I’ve come for. What I want is to
have a good look at _her_. Young lady,” to me, “will you be kind enough
to oblige an old man whose eyesight’s not quite what it was, by turning
full to the light?”

I did. What else could I do?

I sat, facing the low flood of late afternoon sunshine, and feeling
without seeing that all the others turned a little away from me, while
Uncle Albert fixed his prominent, honest grey eyes upon my face and
stared at it without reserve for—well! it seemed several of the longest
minutes I’d ever known. Then judgment was pronounced.

“Well done, Billy!” Here there would have been another of those heavy
blows upon the Governor’s broad shoulder, but he had edged away. “You’ve
chosen well, boy. A bonnie girl, and a well-bred one, and one to do you
credit. Now, Mary, I’m ready for that tea. And, you, my dear”—meaning
me—“pass me the bread and butter. What’s your name, now?”

“My full name is Monica,” I said for the benefit of Major Montresor who
had fixed the monocle with something like mild indignation upon the last
comer. “They call me Nancy, here.”

“Nancy. A pretty name for a pretty girl, appropriate, too. ‘_All my fancy
dwells upon Nancy_’—eh, William? You used to sing that song once upon a
time, dare say you haven’t forgotten it, now?”

And so on, and so forth. I really don’t know how much more of it there
was before the dreadful old man had finished his ample tea and was
carried off to his room by the Governor in much the same humour, I
thought, as he had dragged Cariad and his bone to the back of the house.

A pity Uncle Albert Waters couldn’t be locked up in the tool-house!

I felt like murder when I reached my pretty room at last. What a day it
had been! It had seemed forty-eight hours long at least. Beginning with
that horrible walk to the station with the Governor—Then there had been
the unwelcome appearance of Major Montresor and his clumsy blunderings,
first about Sydney and secondly about the old times at home—and now this
terrible old Uncle turning up to inspect and blare out his embarrassing
verdict upon my looks and suitability; oh, it’s the last straw!

It’s the worst that’s happened yet! There _can_ be nothing to beat the
Governor’s Uncle at tea, even though the evening isn’t yet over. I feel
as if it were long past bed-time, and there’s only half an hour or so
before dressing for dinner! Even half an hour alone——

But I haven’t been allowed a minute of it alone.

The girls fluttered into my room almost as soon as I came up; brimful of
sympathy, but not sympathetic enough to keep themselves from laughter.

“Poor dear Nancy! Wasn’t it awful?”

“Didn’t I tell you Uncle Albert was a terror? But you don’t think he
really _talks_ like me, Nancy, do you? Billy _will_ say he _does_!”

“Theo! He can _easily_ hear you from his room, and the window’s open. Oh,
I do hope that when I’m engaged my young man won’t have _quite_ such loud
relations!”

“Better than having deceitful whispery voices and saying horrid things
in them about you behind your back,” retorted Theo. “And anyhow, Uncle
Albert did _like_ her!”

“Yes,” said Blanche, deprecatingly, “but isn’t it nearly as terrible as
if he disapproved?”

“It’s _worse_,” I decided to myself as I dressed for dinner, in my white,
to please Theo, who apparently has some mysterious child’s reason for
wanting me to wear that particular frock to-night. “Even if one were
madly in love, a relation like that would be quite enough to make one
wonder if it were worth it! Yes! Even if one were _really_ engaged to be
married to a man—the man Mr. Waters would ‘pity,’ one would break it off
rather than put up with such an uncle-in-law. Well! Thank goodness I’m
spared _that_ at all events! I hope Uncle Albert won’t pay many of his
visits of inspection during the next year. One or two ought to be enough
for him, and I’ve taken the plunge now,” thought I, “and got it over. He
can’t go on being much more awful at dinner!”




CHAPTER XVII

THEO SITS UP


Yes! It was all of a piece with the fiascoes of the day that my little
watch gained ten minutes, hurrying me through my dressing and down,
before I’d any need for such haste, into the drawing-room.

Here, big and black-and-white against the giant pink roses of the chintz
couch, I found (as I needn’t have hoped not to find, on this day of
_contretemps_!) my employer alone.

He sprang to his feet, of course, and wheeled forward a chair for
me (looking as if he wished he could have pushed it and me through
the French windows and out of the house for ever!—Goodness knows I
reciprocated that wish!) and I sat down.

Then ensued what I’m beginning to call to myself “one of our pauses.”

But I felt that this evening my nerves wouldn’t stand silence—that
nothing could float me over these quicksands of awkwardness but an
unceasing ripple of small-talk. If _he_ wouldn’t, I must say something;
anything! The first thing that came into my head!

“H—how close it is! Do you think there will be thunder to-night?”

There was suppressed thunder enough on his face as he answered politely:
“It is getting rather stifling. Perhaps you would like the window open?”
and he rose and walked across to it.

Then, from under the chintz valance of the couch where he’d been sitting,
there emerged at small and cringing form with an enormous white satin bow
tied to his collar.

“Poor Cariad!” I went on, patting the unusually subdued little dog, “you
_have_ got a smart new tie! Don’t you like it?”

A one-sided conversation didn’t meet the case, so the “dumb animal” (as
they call it) gave me the cue for my next remark to the almost equally
dumb human being.

“I’ve always wanted to know where he got his rather curious name,” I
said. “What _does_ it mean?”

“It’s Welsh,” explained my employer abruptly, still standing by the open
window. “It means ‘Sweetheart’”—if you must know, his tone concluded.

“Oh.... Is he a Welsh terrier?”

“We got him from Wales. From a little place in Anglesey where my people
sometimes go for the summer holidays,” my employer vouchsafed, with an
effort. “Porth Cariad the name of it is—‘Port Sweetheart.’”

“Fancy calling a _place_ that!” I took up, with the one idea of keeping
this conversation from coming to a dead stop. “But some people call
_anything_ that!” (I was wondering inwardly what this last remark could
possibly mean even as I went on.) “Is it by the sea?”

“Er—I think so.”

“Oh, yes; ports generally are, of course.... Is it—is it a _pretty_ place
at all?”

“Quite. It hasn’t been spoilt yet. Charming little bay. The usual sort of
thing.” (Pause.)

“Yes—? _Do_ tell me about it!”

“Oh! I don’t know—There are about two cottages. No end of gorse—heather.”

“How lovely!” Then, scenting another pause, I hurried on—“Isn’t there
anything _else_ there?”

“Well—There’s a sort of woman.”

“A woman? Really? How interesting! What sort of a woman?”

“Oh, a _wooden_ one,” returned the Governor, who was too obviously
thinking about something else. A wooden woman! What _could_ he mean
by it? But before I could begin my next question the door opened; the
Governor turned quickly, then, seeing who came in, he exclaimed in
accents of concentrated disgust:

“Theo! Isn’t it time you were in bed?”

“No! Because I’m not going! I’m going to sit up for dinner, just for this
once!” announced the child, triumphantly advancing upon us in a Prize-Day
“effect” of let-down white skirts and long, cream-silk-stockinged legs.
“I asked Mother, and that nice old man” (Poor Major Montresor!) “begged
her to let me, and I may! So there! Nancy, _don’t_ you like the way I’ve
done my hair for it?”

She had tied a fillet of white satin—a bit of the same ribbon which was
disconcerting Cariad—about her short curls.

“What’s that for? To keep your brains from bursting through?” demanded
her brother crossly. But Theodora only tossed that yellow posy of a head
of hers, retorting that Major Montresor thought she was sixteen, and was
going to sit next her, and that there would be a _surprise_ at dinner!

       *       *       *       *       *

The surprise—or the series of surprises—didn’t dawn upon me in its full
hideousness all at once.

In the dim-shaded dining-room, where the tall maids flitted noiselessly
to and from the hatch at one end, the round table about which the
seven of us sat down seemed, with its many candles in the curving arms
of Sheffield candlesticks, its gleaming white porcelain, and its
winking, patterned array of silver and cut glass, like some great oasis
of softly-radiant light. Upon it, as table-centre, there was set the
silver-bordered pool of an oval mirror, reflecting a large silver goblet,
round which I could read part of the inscription:

    1896
    FIFTY YARDS SWIM——
    SECS. 6——
    W. WAT——

that upheld a pyramid of creamy, perfumed blossom, softened with sprays
of feathery white. Budding spikes of the same blossom were massed about
the pedestals of four little winged Loves, offering baskets that held
tiny bouquets of the white sprays, mingled with chocolates wrapped up
in silver-foil. Gradually but surely I realized the effect of all this
decoration; it was indescribably, unmistakably, blatantly—_bridal_!

And then I realized who was responsible for it. That gift of Heaven,
Theodora, was beaming upon her handiwork.

It must have been her innocent hands, too, that had tied up each
table-napkin with a white bow and a spray of buds; had cut silver-paper
out of a chocolate-box into the miniature horseshoes that lay strewn
negligently but broadcast all over the tablecloth; and had encircled the
place where I sat with a wreath of crystallized rose-leaves in the shape
of a heart.

With one frantic sweep of my hand I brushed these last into the
table-napkin on my lap. I must pretend I’d noticed nothing, and then
(though I knew that thunder-cloud was deepening every moment on the
Governor’s brow) perhaps the others really _wouldn’t_ notice!

Vain hope!

It was dashed even before the two usually so sedate maids, who seemed,
this evening, to emanate some subtle atmosphere of sympathy and giggle,
had finished handing round the soup.

“Dear me! Who arranged the flowers like this?” murmured Mrs. Waters, with
a mildly bewildered glance at this white-and-silver display. “I thought
Blanche was going to have just the little crystal tubs with the pink
Maman Cochets and some maidenhair fern?”

“Yes, Mumsie, I was. But Theo _would_ put white heather and syringa!”

“Because—Oh, can’t you see _why?_” broke in the cornet voice of the
youngest of the family, who sat between me and the Major.

And before anyone could answer or check her, this appalling child went on
to give chapter and verse for each of her enormities.

“It’s because, you see, syringa’s so awfully like orange-blossoms!—They
call it ‘mock orange!’ And I meant it for Billy and Nancy!”

She paused for breath (so did everybody else), then she hurried on.

“Yes! I did the table, because I wanted it to be appropriate! So I took
away those everyday bon-bon dishes and fetched out these little china
Cupids to hold the choc’lates instead! _Aren’t_ they ducky?”

No one responded, but every eye was upon Theo, who took it all for
approval and beamed again, enlarging upon her arrangements.

“And that’s why I got Nancy to put on her white satin”—

(_Ah!_)

—“with those lace lilies round her front, so’s she could look more like a
_bride_!”

(What I did look like at that moment I don’t know. But the Governor
couldn’t have looked more like the executioner in a cloak-and-dagger film
drama.)

“And _do_ you see the confetti, of those teeny silver horseshoes, and the
pink rose-leaves strewn over—Oh, Nancy!”—reproachfully—“_Look_ what’s
happened to the Heart! And that was supposed to be Billy’s!”

Here I saw the mouth of Uncle Albert, who was sitting facing me at Mrs.
Waters’ right hand, open in readiness for that approving bellow of his.
“Never mind, I’ll make another. I _wanted_ to do it all like this the
first evening she came down,” explained Theo further. “Only, of course,
we weren’t quite sure then whether she’d like it—”

(_Like_ it!)

—“but it _was_ all my idea!”

_Then_ came the bellow of laughter, and—“A jolly good idea too, Kiddie!”
from the other of my employer’s “loud relations,” his odious uncle. “Very
pretty, Theo!”

“Yes, I thought it would be rather sweet! Doesn’t _Billy_?” said the
child, with a half-defiant look towards the Head of the House, who
looked—there is no denying it—as if he were longing to kick someone.
He _did_ kick—a smothered yelp from under the table told me what. He
had vented some of his feelings upon the little dog whose name meant
“Sweetheart” in Welsh—who came from that port—one of those by the sea!
where there are two cottages and a wooden woman—whatever that meant! The
taller of the parlour-maids, handing lobster _soufflé_ to her master,
wasn’t wooden enough, nor quick enough in repressing her smile.

A glare of reproof was her portion as he refused the dish, and a
peremptory, “Move that—er—thing. It’s in the way!” with a jerk towards
the silver pot that held the spraying conservatory plant.

“_Oh_, what a shame!” protested Theo loudly, as this emblem was borne
away. “And I’d specially _put_ it so that it _shouldn’t_ be in his way
when he wanted to look at Nancy!”

“‘_Comes there much more of it?_’” I quoted to myself, but I caught
Major Montresor’s eye; he was looking puzzled, almost sorry for me! And
that nerved me up to laughing (I flatter myself, quite naturally!) as I
murmured to Theo that she was a sentimental little goose!

“Sentimental? A good thing if she is!” took up Theo’s irrepressible
uncle. “I like it. In these highly-educated days it’s a good sign! Yes,
I like to see the young folks still taking an interest in watching a
real Romance, instead of stuffing up their heads with nothing but mixed
hockey and hunger-strikes and rubbish of that sort! That never brought a
girl a sweetheart yet, _did_ it, Mary? _Does_ it, Nancy? And that’s all a
girl’s there for, when you get down to bedrock. I may be a bit behind the
times——”

As he was the only person talking at the table, he was considerably
“behind” with his dinner. Unheeding, he discoursed on all through the
_entrée_ and the saddle of mutton.

“Yes! I may be hackneyed and old-fashioned, but that’s what I feel. What
do you say, Major?”

What chance had the Major of saying anything? The whole conversation had
been pretty equally divided between the two _enfants terribles_—the girl
of thirteen and the man of sixty.

“Plenty of Romance in our young days! All over for us now! Still, we
enjoy seeing the rising generation keep it up! Good luck to ’em. White
heather for luck, eh? Yes, yes! Must have one of those little sprigs in
my button-hole—memento of a very happy occasion!—Bless my soul, everybody
finished except me? I talk too much, ha-ha!—must get on.”

He went on eating very quickly, talking between mouthfuls.

“‘Mock-orange,’ eh? Capital! Hope it won’t be long before we all see
_real_ orange-blossom, a wreath of it, round the pretty head of a certain
young lady in white! Yes! dash it all, Mary, I must drink that in
champagne.”

He took champagne.

So did I. I felt I was going to need it!

Mrs. Waters let it foam and sizzle into her glass; Blanche, though
murmuring that the horrid stuff always reminded her of seltzer-water
that the knives had been washed in, sipped at it for the sake of
the “occasion.” Major Montresor took it—reverting afterwards to his
invariable whisky and soda.

The only “grown-up” who didn’t take it was my employer. Still Waters
refused his usual peg and drank plain water.

Every now and then he seemed to be making spasmodic efforts to remember
that he had guests under his roof; but they weren’t successful! This
added to my discomfort! I saw his mother glance at him, but only once,
and with a half-humorous little smile! Didn’t she _mind_ the fact of
the host remaining well over the verge of unmitigated sulks? Apparently
not! Possibly she’s seen him in his tantrums before now—even though she
didn’t know the reason of these! I was feeling almost thankful that one
of the guests was such a host in himself; thankful, up to a point, for
Theo’s gusto! For the child who was “sitting-up” grew more excited as
each course was handed round. With her rose-flushed cheeks, her tossed
curls from which the white fillet had slipped crookedly down over one
eyebrow, her roving brown gaze, and her giggling spirits that raced
higher and higher with the bubbles in the glasses (of the others), she
was the model of an infant Bacchante. “Sitting-up!” It was her wretched
brother whom she was causing to sit up, and his still more wretched
official _fiancée_! The only thing to do was for both of us to rise to
the situation. Only he wouldn’t—or couldn’t. So, once more _I_ had to.

There is after all a certain relief in feeling you’ve reached the climax
of all things, and that Fate _cannot_ have anything worse in store!

And this I _did_ feel when Uncle Albert, having tossed off his toast,
expressed a wish to know what sort of place the young folks fancied for
their honeymoon.

“Oh, the Riviera!” was what I rushed into the breach with here. “It
would be so glorious to see palms and flowering oleanders, and casinos,
and scent all growing wild!—I mean the Parma violets for it—against a
brilliant blue sea—such a treat to see a really bright blue bay and
golden sunshine in the middle of winter——”

“Winter?” put in Uncle Albert quite indignantly. “But my dear, we’re well
on into June now; you aren’t going to keep this poor Billy of yours”—with
a wave of the hand towards the head of the table—“waiting for his wedding
till November or December, _surely_?”

“Oh—er—why not?—we thought so.”

“We thought—that is, Miss—er—_she_ said,” blurted out the Governor
desperately, “that a year’s engagement was——”

“Far too long, my boy!” interrupted his uncle peremptorily, “far too
long! Don’t you give in to her about that! Why wait, Billy? What the
dickens is there to wait _for_? (What’s this—ice? No, thanks.) Why, when
I was a fine young fellow of your age, if I’d got a bonnie girl like that
to look kindly at me, and enough money to keep her in style, I’d not have
rested until I’d clapped a plain gold ring on the top of those diamonds
on her finger. Nothing like settling down happily as soon as you’ve got
the chance. Like that picture—what is it—oh, you know! Finest picture
that ever was painted, I consider—in the Royal Academy years ago—prints
of it in every shop-window—what’s the name of the thing?”

“‘_My friend Mr. White_’?” suggested the Major.

“No, no; _what_ the dickens is it? A really beautiful thing, now, if I
could only remember——”

“‘_Hope_,’ by G. F. Watts?” put in the Governor’s mother softly.

“No!”

“‘_Harmony_’?” suggested Blanche.

“‘_Simple Aveu_’—no—‘_The Soul’s Awakening_,’ Uncle Albert?” fortissimo
from Theo.

“No—none o’ those. You all know it, though. I shall think of the name in
a minute. Anyhow, I shall give these two young people the best print to
be got of it, to hang up in their hall.”

And his prominent grey eyes seemed to be staring over my head at some
imaginary plan of this entrance!

“Only, they must hurry up, mind! No more of this nonsense about their
waiting a twelve-month and courting all the love away! Happy’s the
wooing that’s not long a-doing: isn’t that right, Major?”

“Quite, quite!” Major Montresor got his word in edge-ways at last. “To my
sorrow” (old humbug!) “be it spoken! You see, Waters, the longer you play
your fish, the more likely he—that is, _she_—is to get away! You’ve got
to put on all the strain your tackle will bear at _once_!”

“Hear that, Bill?” (The Governor was looking as if _he_ would not be able
to stand much more strain of this kind.) “Put it all on at once—excellent
advice! And where are you going to have the wedding, Mary? Here, I
daresay?”

“_I_ had hoped so,” said Mrs. Waters, with her pretty smile at me.

“Oh, yes; _here_, Uncle Albert!” cried Blanche, who, I know, would regard
this wedding as a dress-rehearsal of her own. And then she and Theo began
to enlarge, in a kind of two-part pæon, on this function that will never
be.

“A big tent on the lawn——”

“Red carpet across the gravel——”

“A _huge_ wedding-cake just in that very place”—with a bacchanalian
gesture towards the mirrored table-centre. “All the lovely presents put
out in the den——”

“Too small, Blanche! I know Uncle Albert will want to give them _all_ his
furniture.”

“In mother’s bedroom, then! We could easily get it to look like not that
at all!”

“Yes, and Billy and Nancy standing up in the drawing-room together for
all the people to look at and shake hands with, and kiss——”

(Here a sound as of the word “Pup-chick!” from the other parlourmaid, who
was disposing the finger-glasses.)

“Yes, and showers of confetti dropping out of everybody’s hat for weeks
afterwards——”

“And the band playing like anything all the time—_all_ the
wedding-marches and glides and rag time and all the waltzes that make you
feel you _must_ dance——”

“And a white satin slipper tied on to the back of the motor when they go
away——”

“Yes! One of mine, so’s you can see it! Oh, won’t it be a gorgeous day!”
trumpeted Theo, bounding up and down as if wire springs only held her
to her chair. “Oh, _why_ isn’t it going to be next week? Still, even
this evening is _almost_ as good as a sort of wedding-breakfast! Don’t
you think so, everybody? With Nancy looking so sweet in that dress, and
the way I’ve done the table, and the champagne, and everything? Only,
in one way”—crescendo—“it’s _better_! Because, if it were the _real_
wedding, the bride and bridegroom would be leaving us to-night! And as it
is, they’re staying on,” concluded Theodora, with a peal of rapturous
laughter, “and there’ll be _no_ horrid good-byes to say, and _no_ crying!”

“_Won’t_ there!” came from the straight lips of her brother, in a grimmer
and more deadly tone than even I had ever heard. “_You’ll_ be crying,
miss, before the evening’s over.”

And, to anticipate a little, she _was_.

In half an hour or so, the easily-wounded heart of thirteen was being
sobbed out on her pillow. For when, after the gratifications of a “quite
grown-up bow” from Major Montresor and a prophecy from Uncle Albert that
it wouldn’t be many years now before Theo had a wedding-breakfast-table
of her own to decorate, the child had turned a glowing face up to her
brother’s, she had received only the curtest of “good nights” dropped
over his shoulder.

       *       *       *       *       *

To me the thought of that farewell glimpse of him was nothing less than a
reprieve.

“Thank goodness that, as he’s got two men-guests to attend to, it’ll be
the last of him that I shall be obliged to put up with this evening!”
thought I, as I rose to follow Mrs. Waters. “He’ll have to disappear
into the den or the billiard-room with _them_. _I_ shall have an evening
off. Yes! a regular ‘evening off,’ like the maids! Only, I suppose, a
housemaid uses those evenings to _see_ her young man. With me, it’s
just the other way round. ‘No followers allowed’ indeed! ‘Nothing BUT
following’ has been my trouble. So hurray for a nice peaceful evening in
the drawing-room with his mother and Blanche. After that _ghastly_ meal,
how I shall enjoy the rest!”

Even as I was congratulating myself upon it, my hopes were again dashed
to the ground—this time, of course, by the hand of Uncle Albert.

“No, no, Billy. The Major and I are too old not to let you have your bit
of time to yourselves now, aren’t we, Montresor?”

“_Rather!_” with hollow geniality from the Major.

Apparently it’s one thing for a man to mention his “declining years” and
add about fifteen of them to his age. It’s quite another to find himself
claimed as a contemporary by a man who’s ten years older than he is!

“We two old fogies can look after ourselves, my boy. We’re not going
to keep you in here, away from your girl. Not a word!—that’s quite all
right—quite understood! Been young ourselves once, though you may not
believe it—off with you!”

And, to my unspeakable fury, he closed the dining-room door upon what
he’s pleased to call “these young people.” The door of the drawing-room
had already been shut upon Mrs. Waters and Blanche!

Was there to be _no_ respite, then, after the awful meal I had just sat
through? A nice evening it had been—this dinner which I suppose had been
meant to be so jolly for all of us, as well as for the two guests! Well!
at the end of it all here was Major Montresor piqued; Theo in tears; the
parlour-maids glared at, and Cariad kicked! Even Uncle Albert hadn’t been
able to remember the name of the horrible picture, whatever it was, that
he meant to give “us.”

And now here was I, left stranded once more face to face with my fuming
employer; only, this time, with the memory of that child’s light-hearted
mockery of stage-management between us!




CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIRST KISS


“Well! I suppose there is nothing for it but to go in here,” I said,
marching, with my head well up, to the door of the den.

The Governor was only just in time to open it for me. Without a look at
him I walked in, making straight for the piano-stool.

I sat down. I planted my foot firmly upon the loud pedal. My fingers
clutched at the first chords of a spirited war-song as if it were a
life-buoy.

“Do sing!” I heard myself fling almost imperiously at my employer.

He sang—not well.

“And please keep on singing,” I said, into the last chords of the song.
“_Loud_ ones, please.”

Without any further conversation, we went doggedly through “_Drake’s
Drum_” and “_The Two Grenadiers_.”

I simply wasn’t going to let Uncle Albert Waters, left in the dining-room
with Major Montresor, imagine that his nephew and I had gone into the
den to—to make anything but—music for one single instant that evening.
Let them hear for themselves that we were busy at the piano the whole
time!

They could hear well enough through the wall of the dining-room——

No! Apparently they couldn’t hear well enough. For no sooner had we
come to the end of those bars of the “_Marseillaise_” that conclude the
Grenadier song, than the door of the den was thrown open and in walked
those two other men.

Uncle Albert, of course in advance, pranced up to the piano, thumped his
fist into the open palm of the other hand, leaned over the piano towards
us, then, in a solemn, confidential, impressive tone of voice, he brought
out—one word. It was the word:

“_Wedded!_”

“What?” rapped out the Governor, sharply wheeling round. And I couldn’t
help gasping, wondering if this old gentleman had suddenly come under
some hallucination about our being more, even, than merely “engaged.”

“Yes. ‘Wedded,’” repeated Uncle Albert, raising his voice again to its
normal blare. “You know!—The fellow and the girl! That first-rate picture
by Millais or Holman Hunt or one of ’em. Anyhow, you know it. She’s got
her head resting right back against the young chap’s shoulder, like this”—

(Unsuccessful imitation of the pose of Leighton’s model by Uncle Albert
against the piano.)

—“And he’s lifting her hand to his mouth—_you_ know. That’s the one.
That’s the name I was puzzling over half through dinner, and it only just
dawned upon me just as I finished my cigar. I had to come in and tell
you. And, if we’re not _de trop_,” added that appalling old man, settling
down like a big collapsible toy in one of the huge arm-chairs, “we’d like
to hear just one tune in here. ‘If he’s only _singing_,’ as I said to the
Major, ‘he might just as well have company by as not, and I’m fond of a
good song after dinner!’ So now, Billy, what have you got there? D’you
know that A 1 thing—ah, what is it? What a man I am for forgetting names!
Something bandy—not Bandy-legs——”

“Ha!” Major Montresor, from the other big chair, came to the rescue.
“‘_The Bando-lero_’!”

“That’s it! Know it, William? ‘I _am_ the Bando-lero!’” vociferated Uncle
Albert, “‘the—something—Bando-lero——’”

“I know it,” said my employer, with restraint, “but I haven’t got it in
the house!”

It was my turn to suppress a smile as I remembered how, in my
nursery-days, I’d defined “_a bandolero_” as “_a person with a very loud
voice_,” just as naturally as I used to think that “_a Radical_” meant
“_a dreadfully wicked man_.” It was the very song that I could imagine
Uncle Albert enjoying singing himself. A pity his nephew didn’t happen to
have it in the house!

“You have this, though,” I suggested helpfully, as I turned to the rack
and took out “_The Storm-Fiend_,” with a look at the Governor meaning,
“Don’t dare to say you loathe this thing!” (It was because he did, by the
way, that the song had been ordered for him in a burst of unsisterliness
by Theo.)

“Yes! _You_ can look soft nothings at the girl, my boy!” was Uncle
Albert’s interpretation of that glance of the Governor’s as I spoke, “but
she’s got to keep those pretty dark eyes of hers for the music!”

(—And I wonder the sheet of music didn’t shrivel up under the gaze of the
eyes thus praised!)

We then proceeded to dash through “_The Storm-Fiend_.” I wondered whether
the Governor found in the loud singing of it as much of a safety-valve as
I found in the playing of the artillery-like accompaniment!

“Bravo! Very good! Stirring song, that!” Uncle Albert’s bellow swelled
the echoes of the last chord. “Capital song—very well sung. I like that
tune—‘_I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho! I chuckle and laugh, ho, ho!_’” he
persisted (to some tune quite of his own). “‘_The Storm-Fiend is the
Lord—of—Woe!_’ Very good! Still, not very appropriate for to-night,
Billy? Not much Woe about this evening, my dear, eh?” (to me). “Supposing
we have a bit of sentiment now. What was that other song, now? I was
talking about it only at tea-time here—something tally-ho-ish that we
could all join in the chorus of.”

But here I felt I simply must nip in the bud a request for the one about—

“_All my Fancy dwells upon Nancy._”

“Nancy” had had _enough_!

So I rose, saying gently, “If you will excuse me, I am rather tired”—

This was no fib!

—“and I think I will go to bed early. Good night, Mr. Waters,” politely
to that awful Uncle Albert. “Good-bye, Major Montresor; so nice to
have seen you again like this.... Good-night,” with a little nod to my
official _fiancé_.

“‘_Be the day weary, be the day long_....’” I thought. But we hadn’t
_even yet_ come to the end of it.

For Uncle Albert Waters had bounded up again from the deep chair like a
large india-rubber ball, with yet another protest to his nephew.

“What’s that? what’s that? Ah, but that’ll never do. Never!” reverberated
through the den. “You’re never going to let the girl go off like that,
Billy?—Just a word and a nod?”

Good heavens—what could he mean?

“Why! She’d never think anything of you again, lad! Never mind two
old has-beens like us. We don’t count, do we, Major? Don’t you
take any notice of us. You kiss your sweetheart good night, like a
sensible youngster!” And before I could escape, before either of us
had fully realized what this terrible, bellowing, stout, red-faced,
eyes-on-stalked, cigar-scented, coarse, _horrid_ old man would take it
into his head to say or do next, he had literally pushed us into each
other’s arms.

I don’t know whether it was for a minute or for half a second that I was
given over to feeling the true horror of this position; to wondering what
on earth my make-believe _fiancé_ meant me to do about it—what _he_ meant
to do.

Then he—the Governor—decided the matter for me.

With the suddenest of movements he ducked swiftly forward and bent,
without further look or word, to kiss me. I was too petrified to draw
back even the fraction of an inch from the touch of his lips; it brushed
by, scarcely stirring on my cheek, to fall almost roughly on the ripple
of dark hair above my ear.

Then he bolted to the door and held it open for my headlong exit from the
den.

To the sound of an explosive “_That’s_ more like it!” from Uncle Waters.
“You surely never——” (Slam! from the door) I tore across the hall. I
didn’t pause for any more good nights in the drawing-room. I rushed
upstairs to my bedroom.

Here I flung myself down into one of the rosy-chintz chairs by the open
window and gasped while I tried to collect my whirling wits.

       *       *       *       *       *

What _had_ happened? What was he—that young man—doing to _allow_
anything to happen? His “official” _fiancée_? Was this what he meant by
“official”—it wasn’t what _I_ meant, and I would let him know that. I was
furious with him—His uncle’s fault?—Yes! But he ought to have managed so
that _That_ wasn’t thrust upon me like this.

I _was_ angry!

Then I couldn’t help laughing a little at the mad incongruity of it.

Kissed, by Still Waters!

What could he think I thought of it? What was _he_ thinking about it all
now, downstairs there with those other two horrible men? What was his
Uncle Albert thinking? Chuckling and laughing, ho, ho! I expected....

That ghastly moment!

That ghastly, _ghastly_ moment!...

Thank goodness that the Governor did at least end it as soon as was
humanly possible. And, after all, that quick gesture of his hardly counts
as a kiss. I’ve seen the love-scenes in private theatricals carried out
just like that by bashful amateurs. A stage-kiss; a sham one; in fact, no
kiss at all.

Well, that, anyhow, was decent of Still Waters....

But _was_ it? Was he thinking of _my_ feelings? I don’t believe he was.

I believe—at least, a month ago I might have believed—with the rest
of the girls at the office, that that would be his only conception of
kissing a girl. I can’t believe that now—not of a brother of Theo’s and
Blanche’s—not of a son of Mrs. Waters’s! His father, Blanche said, was so
devoted to her ... their boy would have inherited some sort of idea of
the real thing! Besides, a young man who’s already surprised me by being
able to sing like that, and to be keen on dancing, and to win swimming
competitions, and to look, sometimes, quite _human_! Oh, no!

It was _meant_ for being decent.

He’d scarcely touched me—except just on the hair.

Then I felt furious again.

My hair—my pet vanity—the prettiest thing about me! Once Sydney
Vandeleur begged me for a piece of it to keep—that piece with the
ripple—as if I’d cut it! If I had, it wouldn’t have got kissed....

Hateful, clumsy, blundering, or _something_ young man! He _needn’t_
have kissed me at all! He _could_ have got out of it—in spite of his
detestable old uncle.

Couldn’t he have seemed to think that I was too shy to let him in public,
and allowed me to slip away? Or couldn’t he have followed me into the
hall and shut the door and _pretended_?

Or couldn’t he have hatched up some joke on the spur of the moment and
announced cheerfully—

“Oh, we don’t say our good nights in here, Uncle; outside in the veranda
is where we say good night”—or something like that?

Easily.

Then what did he mean by it?

Was it that this excruciating evening, with its countless trials, had
worn his patience absolutely through, and that he felt he must vent his
fury on something besides Cariad? Was that kiss a kind of “let-fly” at
_me_?

How frightfully unfair! As if I’d done anything but rush into breaches
and make the best of things for him! Good gracious! I shall tell him
exactly what I think of it all to-morrow!

       *       *       *       *       *

But the evening held one last trial for me before I was able to slip into
that springy snowdrift of a bed and lie tossing, indignantly awake, for
quite an hour after I’d heard the motor puff off, taking Major Montresor
to catch his last train up to town.

This trial was heralded by a tap at my door.

Enter Blanche in her _débutante’s_ dinner-gown.

“How early you’re going to bed, Nancy! We thought you were still with
Billy, but Uncle Albert’s taken him on at billiards—he says he’s playing
worse than anyone he’s ever seen. Is anything the matter, dear?”

“Oh, no—nothing; why?”

“You look so flushed—I thought you might have a headache.”

A headache—ah! valuable antique feminine excuse for everything!
“Yes—perhaps I have, a little.”

“Poor darling! Everybody _did_ seem to be talking at once at dinner, and
Uncle Albert _is_ such a fog-horn, enough to go through anybody’s head.
Let me brush your hair for you, will you?”

I had to let her.

“It’ll be better with all these pins and clips out,” said Blanche,
unfastening and shaking loose. “Goodness, what lots you’ve got! It’s like
yards and yards of black skein-silk. And _how_ lovely and soft.”

And here, in the looking-glass, I saw the girl’s face, blonde and
clear-featured as her brother’s, pressed for a moment to the ripple of
dark hair above my ear.

It must have looked something like that just now to those two other men
in the den....

Then I saw my own face turn scarlet.

Blanche Waters saw that too.

“Oh, sorry,” she murmured, with a little “understanding” smile. “Mustn’t
I?”

She might just as well have _said_, “Mustn’t anybody except Billy kiss
you just there?”

—Which did, as my brother Jack would say, put the lid on it!

Well! to-morrow I am going to put my foot down, very firmly, on anything
more of _this_ sort!




CHAPTER XIX

THE FIRST HANDSHAKE


This morning I was just finishing dressing when I heard a blackbird’s
whistle, two or three times repeated, just outside my window.

It interrupted my meditations on a rather interesting subject.

Namely: What was my employer going to say to me to-day about that episode
last night?

How—in what spirit, in what words, would he make his apology?

Of course I know that for the offence of having kissed a girl who is
nothing to him there _is_ no apology a man can make. The mere suggestion
of apologizing for that is adding insult to injury. The only possible
excuse is to say: “_I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I couldn’t help
myself_”—allowing an unspoken—“_and I’d do it again if I had the chance_”
to be interpreted by the tone in which it was spoken.

However, _that_ was quite out of the question here, seeing that there
had been no kiss of that sort in the affair. The offence, however, was
just as inexcusable; more so. To have kissed me on the hair—why, even as
I took up my brushes before the glass this morning I saw the reflection
of another angry wave of scarlet in my face brought there by the memory
which can’t be just brushed away.

It might not have been so infuriating if it hadn’t been the first time....

For I’d never before allowed any man to attempt such a thing. I’ve always
known that one ought to stick to what Lady Mary Wortley-Montague says in
that little poem:

    “He _comes too near_ who _comes to be denied_!”

I remembered that last night, as I lay awake; remembered quoting it to
Cicely Harradine. She had laughed and turned rather pink—this was after
some dance we’d both been to at the Slade—and had said, “Yes, Tots dear;
that is so sweet—and so awfully true, of course; only—it _was_ in the
eighteenth century, dear, wasn’t it? and isn’t it _rather_ what you call
‘a Counsel of Perfection?’”

It oughtn’t to be so—it needn’t have been so for me, but now—that’s all
been spoilt—and by _him_!

What can he say about it?

“Nothing else for it—my uncle’s doing.”—Yes, but I’ve got all my answers
for _that_ excuse.

“I was goaded into it by having had such an awful evening; felt I must
do something outrageous.” Yes, but not _that_! I had had an awful evening
too! And _I_ hadn’t wanted to kiss anybody!

“Hadn’t time to think of anything else.”

Nonsense! A business man with his wits sharpened by daily interviews with
other sharp-witted people for whose benefit he has to think out, even
while he’s speaking, excuses, schemes, promises, goodness knows what! Oh,
he’d have to say something more convincing than that to me!

Again I heard the whistle—a monotonous note for a blackbird’s! Then came
a sharp tap at my opened, latticed, wistaria-garlanded casement. A pebble
had been flung up against it.

This gave me quite a little jump; it brought back old days at home; when
Sydney, staying in the house, had wanted to bring me out for a stroll
before breakfast.

“Must be Theo,” I said aloud to myself. But something told me it wasn’t.
I looked out. Yes. There on the gravel beneath, in a blue serge suit that
seemed to make his sleek head shine quite golden in the morning sunshine,
stood my employer, looking up.

Waiting for me to come out? Throwing stones up to catch my attention? Who
taught him that?

“Good morning,” he said quietly. “Will you come down when you are ready?”

I nodded as ungraciously as I could, and drew back at once. I was quite
ready, but I stopped dead-still by the wardrobe glass for a long moment,
letting him wait. Then I turned to the door.

Then I came back again.

I took the shadiest hat I’ve got out of its drawer and pulled it
down firmly over my hair, stabbing it on with my swastika hatpin, my
hand-wrought silver one that Sydney designed for me, my two mounted
regimental buttons of father’s, and my little pearl-headed one. I daresay
my head did look all bristling with spikes, like the Statue of Liberty’s.
But if I’d had more pins I’d have stuck them _all_ in! And even if I do,
like Blanche and Theo, usually go about hatless in the gardens, I was
going to use all the “cover” I could to meet the Governor’s apology,
whatever it might be. For _now_ he was going to have his work cut out for
him! And whatever he began to say about last night’s brusque, snatched
kiss, I wasn’t going to help him out by one syllable. I could wait.
Let him explain; floundering about for words, probably, as he hasn’t
floundered yet! Feeling most satisfactorily composed myself, I came down
the stairs. One of the maids, in china-blue print, moved aside a dust-pan
for me to pass.

Then I saw something that ruffled me again.

In that dust-pan there was a handful of pink, crystallized rose-leaves
and a couple of tiny silver horseshoes—Theodora’s “confetti!” It must
have dropped out of the draping of my skirt as I rushed upstairs—was
there no getting away from last night?—and I know that there was
something more than well-trained civility in that girl’s smiling “Good
morning, Miss Nancy!”

Why can’t they say “Miss Trant”? Do they consider it isn’t worth while
for so short a time, as they think?—_Hateful_ household!

I had only just unruffled myself again as I faced the Governor in the
sunshine outside.

“Come in here, won’t you?” he said, holding open the little white gate
under the rambler arch of the rose-garden.

It was just then a bouquet of warm, scented colour, shading down from the
deepest damask of the bed of Jeune Amours, through the rosy, straggling
Baroness von Ulks and the faintly-flushed Cuisses des Nymphes to the
dead-white Frau Karl Druschkis—such a rose-garden, such an earthly
paradise for a before-breakfast stroll—_alone_!

Side by side we paced slowly down to the end of the box-bordered path
between the pink Maman Cochets (another echo of last night!) before
another word was said.

Then he began. “I wanted to have this opportunity of saying something to
you.”

His tone was conciliatory, quiet. The expression of his face was—well,
not in the least his mask of office-hours, nor the scowling barricade
he put up at last night’s dinner-table; but guarded and absolutely
non-committal.

So was mine, I hope.

I waited for him to go on.

“I may tell you,” he went on, “that I’ve been regretting—”

Last night, I supposed? A curious way of _putting_ it!

—“regretting for some time that it was you I asked to take on this—this
situation for me.”

“Oh!”

We turned and walked back again.

“I mean,” he added quietly, “that I regret having dragged a girl of your
kind, more sensitive and spirited than I had imagined—”

What _had_ he imagined, then?

—“into this affair.”

“Oh.”

“I—I suppose I ought to have known better than to ask—_you_.”

“Oh,” I said, for the third time, and I meant to stop there. But somehow
I couldn’t help going on rather acidly, “And which of your other
employees do you wish you had asked instead? Miss Robinson?”

(Who would have been provided with material for impersonations of the
family Waters for the rest of her life.)

—“Or Miss Holt?”

(_She_, I know, would have screamed aloud when he inflicted that
extraordinary kiss upon her!)

“Miss Smith, of course, has her affections otherwise engaged——”

“Ah? And so that would have been a barrier, would it? Even to this kind
of an affair?” retorted the Governor, very quickly and looking hard at me.

I knew what he meant. He was thinking of the Major’s clumsy bringing-up,
yesterday, of the name of Sydney Vandeleur.

So I lifted my eyes, which had been idly studying the grey pattern of
shadow flung by a trellised rose-arch upon my creamy skirt, and I looked
the Governor firmly in the face as I said quietly:

“I imagine so.”

Then _he_ said, “Oh.”

And then there was another pause.

Surely Mr. Waters could not break it by anything else, now, than by
coming to the point—saying whatever it was he meant to say about his
behaviour at the door of the den? But nothing of the kind.

“You quite understand, then, that I am sorry—for bringing you into all
this?” he began again. “Right. Now, I suppose I ought to offer to release
you from the arrangement.”

“Yes?” I looked up again quickly, hopefully.

“Only, you see, I can’t,” my employer concluded, slowly. “I can’t do
that. The—er—my—the reason which forced me into it is—still there.”

“Oh.”

Another turn. This time towards the pergola.

“Another thing,” he went on—and this time I really did think I knew what
was coming next. “About last night.”

I didn’t say, “Oh”—I simply waited for whatever apology he thought fit to
make.

“Last night, in the drawing-room before dinner. I’m afraid I was rather
rude.”

“_Before_ dinner?” I echoed, forgetting what could have happened then.

“Yes; when you were asking me about that place in Wales, Porth Cariad,”
he said. “I told you, rather off-handedly, I’m afraid, that there was ‘a
wooden woman’ there.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Well, there is. It’s the figure-head of a ship, some vessel that was
wrecked in the bay, years ago,” explained the Governor quite simply.
“They’ve put it up beyond the two cottages there, on the cliff. I ought
to have explained that at the time.”

Well! And wasn’t there anything else he had to explain? With all
these “Oh’s” and pauses, he was a long, long time in coming to that
unjustifiable kiss—and yet something convinced me that his mind was full
of it even while he mentioned these other things first.

“Besides that,” he went on deliberately, “there’s something I was
thinking over last night, for quite a time before I went to sleep.”

Ah! At last!

“I wanted to suggest——” he was saying, when, from behind the leafy screen
of the pergola there came a booming cry of:

“Aha! Here they are! here they are! Might have known what they were at!
Love among the roses, eh?”

And in another moment there hove into view the rotund, white-waistcoated
form and the rosy John Bull face, smiling under the light grey, dented
felt hat, of Uncle Albert Waters.

Beaming and rubbing his hands, he advanced upon us.

“Now, young people, young people! Breakfast’s ready! Didn’t hear the
gong, eh? No, of course not. Something better to listen to, as I said.
_I_ heard you, Billy! I heard you whistling under her window half an hour
ago! Something worth while being an early bird for now, what? But come
along.”

He slipped one arm into his nephew’s, the other into mine, and wheeled us
round towards the house.

“I told your mother I’d come out myself and fetch you in!”

Perfectly unconscious that if wishes could have killed he must have
fallen down shrivelled to a cinder on the garden path, he rolled on
happily between us towards the French windows of the dining-room,
prattling robustiously all the way.

“Nothing comes up to that nine-o’clock-in-the-morning smell of bacon
and coffee, does it? Smells far better than it tastes, they say! Which
reminds me that I once heard a young lady, Nancy, my dear—only she was
a cynical young person, not nearly so pretty—I heard her say that the
best part of frizzling bacon was like Love—all in the anticipation! Never
tasted as good as it promised to, so to speak! Of course you don’t agree
with her?”

“No, oh, _no_!” I cried hastily, partly because I felt I must disagree
with somebody, partly because I realized that the inevitable effect of
this detestable old man upon his nephew was to strike him dumb when he
ought to have spoken!

“Ah, quite right, quite right!” responded Uncle Albert, with an
affectionate pressure of my arm in his. “_That’s_ the attitude! I don’t
believe in this modern plan of analysing everything down to nothing, do
you?”

“_Hate_ it,” I said viciously—meaning that I hated having my arm squeezed
by horrible relations-in-law never-to-be.

“I see you do! Good! My dear, I’m delighted to find that Billy’s
sweetheart sees eye to eye with Billy’s uncle on so many points. That’s
why I’m taking you out this morning—Oh, yes! you too, my boy! Not going
to separate the turtle-doves!—going to take you both out if you can beg
mother off from church. I’m going to motor you over—not a hundred miles
away, and show you something—Aha! Something that I fancy you will approve
of as much as I do!”

“Heavens! What will this new horror turn out to be?” thought I; catching
the same question in the Governor’s eye as we entered the dining-room,
where the family, including Cariad, was already at breakfast, and sat
down to the coffee and bacon of old Mr. Waters’ disgusting metaphor. We
weren’t long spared the answer to that question.

“Now, Mary! I’ve just been telling our two young people here,” began
Uncle Albert almost at once, “that they’re going over in the car with me
this fine morning to look at something I particularly want them to see.
Now, I’ll give you three guesses what it is—No, I won’t—”

(Interrupting Theo, who had leapt up in her chair with a shriek of
“Wedding presents! That picture!”)

“—I want the pleasure of telling you myself. Picture? No, child.
Something to put the picture in—to _be_ the picture in, ho, ho! It’s a
house to let!”

“A _house_!” murmured Blanche, clasping her hands, and obviously seeing
herself helping to arrange the flowers in it.

“A charming house, only fifteen miles from here. Just the place for Billy
and his Nancy to settle down in when they get married,” enlarged the
elderly _enfant terrible_. “In fact, once they’ve seen it, they’ll want
to motor on and order that special licence at once, I shouldn’t wonder!”

Mercy! I turned my eyes to Mrs. Waters, as if imploring her help to
change the conversation; she only nodded and smiled and murmured: “Pretty
blouse—I always like you in lacy white things, Nancy!”

There was no checking Uncle Albert; on he went:

“I was looking at the place only last week, and it’s still going! There’s
a rose-garden, my dear, almost as prettily arranged as the one here
that you were billing and cooing in just now. And a splendid vegetable
garden for the more practical side of life. South aspect!—Very excellent
fish-curry, Mary—Nice, airy bedrooms! _And_”—his voice took on an
impressive rallentando—“Now, what do you think? A little—a little white
wicket-gate at the top of the stairs! That’s the crowning touch, eh?”

Yes. It was.

“That was what took _my_ fancy, you know! I immediately said to myself——”

At all costs, I felt, must Uncle Albert be kept from repeating what he
had said to himself.

“Yes—But, Mr. Waters,” I interrupted wildly, “I’m so afraid that that
house wouldn’t—couldn’t do for _us_!”

“What, my dear! Why not? If you only see it, you’ll say as I did——”

“I’m sure it’s perfectly lovely,” I burst in; “but the fact of the matter
is that we—we have arranged to live in London”—“and in separate houses
for ever,” I might have added. I went on improvising rapidly. “You see,
we shall have a town house for most of the year, and for the summer we’re
looking round for a sort of—of farmhouse, with two cottages by the sea,
you know! In—in Anglesey, I think. I am so fond of—of that part of the
country, so—Those were our plans, aren’t they?” I concluded, with one
reckless “Say so, _do_!” glance at the Governor.

“Yes—rather! That’s what _we’d_ thought of!” he returned, with a glance
back at me which betrayed something very like pure gratitude.

As well it might!

For again, just before I spoke, my employer had been at such an utter
loss that—for the first time since I’d seen him, I felt positively
_sorry_ for him.

And I answered his glance with the tiniest nod of encouragement.

They were the first friendly signals that had ever passed between us.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Look here. I must speak to you.”

This was my employer, hurriedly to me after breakfast, in the veranda.
Now, as that deep, shady veranda is built all the way round the house,
as every one of the windows gives on to it, and as all the windows are
always wide open, I couldn’t help giving a look round it as much as to
say, “Here?”

“Not here,” he muttered, still more hurriedly. “This seems to be the
deuce of a house to talk in—never saw such a place. And there’s no time
now. My uncle was going to take us along in the car——”

“_Must_ we go?” I asked, softly and ruefully, with my back to one of the
pillars.

“No. I’ve knocked that on the head—I’m going to take him off by myself to
play golf. I said you’d really rather go to church with my mother and the
girls.”

“Oh, thanks so much,” I said fervently. “I certainly would!”

“So I thought. Well, then, we shall be lunching at the Club House—or,
anyhow, getting lunch somewhere out—not coming back here.”

I nearly said, “Thanks, so much!” once more.

I also nearly smiled to think that anyone else, catching sight of the two
of us talking so quickly, so quietly, and so close together under the
soft mauve fringe of wistaria-blossom that drooped from the glazed roof,
might easily have imagined that our conspiracy was how to spend most of
this glorious Sunday _together_, instead of _apart_!

“We might not even be back for tea,” said the Governor.

“And when is——” I paused and turned my eyes towards the house, “_going_?”

“Six o’clock train back to town this evening,” said the Governor, looking
steadily at me.

A “Thank goodness!” remained unuttered on the tip of my tongue, as I
felt obliged to say, “I hope he didn’t think it odd of me not to want to
see”—I brought it out with a jerk—“that house.”

“Oh, no! He seemed rather bucked, really, to hear that—well, that we
were so far on in our plans. Anglesey, you know, and so on,” said the
Governor, in an expressionless voice as I turned quickly away.

For I’d caught the heralding whiff of a cigar round the corner! Also, I
wanted to be safely in my own room, getting ready for church, just at the
time that those two men would be setting out for the links.

My employer took one step after me.

“This evening, then?—I mean, for what I was going to say to you.”

Ah. That interrupted apology weighed on his mind.

“Very well,” I said. “Good-bye.”

And I drew a breath of relief to think of the whole blessed Day of Rest
before me.

       *       *       *       *       *

Even Church, however, wasn’t without its slight reminder of the situation.

I was feeling rested, soothed, lulled—and, I am afraid, not strictly
attentive—when my attention was caught, first by Theo’s moist palm being
thrust into mine, much as Cariad thrusts his nose, and then by a phrase
in the voice of the officiating curate:

“_I publish the banns of marriage between_——”

Banns, of course! Of course they must needs publish banns on this
particular Sunday and in this particular church! thought I, rather
pettishly. Well, I supposed it wasn’t really the Governor’s fault! and
that there _are_ banns read every week! The next words I heard were:

“_Also of Leonard Harris, bachelor_—”

Ah! I knew his name; it was the young man from the Waters’ butcher, who,
as I had already been told, was to marry the prettiest of the maids at
The Lawn, the one who was sweeping the stairs this morning.

—“_and Ethel Mary Bell, spinster, both of this parish._”

Both absurdly happy, probably, in a “Smithie” kind of way. I wondered if
“he” were red and greasy, like so many butchers? Whether he’d leave “her”
at home while he went and sat all the evening in the “Spotted Dog”?

My young man—I suppose to some people the Governor _would_ be my “young
man”—isn’t that sort. Not that it need make the slightest difference to
_me_ if he were! I needn’t worry about the sort of husband he’ll make—to
someone else.

“_Also between_——”

What a lot of engaged couples! Six, at least, were “called” to-day.
And I wondered about each of those six engaged girls.... Which of them
had bloomed out into what books call “_this strange new happiness that
had come to her_” on HIS account, and which of them just wanted to be
“engaged” for its own sake?

For supposing an engagement were stripped of all its glamour of
importance? Yes, my dears! Take away the delight of discussing, with
other girls, the possibilities of finest nainsook and torchon. Take away
the chance of growing positively left-handed from showing off “his”
ring. Take away the joy of being, instead of an unattended wallflower at
dances and parties, always more or less of a guarded treasure. Take away
that feeling of being at one and the same time much younger, much older
and much better-looking. Take away the comforting conviction that _now_
you needn’t fret about what’s to become of you when you grow _passée_
and “long in the tooth,” as Major Montresor unkindly calls various
ex-favourites of his own. Take all those “extras” away—and what remains
of your pride and joy in HIM alone? There’s a sum for the “really”
engaged girl. I can’t help feeling I can guess how it would work out
in—say, four cases out of six!

Perhaps I’m wrong.... Perhaps the whole six of them would still go on
feeling that _their_ unparalleled engagement had caused the sun to rise
upon a new heaven and a brand-new earth. But it’s odds, long odds,
against any one of the six having an “affair” in the least like—_mine_.

And the curate went on reading out names.

“_Also_——”

“_Between William Waters, bachelor, of this parish_,” breathed his
younger sister in a gusty whisper, “_and Nancy Monica Trant, spinster_—of
the parish of what, Nancy?”

“S-sh! Theo!” I whispered, still wondering about those banns.... Would
it come to that? Would my employer feel himself obliged, before our
twelve-months’ contract was up, to let those banns be actually published?

“_If any of you know any just cause or impediment why these persons
should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony_,” concluded the curate’s
voice, “_ye are to declare it_.”

What in the world _was_ Mr. Waters going to “declare” about it to his
family when we reached that point? What just cause or impediment (except
the real ones) would he choose to “announce” as the bar to our getting
married? Or would he, just as he did this morning at breakfast, leave
all explanations to _me_, and reward me with a grateful look when I’d
achieved them?

Well!...

Plenty of time before _that_ happens....

       *       *       *       *       *

To-night, though, there’d be that other explanation: his to me about
that—really, under the circumstances it might be called that _outrage_!
Even yet I hadn’t made up my mind how I was to accept what he should say.
The only thing left standing of all the many answers I’d considered and
rejected was, “Well, it must never happen again, that’s all!”

Even that doesn’t sound right, somehow.

Perhaps something really clinching will occur to me later.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was almost at the end of this Day of Rest that the Governor, extra
sunburnt and out-of-door-looking from the links, returned to find the
women-folk of his household—to which I suppose I must count myself as
belonging officially—sitting over that diminuendo of half-cups that marks
the end of tea.

“Has your uncle gone, dear?”

“Yes; met some old crony of his and joined him for the journey home. If
you tell me where his bag is I’ll get it sent down to the station to meet
the six, Mother?”

“I’ll see to it now.”

She went out of the drawing-room—I _know_ with the usual gentle intention
of leaving the young people a minute to themselves after having been
apart all day; but before Theodora and Blanche could follow her, the
Governor, saying that he simply must change and get this dust off,
disappeared himself.

He disappeared until supper-time.

For late Sunday supper they don’t dress at The Lawn. So I was still
wearing my cream cloth costume with the white French blouse that Mrs.
Waters likes when the hour came which is given over to my official
_fiancé_ and myself. I’m quite hardened to this now.

I supposed he would suggest the den. (I hate that den.) But he didn’t.

“Shall we go for a walk?” he said instead, “round the lawn?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I fetch you a wrap to put over that frock?”

“Oh, no. It’s perfectly warm, thanks.”

“Oh.... Very well.”

And so, at the dusk of the day, just as in the morning sunshine of it, I
found myself pacing a garden path by his side, and wishing to goodness
he’d get this over, out of the way.

He ought to be made to _grovel_, of course; that was as it should be.

But the longer he delayed mentioning that grotesque incident, the more it
_loomed_!

It seemed to hang over my head like the shade of the trees that bordered
the further edge of the lawn, which we had now reached. The great spread
of turf was gleaming greyly in the dew. A bat, attracted by the whiteness
of my gown, flickered out of the shade and wheeled above us.

“Well,” began the Governor, “my uncle left all sorts of messages for you.”

He would, of course. Carefully refraining from asking what they were, I
said mildly, “Thank you.”

“He’s back in London by now.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose if he’d stayed on much longer,” observed my employer, in a
detached tone, “_you wouldn’t_!”

I said defensively, “I really _had_ been thinking I might find myself
obliged to go back to town at once!”

“After arranging to stay here for at least a fortnight,” he concluded
quietly; “after having given notice at the office—”

“The office” was good! Just as if “the office” meant anything but
himself, Mr. William Waters!

—“and having no people of your own to consider—what should you have said
to mine?”

“I should have had to tell them that it was to—to attend a funeral!”
I retorted, with a memory of Mrs. Skinner. “Or”—here I checked the
suggestion of getting my hair singed and cut. I thought I’d better not
begin by mentioning my hair! And I added recklessly—“or that I’d got to
go to the dentist’s and have every one of my teeth out!”

“Rather than stay here in these circumstances. I see. Yes. I——Do you
know, I have felt uncommonly like that myself,” admitted my employer.
“That’s what I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. I thought it over
last night, as I told you, and I’ve been thinking about it again to-day.”

I wondered what sort of a game of golf he’d played.

“It can’t go on like this!” he said, suddenly stopping in our stroll and
facing me in the deepening dusk under the copper-beech. “I can’t stand
it. It’s got a—a bit too thick!” he concluded, quite schoolboyishly.

Then he began again, incoherently, indignantly, as if each word he said
were a shell that held showers of bullets of other words.

“Theo’s tomfoolery! Those dashed flowers! My uncle and his—his remarks!”

“I know!” I said fervently. He turned on me again, and added
unexpectedly, “And _you_!”

“M-me?”

“Yes!” explosively. “You’re the worst of all—and you do know it! Because
I’ve let you in like, this—”

“They’ll hear you from the house—you really are like Theo sometimes.”

—“Because I’ve let you in,” sinking his voice and speaking once more
calmly and deliberately, “for lots of unpleasantnesses which nobody could
have—well, which _I_ never anticipated—you do all in your power to pay me
back!”

“All that—at dinner last night,” I said virtuously, “was nothing to do
with me. You can’t say it was.”

“No, I admit it was Theo.... But it was all part and parcel of the same
impossible situation. Impossible! It can’t go on like this.”

“So you said before! But this morning you said you were unable to release
me?”

“So I am. Which means that there’s only one other thing to be done about
it,” said my employer.

I waited, wondering what on earth this might be.

Utterly unexpected was his next remark:

“Don’t you think you could manage to be—_friends_ with me?”

“_Friends?_” I repeated incredulously.

Then something of his meaning began to dawn upon me, and it was with a
return of Manner B that I added: “I suppose you mean ‘official’ friends?”

“No, I don’t,” he said rather tartly. (That manner never has been lost
on him.) “I mean, why can’t we be really friends and call ‘_Pax_’—for at
least the time that you’re here? Don’t you see how much better it would
make it if we could face these awkwardnesses together, instead of my
knowing every time that you are only waiting for the chance to rub it in
and to get at me?”

This was all so foreign to his Near Oriental vocabulary that I nearly
laughed. But not quite. For it was being borne in upon me still more
clearly that I didn’t care for this suggestion of his at all. He was
actually asking for my help and co-operation, not in a sham rôle, but a
_real_ one? Well, I thought, what _cheek_!

“If you mean,” I said, “that you want me to promise not to ‘rag’—not
to—to banter you again about all this; not to go on saying things that
mean one thing for you and another to whoever else hears them, and all
that——”

I was going to say that this I might promise; although I felt he was
asking for a good deal—for his official _fiancée’s_ one safety-valve, in
fact!

“No, no! That’s not what I mean,” he put in. “When I say ‘friends,’ I
mean it. Genuine friends. On the terms we might be on if we weren’t en—if
we hadn’t this ‘engagement’ between us.”

“How _can_ we be that?” said I emphatically.

“Why can’t we?” he persisted.

“Why? Because I—I don’t see how I could be expected to answer such a
question!”

He didn’t _say_, “You agreed to the other!” But I knew some men might. So
I went on trying to explain to this specially obtuse one.

“Don’t you see how much easier it is to pretend to be engaged or even—in
love with a person, than to turn round and _like_ them because you’re
asked to?”

“Is it?”

“But of _course_ it is!” said I. “One _can_ act being—engaged and all
that. One can’t force oneself into friendship, real liking.” (Stupid, he
was; it was just like his not seeing the difference between accepting
furs—and a frock!) “One simply can’t make oneself _like_. That is asking
too much. And I never bargained for it. It wasn’t——”

—“In the arrangement,” I nearly said.

I might just as well have said it! For:

“Damn—dash that infernal arrangement!” muttered my employer heatedly,
crunching, in the absence of Cariad, the well-kept gravel beneath his
heel. “Can’t you forget that, leave that alone for the time being? It
would be so much easier——”

“Yes! For you perhaps!” I retorted. “But not easy for me; and it’s
impossible for me to feel like being ‘friends’ to order!”

He said nothing for a minute. Then he began again quietly. “You mean you
dislike me?”

“I don’t even know you well enough for really liking or disliking,” I
argued coldly. “And besides, what have we—you and I—in common, that we
should expect to get on well together?”

I knew what a hopeless question _that_ is to answer about almost any two
persons!

He said rather helplessly, “Well, but hang it all! What have you in
common with——”

Here I _felt_, suspended between us in the dusk like a Mahomet’s coffin,
the name of Sydney Vandeleur!

But the Governor changed his mind about uttering it.

He _said_:

“For instance, what can you have in common with a man like Montresor?
You’re twenty-one. He’s what?—Fifty? Sixty? Yet you can talk—you can——You
seem to get on all right with him.”

“Naturally!” I said.

The Governor said nothing.

He put up a hand and leaned against a bough of the copper-beech under
which we were standing.

Well! It seemed going to be a long discussion.

I sat down on the garden bench a step or so away, and turned my head to
look at the glimmering white trumpets of a tobacco-plant that grew behind
the bench. The only form in which tobacco smells anything but poisonous!
And there were such beds of it at home ... in the evening it scented all
the grounds....

“Major Montresor, as he told you, knew me in my home, knew all my
people,” I went on slowly. “He knew all the places I went to before I had
to drop out of everything that I cared for and had to slave for my own
living in that detestable City of yours.”

“You speak as if _I_ owned the City—as if I were responsible for your
having had to work there—for the whole thing! Is that fair? Must you go
on making me stand for all that? Supposing it hadn’t been there at all
that you first met me, Nancy?”

For the first time the name slipped out from my official _fiancé_ quite
naturally.

“Don’t you think,” he went on, “that we might have managed to get on
moderately well then?”

“How can I tell?” said I. I _wanted_ to keep him on that strictly
business footing. This other I didn’t want. I knew it would take
something from me, and give me nothing—nothing to stand up for myself
with—in its place.

“Try to imagine,” he persisted, “that I’d known you in your home, like
that chap—what’s-his-name—”

The name—Vandeleur—flickered between us once more like that bat in the
air!

—“like Montresor. Imagine that you’d never been at the Near
Oriental—never heard of the place. I’m sure I often wish _I_ hadn’t,” the
Governor’s voice came ruefully out of the dusk. “Then, instead of this
eternal sparring—”

“My only refuge,” I thought, “and he’s trying to turn me out of it!”

—“there might surely have been something distinctly resembling friendship
between us?” he said.

I said obstinately, “Might there? I don’t know.”

He moved. There wasn’t enough light to see his face. Only his collar made
a white blur against the branch, and the broad slope of his shoulders
showed dark against the sky that had deepened from lilac to purple.

“But I know,” he said quietly, “that you could—that you _could_ be——”

He paused.

“Well?” I said, rather uncomfortably. “I could be what?”

“Rather a little brick to me if you chose,” said the Governor.

I am sure it slipped out without his meaning it to. _He_ would have been
ready to go on arguing quite logically about “how much more sensible” et
cetera.... How there was “absolutely no valid reason why it shouldn’t”
and so forth ... for another hour!

_He_ can’t know how the key of a logical argument will fumble forever at
the locked safe-door of a woman’s mind that could just fly open to the
cipher spelt “Appreciation.”

—“Rather a little brick.”

So he did think me capable of that?

I was glad of the dark under the copper-beech. For I didn’t want my
employer to see that his words had any sort of effect on me. Four words
ought not, certainly, to be enough to threaten to bring one’s flag down
with a run ... or even to flush one’s cheeks with that sudden warmth—of
surprise. I didn’t mean to hesitate——

But there was a moment’s silence before I could think what to say. I was
glad he was standing right away from me....

Just at that, he came and sat down beside me on the garden-seat.

“Well?” he said expectantly.

“M-m—very well,” I heard myself say with a little sigh.

“You mean that you will?”—quickly. “That it’s peace between us?”

“Yes—” reluctantly, from me.

“And that, instead of remaining”—I heard him laugh a little—“a mere
_fiancée_, you’ll be friends now—real chums?”

“If you like,” I sighed again. “That _is_ promotion, isn’t it?” I said,
not meaning to be altogether too polite to him.

“Nancy, I know I’m rotten in lots of ways,” he admitted frankly. “I
daresay you think I’ve got a beast of a temper, don’t you?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “you did kick Cariad, didn’t you?”

“Little brute needs it! He’s disgustingly spoilt. Everyone is who belongs
to my mother.” ...

“And you did make Theo cry!”

“Did her good!”

“It didn’t in the least! She was just as bad again to-day!”

“Was she, by Jove? Then I shall have to——”

“No, no, she wasn’t. I mean, _you_ are!”

“Ah, but I’m—_we’re_ going to turn over a new leaf!” he said, laughing.
“That’s settled, isn’t it? Good! This is going to be no end better, all
round.”

All very well for _him_ to say so! I thought, as I got up and turned
towards the dim, blue-white front of the house with the dark girdle of
the veranda circling it, and the windows, now lighted up, set into it
like a chain of long, rosy jewels.

He rose too.

“Well!” he said, straightening himself a head and shoulders above me. “Do
we shake hands on that, Nancy?”

“I suppose so,” said I.

What else was there to say or do?

_I_ don’t consider it’s going to be “better all round.” For me it will
be ever so much more awkward—as well as something—yes!—something like a
_climb-down_.

Still——

As he held out his hand I put my own into a particularly warm and hearty
grip.

It was the very first time we’d shaken hands at all.

Last night a kiss on the hair!

To-night, a handshake!...

And, in spite of all I’d expected, he’d never once mentioned that kiss.

I suppose he won’t now.




CHAPTER XX

FRIENDS


Often, when I’ve imagined something was going to be so easy and
delightful, it’s turned out to involve every kind of difficulty and
unpleasantness. Like earning my own living in the City. And then other
things, which I’ve foreseen as such odious and constant worries, have
proved to be not nearly so bad after all; in fact, quite amusing—that’s
like agreeing to be “friends—real chums” with my employer Mr. Waters.

He’s really quite—I don’t know how to put it—_different_.

I know he’s trying to be “decent” to me, and yet not trying hard enough
to make me feel it’s my duty to “play up” and to be unnaturally sweet in
return.

Instead, I am beginning to feel that I shall soon be able to like him
genuinely, just as I like Blanche and Theo, though perhaps not quite as
well as I like his mother, who seems more of a darling every day.

This morning after I came back from driving to the station with the
Governor, she called me, and I went into the little tiny room off the
drawing-room, which is furnished only with one deep chair and her
writing-table, but of which each wall is simply covered with framed
photographs of her children at every stage.

She was sitting at the writing-table, with a pile of letters to answer.

“Sit in the big chair, Nancy. I won’t keep you more than a minute,” she
said, turning to me, “but I wanted to speak to you. It’s about our summer
plans, dear.”

“Oh, yes,” I began. The fortnight which I’d arranged to spend at The
Lawn—and which seems about three months now!—is up to-morrow. I was just
going to remind her of this, when she said, “We all—not only Billy!—are
so anxious that you shall stay on, Nancy. You will, won’t you, if you
haven’t made other arrangements?”

“Oh! I’ve made none,” I said, hesitating both in my official and
unofficial capacities. I didn’t _mind_ staying on, now. Still—ought I to
do it?

“We have only a week or so,” said Mrs. Waters, “before we go away to the
sea. That is, the girls and I are off on Saturday week to Anglesey.”

“To Porth Cariad?” I said. “Isn’t that the place—he told me about?”

“Yes; Billy’s so fond of it! It’s just a tiny place with a station and a
post-office and a handful of cottages. We take the two cottages nearest
the sea, and let just the woman and her daughter ‘do’ for us. He likes
that so much better than going to a ‘resort’ with hotels and esplanades
and things.”

“Of course!”

Mrs. Waters gave me a pleased, girlish smile.

“Then, if you do too, you’ll come, won’t you? He didn’t seem sure
whether”—she laughed a little—“whether it mightn’t bore you rather; but
he made me promise to ask you. Will you come?”

“I should like it very much,” I said sincerely, for, since this revised
version of my relations with Mr. Waters, there’s an end of any more
complications for the present. It has been worth while sinking the
small satisfactions of being “cattish” and making two-edged remarks to
my employer. I seem, now, to have all the advantages of being engaged
to a quite friendly and easy-to-get-on-with young man, without the
horrible disadvantage of feeling it’s a permanency. Yes; I do like
having the freedom of a man’s conversation and society without _arrière
pensée_. And it seems to me that the only way to enjoy them is by being
officially—that is, _nominally_, engaged to the man! In any other sort of
acquaintanceship there looms the possibility of the “Real” engagement.
All the time that the girl and the man are having what might be a jolly
and unembarrassed conversation about really interesting things—not Love
and nonsense—that possibility is being conjugated between them by some
horrid form of Conscience or Self-consciousness. Something like this:

“_I might fall in love._”

“_Thou mightest fall in love._”

“_She might think I was falling in love._”

“_He might imagine I wanted him to fall in love._”

“_We might both fall in love._”

“_You might tease us about being in love._”

“_They might say we were actually engaged!_”

All this we—Mr. Waters and I—are spared. The feeling of it, which is
there like a brick wall between almost every unattached young man and
young woman, I know; I’ve felt it there between Sydney and myself, long,
long before I knew he admired me.

And this same wall—well, it’s not so much that it’s never been built, or
even that it’s been pulled down, as that it’s not _between_ Mr. Waters
and me, just because we’re sitting on the top of it and talking all the
more comfortably for having climbed it together!

Consequently, I really was pleased to accept Mrs. Waters’ invitation. And
when she said further, “Billy won’t be able to join us for a fortnight,
I’m afraid. Will you go back, dear, to this friend of yours you live
with in London, and come on later? Or—of course you know we should love
it!—could you come with Blanche and Theo and me?” I said, “Do let me come
with you and the girls.”

“That’s right,” said the Governor’s mother. “Then I shall write to Mrs.
Roberts at the cottages, and tell her to have the extra bedroom in _my_
cottage ready for you.”

“And I will write to Cicely Harradine—that’s the girl I live with,” said
I. “And I ought to go up one day this week to the flat, and see her and
collect a few things.”

“Go up on Saturday, dear,” suggested the Governor’s mother. “Then Billy
could motor you up; he would like that so much.”

She has so many plans of this kind for me, fostered by this delusion that
her son is always on the look-out for a chance to be alone with me.

Of course it’s not quite the same kind of delusion now that it was a week
ago.

The Governor’s “Good!” when he heard that I was going to spend the summer
holidays with them at that curiously-named place in Anglesey was quite as
sincere in its way, I do believe, as Theo’s “_Joy!_ Oh, it will be twice
as lovely as usual with Nancy there to show everything to!” He wasn’t
the least bored, either, when Mrs. Waters put forward the plan of his
motoring me up to town.

“Rather! A good idea,” he said briskly. “What about starting earlier
after lunch, and doing a matinée this afternoon? You’ve never been to the
theatre with me yet, Nancy, and—we talked about that one day.”

“So we did,” said I demurely, remembering that grisly occasion at the
Carlton.

“Well, would you care about it?”

“I should! Why! I haven’t been to the theatre for ages. I haven’t seen
anything; not even _Milestones_!”

“Care for that?”

“Anything, so long as it’s a play!”

“Then I’ll ’phone up now for seats.”

And as he spoke through the telephone that is fixed up in the den, I had
almost a start at what seemed to me the strangeness of my employer’s
voice. Yet that curt, metallic “_Hullo!_” used to be familiar enough to
me—the only tone of his voice, indeed, that I’d ever heard!

       *       *       *       *       *

Passing the long waiting queue at the gallery entrance to the Royalty
this afternoon, I glanced idly towards all those people who had stood for
over an hour, probably, to get a shilling seat; the playgoers to whom I
myself belonged a couple of months ago. Yet I never felt I’d belonged to
them.... I suppose no woman, from a factory-hand to a viscountess, feels
that she really “belongs” to any but the life of luxury. I don’t believe
men feel that as strongly—and yet it’s they who are supposed to be the
more finished and civilized sex. I must ask Mr. Waters, now that I know
him well enough, what he thinks about this?

I was just wondering, when, out of that mosaic of black and coloured
pattern formed by the crowd, there turned with one movement three dabs
of colour, three cheap, effective little hats; and three girlish faces,
alight with amusement and recognition, were lifted towards us.

They nodded and smiled; and I, leaning forward out of the car, was just
in time to wave my hand to them.

“Friends of yours?” said my employer, glancing back as he raised his hat!

“Why, yes! Didn’t you know them?”

“No! Why should I?”

“Because you see them every day,” I laughed. “They were Miss Robinson,
Miss Holt and Miss Smith from your office.”

“No? By Jove,” said Mr. Waters, rather blankly. Which surprised me
rather, as I remembered his care that “the other typists should know for
a fact” with whom I was going out, that first time of all.

I was conscious, though I couldn’t see where they sat in the gallery,
that their three pairs of eyes must be glued to us in our front-row
stalls. Nothing could have been more conventional than our appearance—we
were absolutely the model of a prosperous young engaged couple up from
the suburbs; I, prettily dressed, with the inevitable box of chocolates
on my lap; he, good tempered and easy of manner, paying me all the
customary attentions of programme, helping me off with my coat, seeing
that I had opera-glasses, the best seat, and so on, and yet—apart from
the “official engagement” side of it, how _really_ unconventional was our
relation!

So much more satisfactory under the circumstances than a real engagement!
Or that pie-bald thing, an understanding! Or that other form of platonic
friendship which either the girl or the man is always hoping, or fearing,
may turn into something else!

The curtain went up to the soft strains of a tune which I, who have had
to play accompaniments to so many songs, didn’t know.... But beside us
and behind us there were old ladies who murmured, “Ah! ‘_She wore a
Wreath of Roses._’”

The play began, and I forgot everything else for a time.

In the first interval we amused ourselves by looking at the audience.
They were nearly _all_ elderly ladies! As the Governor remarked, “Nancy!
Yours and mine are the only heads for three rows of seats that aren’t
grey-haired or covered with bonnets!”

“They’ve come to catch echoes of their past,” I murmured flippantly as
those tunes from the _Mikado_ sent the curtain up on Act II.

That finished my flippancy for me.

In what seemed like hours afterwards I heard Mr. Waters’ voice, cool
and detached, saying something about good acting and soothing syrup and
the most sentimental public in the world, then breaking off suddenly,
anxiously to exclaim, “What is it, Nancy? Aren’t you well?”

“Of c-course I am! I’m only enjoying myself!” I sobbed quietly; tears
dripping down on to the pleated frill of my afternoon blouse. “I think
it’s p-perfectly lovely!” And I dabbed my face with the powder-puff
swathed in my handkerchief.

“Rum idea of enjoyment,” said the Governor doubtfully.

“Not a bit rum,” I argued, having steadied myself again. “You don’t know
much about girls—they’re mostly like that—ask any of them—ask any of the
other typists in your office!”

“I suppose I’ve never looked upon those as ‘girls,’” said he.
“They’re—machines! machines that eat cherries all day long and chuck the
stones all over the floor. Such inefficient ones, too; they——Why d’you
laugh, Nancy! I say, you know quite well I don’t mean——”

“Ssh!” came indignantly from under the bonnet—trimmed with squashed
heliotropes and doddering jet beads—on the other side of him, as the band
struck up the rollicking two-step that heralds the twentieth-century act.

I didn’t cry any more, though.

I believe I was actually less taken up with what was on the stage than
with the oddness of my having been behind two sets of scenes myself; with
those girls who “couldn’t possibly look upon Still Waters as ‘a man,’
exactly” and then with this man who never really considered typists as
“girls.” When had he left off considering me as just a typist? How soon
before that evening when we became friends?

Once more I felt grateful to that evening’s compact, as I followed the
tall figure with that slight dip from the broad shoulders in to the
waist—that line so painfully cultivated by Major Montresor!—and let it
make a path for me out of the theatre and to the waiting car.

I believe I’ve always really hated going about London alone, or with just
another girl!

       *       *       *       *       *

“Now, then! Rumpelmayer’s, or the Piccadilly, or where, for tea, Nancy,
before I take you on to your friend’s?”

“I meant to have tea with her,” I explained. “I was going on in the bus,
and getting down to Sevenoaks afterwards by the dinner-train; saying
good-bye to you here.”

“Oh, were you! Why not take me along too?” he suggested, looking down at
me.

Well! Why shouldn’t he realize in what sort of places these machines
called working-girls live? He’d heard about the lawns and gardens, and so
forth, of my old home. Let him see the change I’d had before—well, before
that first interview in his office. Then there was Cicely. Yes, when I
left her she was still rather “difficult” about my engagement—rather
given to unspoken hopes that I wasn’t doing it for the money. Let her
see that my (official) _fiancé_ was quite a human sort of young man—the
sort that some girls really might get engaged to without a thought of his
income!

“My chum is a very pretty girl,” said I; “_she’s_ worth looking at——”

“Fair?”

“No, glorious red hair.”

“Well, take me along and let me look at it!” he urged boyishly; and
presently we were speeding along down the Embankment towards Marconi
Mansions.

I had my latch-key in my vanity-bag. I opened the door at the top of the
many stone steps and led the way into the passage, which seemed about as
light and wide as a good-sized drainpipe after that airy, tiled vestibule
at The Lawn. Meaning to take Cicely by surprise, I quietly walked into
our small front sitting-room.

But it was Cicely who took me by surprise.

She had, already, a visitor for tea.

Thick cigarette-smoke made a blue haze above the jumble of odd bits of
furniture which we’d picked up second-hand in the Old King’s Road, above
the tea-table with its Persian Rose pottery, its plate of Chelsea buns
and its green dish of cherries—I hoped there weren’t many stones on the
floor!—a haze that half obscured Cicely’s bright head and the figure that
reclined, opposite to her, in our comfiest basket-chair. I saw by the
unusual garments of it that it must be—yes! Sydney Vandeleur!

Really, I don’t know which of the four of us was least pleased to see the
others, while I introduced Mr. Waters to Cicely and said gaily to the
men, “I think you’ve met before” ... and forced myself to dissipate the
odious pause that followed the insincerely civil greetings by plunging
into some sort of conversation.

It was worst for me, I think. I was so utterly taken aback—first, by
finding Sydney there at all, and then by wondering what on earth the
Governor would think of his being there—_and in those clothes_!

For Sydney’s latest idea for not being slavishly got-up like every
other miserably conventional tailor’s dummy was, apparently, to have
his “things” more or less a copy, but an _édition de luxe_, of a French
fisher-boy’s _vareuse_-blouse and skirt-like trousers; those brown
corduroys were of corduroy-velvet at goodness knows what a yard, cut
by some master-hand in Savile Row; the very bagginess at the ankles,
above the leaf-brown silk socks, had been carefully studied. And the
Governor!—who’d once said:

“_After all, what’s unusual in dress is wrong, nine times out of ten.
Eight times, it’s also hideous._”

He must be positively flabbergasted at this spectacle! I’m more
accustomed to those ideas; but even I found it a relief to turn
my eyes upon his stereotyped grey suit after that fell and deadly
“_effectiveness_” of Sydney’s....

Posing in his dress like that! Posing, even more shamelessly, in his
manner!

For wouldn’t you have thought that anyone who’d been refused by a girl
and who then came unexpectedly face to face with that girl and the person
for whom he imagines she’s jilted him—_wouldn’t_ you suppose that he
would at least behave like a man? Take it without flinching, even if it
were fairly unpleasant, and carry it off as if nothing particular had
happened? _I_ shall never think the same of Sydney again for not doing
that.

Perhaps it served me right for the rather spiteful note I wrote to him
just before I went off to The Lawn, but—Need he have committed the
solecism of calling me, when I’ve never been anything but “Monica” to
him, “_Miss Trant_” in italics? It was trying! So was the pathetic
look which he saw fit to call up into his spanielly brown eyes as he
glanced from me to Mr. Waters. (Mask well down there, so I couldn’t
guess what _he_ made of this velvet-and-Vandyke apparition.) And the
worm-in-the-bud expression which Sydney let steal over the whole of his
dreamy, Cavalier’s face as he turned it, in a way that all but said “Ah!
You understand what I suffer!” to Cicely——

Cicely, too! _Cicely_, who’s shared ups and downs with me for the last
two years! Even she must needs forsake me, making matters worse by
creating a general atmosphere of blight even while she was bringing in
two more leadless-glaze cups and plates, and making fresh tea, and by
giving an accurate though unspoken impression of what she “understood.”

“Yes! I am the looker-on at this game. I see it all! The sensitive,
artistic soul—”

(This is what she thinks of Sydney.)

—“torn by the sight of this hopelessly stodgy, commonplace young man—”

(I know that this is how she sums up my friend Mr. Waters.)

—“being preferred to himself! Ah, Love is blind!”

(Meaning me.)

“And people never seem to recognize the right man until it’s too late.”

(Deluded little donkey!)

We had tea. What a meal!

“You do take sugar in it, don’t you, Tots?” plaintively from Cicely, with
a side-effect of, “She’s so deplorably altered in everything else, I
don’t know what any of her tastes may be now!”

“Does Mr. Waters take it?” (To _me_!)

“Not any, thanks,” from the Governor. “Only milk.”

Cicely’s glance commented silently, “Ah! Incompatibility latent here! An
unhappy marriage!”

Why, why hadn’t I said I’d like to go to Rumpelmayer’s, or Lyons’—or
Lockhart’s? Anything rather than this funereal feast, with Sydney
Vandeleur as the skeleton thereat! Even if he’d remained a voiceless
skeleton! But, cheered by all the subtle encouragement and moral support
from his pretty hostess—I must say Cicely was looking prettier than
ever!—Sydney began to recover a little, relaxed his first pose of open
broken-heartedness, and proceeded to _talk_.

Nobody else did. Mr. Waters looked as if nothing was going to force his
lips asunder again. I didn’t want to say anything. Cicely was quite happy
to listen. And Sydney held forth.

He began with—“Have you been to—” and “Haven’t you seen—” various
picture-galleries and pieces of an “advanced” type.

“What! Not seen ‘_The Keening of Deidre_,’ even? But why not?” he
protested to me, lolling back in that chair as if he didn’t possess a
spine. “Oh, it’s such a wonderful thing; so subtle and so brutal at the
same time. And one’s sure of seeing everyone one wants to see, in the
pit; a positive At Home of them. Better than the dear old palmy days
of the Sicilians. I have been three times. The whole effect is so—so
sculptured! You would love it! Oh, you must take her”—this to my official
_fiancé_, who sat silent and non-committal and very bolt-upright. “You
really must not miss it. It is coming off next week.”

“I’m going away next week,” said I.

“Oh, yes? To the country?”

“To Wales.”

“Ah, Wales! It used to be so wild and charming and remote—almost as good
as those perfectly untrodden tracts we still get in the West of Ireland.
But it’s frightfully overdone now,” complained Sydney. “One doesn’t know
if it’s the fault of Lloyd George, or the picture postcards, or that
appalling little railway up Snowdon, but Wales has become so _obvious_.
When I’m going over to Ballycool, do you know, I have to read all the
way in the train between Chester and Holyhead, in terror lest I should
inadvertently catch sight of any of the ‘scenery.’ I assure you”—to
Cicely—“that when you get that Snowdon Range, cut out in purple cardboard
jig-saws against what the dear tourists call ‘a glorious sunset’ it’s
almost exactly like a landscape in the Academy!”

“How _perfectly_ dreadful!” sympathized Cicely—little humbug! who, only
last year, used to mark her favourite pictures in the Academy Catalogue.
I do hate a girl’s tastes to be mere echoes of the man she’s with!

“And those ruined castles; they’re really almost too priceless to
be true,” enlarged Sydney. “Turrets like this”—he zig-zagged with a
finger in the air, while a gold curb bracelet chinked at his slim
wrist—“reflected, wherever possible, in water. Terrible! I mean, you
simply _have_ to laugh! You feel the landscape transforming itself into
wings and a drop-scene before your eyes! And the ‘Elephant Mountain’
that they insist on pointing out to you, because it really _is_ so like
an elephant’s back! (Such an attraction!). And then those _meaty_ pink
clouds that they always contrive to get so symmetrically posed _just_
behind the summit of Snowdon! Snowdon itself is so hopelessly banal
that it only just falls short of perfection. Excruciating! Cader Idris,
now, is a little better,” he went on kindly. “It is still possible to
introduce Cader to one’s friends. Cader, with that quaint lake they have
there, remains quite an attractive mountain, I think”—turning to Mr.
Waters, who still looked as if _he_ couldn’t think of anything to say to
this person who patted the Welsh mountains, so to speak, on the head.

“We aren’t going to be among the mountains,” he announced briefly. “My
people generally settle for six weeks or so in Anglesey.”

“Not really? How amusing—I mean, it’s really possible to ‘settle’
there?” said Sydney Vandeleur, lifting his dark Vandyke beard from his
tie—heavens, what a tie! I’d only just noticed that. “One had always
looked upon Anglesey as a sort of straight line leading to the North
Wall.”

“H’m,” said the Governor, who, having checked a “Can-such-things-be?”
start, was obviously trying to keep his eyes off that tie of Sydney’s: a
bunch of amber silk, patterned with blatant little splashes of scarlet,
black, magenta, emerald-green.... Futurist, I presume. How could I ever,
ever have dreamt that life, even in Ballycool Castle, could have been
tolerable with a man who wore ties like that? I should have left him
in a week. No! I’m sure I should never have been there to leave him. I
couldn’t....

Sydney lighted another cigarette, and the conversation languished.
_Nobody_ spoke.

In the middle of this sickening sag to the talk I had an inspiration!

I thought, since both these young men sing and one of them composes, that
it would be at this juncture a bright thought to introduce the subject of
music.

Why did I do it?

It was distinctly what Jack calls “a wash-out.” For Sydney Vandeleur at
once switched off on to Eleventh Century folk-songs. And Mr. Waters,
asked if he didn’t think they were too delicious, was “afraid the
Eleventh Century was out of his groove.”

And then Sydney hummed several only slightly more modern Celtic
dirges—one about “The Sweet Flowers, all gone to Decay!”

And Mr. Waters said he preferred his flowers _fresh_; adding bluntly that
he loathed all those miserable minor wails himself, and quite agreed with
that law which Queen Elizabeth passed for the Irish bards of her time,
sentencing them to death if they composed songs on any subject whatsoever
except in praise of the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty.

That brought back some of Sydney’s first pose. With a pained little smile
he turned to me, then, putting on just the expression of the bereaved
collie in Landseer’s “Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,” he asked me if I
_happened_ to have kept the MS. of that little thing he’d written for me
to that sonnet—“_Kissing her Hair, I sat against her Feet_.”

I felt myself flushing up to the roots of my own wretched hair that he’d
always so praised ... there was something about kissing of hair which
_he_ knew nothing of, and that I was only too thankful to let die a
natural death.... Rather shortly, I answered, “Oh, that song—yes; it’s
tucked away in some drawer or other here, I believe.”

“If it wouldn’t be troubling you too much, Miss Trant, to lend it to
me again? It was my only copy,” suggested Sydney softly (_con molto
espressione_).

“Of course,” said I. “I’ll find it for you now. Cicely, you might come
into my room and help me to hunt.”

Cicely followed me, leaving those two men to entertain each other. How
they proceeded to do so I suppose I shall never know!

“Well, Cis, how are you getting on?” I asked her, when the door was
closed between us and them. “Foot’s all right, I see, and you said you’d
gone back to work?”

“Yes, but not at Chérisette’s, you know; I’m working opposite in Bond
Street; Madame Lamaire’s. Mr. Vandeleur got me an introduction from his
married sister, who knows her; and I’m getting a better salary, and such
a much better time, there. He has been so awfully kind, Tots!”

“Has he? Have you—been seeing a good deal of him, then?”

“He’s been here several times, but”—reproachfully—“only to talk about
you!”

“Good of him,” I said.

Cicely looked more reproach. “Well, he says you’ve taken all the colour
out of his life and left ‘_gold tarnished and the grey above the green_.’”

“Drat him! And his colours!” I quoted Mrs. Skinner vulgarly and
vindictively. “He’d plenty of them left in his tie, anyhow.”

“I am afraid,” said Cecily aloofly and with a pointed comparison in her
face, “that you’ve scarcely _realized_ Mr. Vandeleur.”

“Haven’t I? Well, the sort of man who, when he’s turned down by one
girl, must needs rush and pour it all out into the shell-like ear of the
next——” But I broke off here.

What I suddenly did realize was that, for next to no reason, I was on the
brink of squabbling ridiculously with my chum.

So I hastily changed the subject to rent-money and the length of time
I should probably be away, caught up Sydney’s ever-to-be-hated song,
reassured Cicely that I was not going to be married until after the
summer—_long_ after! and told her I was glad she was getting on so well.

“Get Mr. Vandeleur, if he wants cheering up, to take you to ‘_The Keening
of Deidre_,’” said I. “Good-bye!”

       *       *       *       *       *

It threatened to be a silent motor-drive back to Sevenoaks.

Again I felt that I should have to be the one to take the plunge into
conversation.

“Well?” I said. “Didn’t you think Miss Harradine a very pretty girl?”

“Beautiful hair,” said Mr. Waters, “hasn’t she?”

“Oh, lovely.”

Silence.

I saw that Mr. Waters hadn’t realized what I suspected: namely, that
Sydney was beginning to find my chum quite sufficiently “lovely” as a
girl, not merely as a confidante for his sorrows about “another,” who
was, as he imagined, “another’s.” But I was longing to hear some comment
on Sydney.

I should have been left longing, I suppose, if I hadn’t said straight
out, “What _did_ you think of Mr. Vandeleur?”

“Oh, come! What a question! How can one tell, after seeing a man for
half an hour? He seemed—clever, and all that,” fenced my companion. “Of
course he’s not the sort of man _I_ get thrown much with in that sordid,
detestable City of mine, as you call it. What does he do?”

“He doesn’t have to ‘do’ anything.”

“Rather lucky for him,” remarked Mr. Waters, in a tone I didn’t fathom.

I said, “But he does draw and design—and he writes dramatic
criticisms—and he composes.”

“Gifted sort of chap,” said Mr. Waters smoothly. “I suppose——”

And then stopped.

“You suppose what?” I urged. “No, do tell me,” as he looked obstinately
ahead and shut his lips into that line. “You _must_, Billy!” Then I found
myself laughing and colouring a little with surprise. For the first time
I’d used that absurd name in speaking directly to him.

He turned to me, smiling once more in quite a friendly way. But it was
not to answer my question. It was to ask another.

“Nancy, you know I shall expect you to write to me? When you’re at Porth
Cariad with my mother and the girls, I mean.... It’ll look funny if you
don’t.”

“Oh, of course. For the look of the thing,” said I, “I’ll write.”

“Sorry to trouble you. You can put a blank sheet into the envelope, you
know, if you like.”

“I hadn’t thought of that!” I laughed, glad to be once again on
comfortable terms of chatty friendship. “But—so I can.”

“Well, as long as you don’t forget to send _something_,” said Billy
Waters.

       *       *       *       *       *

He reminded me of this once again, on Euston platform. For we—his mother,
his sisters, his official _fiancée_ and the little dog—left London at
eleven o’clock on the following Saturday morning.

That evening we were all among the sand-slopes and the gorse and the soft
calling of the waves at Porth Cariad.




CHAPTER XXI

THE FIRST LETTERS


“Hullo, Robert Roberts! Any letters for us?” sang out Theo.

She had darted out of the cottage, hatless, as usual, her nose already
peeling with sunburn and her long bare legs covered with midge-bites and
sea-holly scratches down to her white sand-shoes, to waylay our postman;
he’s the son of Mrs. Roberts, our landlady, a young Welsh giant who wears
that uniform coat for just that five minutes daily which it takes him to
deliver the mails at Porth Cariad.

“Yes, mam!” he announced. “Picture poss-card for you—I wonder shall I
have it, mam, when you read it? Blodwen and me is making a co-leckshon of
those. Letter for your mother; letter an’ _big_ parsal for the strange
young lady.”

I—who have not been seen in the place before this year—am the strange
young lady.

“Here you are,” said Theo, bringing the mail into the
kitchen-sitting-room where we’d just finished breakfast; a room that
boasts three grandfather clocks and five pairs of china dogs and a
dresser crowded with blue-and-white plates. “The letter and the ‘parsal’
for Nancy are both from the Adored One!”

Meaning her brother.

“And I suppose you’ll now have to fly off somewhere to read your
love-letter all by yourself.”

“Of course I must,” I laughed.

For it’s rather amusing in the face of all this to think that, except for
one sentimental scrap from Sydney, I’ve never had a love-letter to read
in all my life!

       *       *       *       *       *

This duty-document of my official _fiancé’s_ I’ve taken out on to the
sand-hills; there’s a dip under the crest of one of them where I can curl
up in comfort out of the wind, facing the view across the bay, with that
pale lilac silhouette of the Carnarvonshire hills across the water.

How funny it seems to unfold a letter bearing the familiar heading of the
Near Oriental Shipping Company’s offices! But this one, actually, is not
type-written, and signed by a “William Waters, per pro.,” and a scrawled
“A. A.” of Mr. Alexander’s.

William Waters has written in his own hand; not a particularly good one,
either. Several sheets of it? Was it such an unusually slack day at the
office, then?

                                                     “July —, 1913.

    “MY DEAR NANCY,

    “I was glad to hear _from my mother_”

(I don’t see why he should underline the three last words; _I_ shouldn’t
be likely to write first.)

    “that you’d arrived safely and were comfortably settled into
    the cottages. I wonder what you think of Porth Cariad. I do
    hope you won’t be bored to extinction in such a quiet spot;
    but you were warned, weren’t you, not to expect esplanades and
    pier-concerts and shops and things? Do you think you can manage
    to make yourself at all happy without them?

    “How do you like the bathing in that little bay next to the
    cottages? Can you swim? If not, you will have to learn. I will
    teach you.

    “I am pretty keen on getting down myself, I can tell you. Town,
    in this heat, is the abomination of desolation; and smelly. So
    is the office. You’ve never been here in July. It’s awful. I’ll
    let you know later when I shall be coming; time of train, etc.

    “You were missed at The Lawn last night. I took a man who lives
    near to share my solitary meal there, and to have a game of
    billiards afterwards. He wanted me to try over ‘Ford of Kabul
    River’ for him; I can’t accompany myself, though, and he made
    an awful hash of it. I wished we’d dined in town and gone to a
    show.

    “When I go out to lunch I shall call at Fuller’s and order them
    to send you on—for the look of the thing—a box of chocolates.
    I hope they have one with a picture of forget-me-nots or
    something of the sort on the lid,”

(Yes; they had. White satin, with the sprays of flowers embroidered in
pale blue silk.)

    “as Theo notices everything. Don’t let her bag all the sweets,
    though.”

(Here the writing gets more scrawly and hurried.)

    “Have just got in from lunch, which I had with my uncle. He was
    full of talk; you can imagine it!”

(I can.)

    “I also saw two other men whom I’d got to meet, and as a result
    of this, I think I’ve managed to get through the business that
    was keeping me. So I shall be down at the end of the week after
    all; cheers for some fresh air and a dip! Please be very glad
    to see me, will you? as Theo—but I put that before.

    “Just before I went out to lunch a very rum thing happened:
    at least, I thought it was rum until I found out what it
    was. I was opening the door of my room when I heard, in the
    passage, _your voice_, Nancy! Yes, your voice, with that
    little dare-devil tone you put on sometimes, saying these
    extraordinary words: ‘_I think it’s to the Savoy that I’m going
    out with Mr. Waters to-day_!’

    “I couldn’t think what on earth was the meaning of it, with you
    miles away in Anglesey.”

(But already I smiled, seeing what was coming!)

    “I wondered what could have brought you back, or if I’d got an
    hallucination—can you hear hallucinations?—and I bolted out
    into the passage, nearly knocking over two of the typists who
    were coming down it.

    “Miss Smith (that’s the one whose affections are otherwise
    engaged, isn’t it?) fled like a hare; but that tall, dark Miss
    Robinson stood her ground, only moving aside a little for me
    to pass. I stopped and asked her straight out, ‘Was it you who
    were speaking a moment ago?’

    “She said ‘Yes’—all meekness at once. ‘Mimicking hussy’ I
    thought—for it really had been exactly the way I’ve heard you
    speak, you know, sometimes. It was all I could do to keep from
    laughing outright, but I just said ‘Well, I am writing to Miss
    Trant to-day; can I give her any message from you?’

    “And she said (in that ‘mim’ voice, which I’m blest if I shall
    ever feel able to believe in again!) ‘Will you please give her
    my love, Mr. Waters?’

    “So with love from Miss Robinson, I remain,

                               “Your

                                                         “BILLY.”

(What’s this? “Your” Billy? It can’t be. Oh, no. It’s his disgraceful
handwriting. It’s the “r” being scrawled into the “s” like that. “Yours,
Billy,” is how it really reads. How stupid of me not to see that at once!
Then there’s a bit across the top.)

    “Six-forty train Porth Cariad on Saturday. You might write and
    tell me how you do like the place; and you might answer at
    once, even if it’s only for the girls to take it to the post.”

So, for the benefit of Blanche and Theo, I will write at once; I’ll do
it out here, in pencil on my pad, as I’ve so often taken down his own
letters. (One of these days I shall tell him how I loathed it, and how
utterly impossible his dictation was!)

                                       “Porth Cariad. July —, 1913.

    “DEAR SIR,

    “Your favour of yesterday’s date to hand, for which we thank
    you.”

(There! I wonder how he’ll like that. Will he think that it goes on all
through?)

    “The lovely sweets really were appreciated; but I didn’t let
    Theo bag them all, nor take the pale-blue satin tie-up to make
    a bow for Cariad, which was what she wanted to do. So then she
    said of course Nancy would want to keep that ribbon to tie
    round all your letters. She does notice everything, doesn’t she?

    “As for how I like this place, I simply love it, and the
    cottages—I’m in the bigger one with your mother, and Theo and
    Blanche are together in the other until you come—and I love the
    sand-hills with the sea-holly and little prickly brambly roses
    and tiny purple pansies growing all over them,”

(I might slip a pansy from this place that he’s fond of into the
envelope? No, I mightn’t. There’s no Theo to “notice” at his end.)

    “and the cloud shadows on those hills opposite, and Mrs.
    Roberts, with her sackcloth cooking-apron and her clogs and the
    boy’s cap she wears; and Blodwen, even if all the English they
    know does always seem to be all about you! And I should hate a
    pier-concert if there was one. There’s everything here to make
    me quite happy. Since this very hot weather’s come, the bathing
    is delicious. I learned to swim when I was a little girl, thank
    you.”

(So he needn’t think he can teach me anything.)

    “How was Mr. Albert Waters? Still chuckling and laughing ‘ho,
    ho!’ I expect.

    “_I_ laughed at your being taken in like that by Miss Robinson.
    Yesterday morning I was almost taken in, by something that was
    like you: a sharp tap against my bedroom window that might have
    been a stone thrown up. But it was only a fat, speckly thrush
    cracking a snail; there are always lots of them crawling out of
    that southernwood bush by the door.

    “Mrs. Roberts asks me to tell you,”

(What she _said_, in her speciously honeyed Welsh voice and with her
irresistible if toothless smile, was, “Tell your _Cariad_——” But I
needn’t put that.)

    “that the ’ooden ’ooman—it took me some time to remember that
    this was the figure-head on the cliff!—was want paint very bad,
    and she wonder would you do it when you come. Welsh people, I
    notice, are fond of ‘wondering’ like this, instead of asking
    straight out for what they want; yet they generally seem to get
    it.”

(Dear me, this is rather different from the blank sheet I might have
enclosed.... Anyhow, it mustn’t get any longer than his, so I’d better
stop now.)

    “I will give this to Theo to post, and”

(Goodness, it is difficult to think of how to sign oneself to young men.
To Sydney I was always “Yours sincerely.” A stupid ending, means nothing
at all.)

    “With kind regards.”

(No.)

    “Assuring you always of my best attention,”

(No. A bit of that at the beginning was enough.)

    “Will give this to Theo to post, and I am,”

(Well! What I _am_, after all!)

                     “Your official _fiancée_,

                                                    “MONICA TRANT.”

Ah! _Now_ there’s something I’d forgotten!

    “P. S. I will remember what you’ve ordered—”

(No, that sounds rather nasty; rather too like Manner B. Cross it out.)

    —“what you—wish”? No! “What you suggest about my being pleased
    to see you on Saturday.

                                                               “N.”

As a matter of fact—I shan’t write it, as it might possibly give a wrong
impression!—but I really _shall_ be quite pleased to see Billy Waters
again. And now to find his young sister, and send her off to the post
with what she, in her innocence, imagines to be a return _love_-letter!




CHAPTER XXII

THE WOODEN WOMAN


If a girl were the least bit inclined to fall in love with Billy
Waters—and I see now that some girls might be; though not, of course,
any girl of my type, capable of this kind of frank friendship that puts
anything else out of the question!—well, if she were, she’d find it much
easier to complete the process here at Porth Cariad than anywhere else
that I can imagine him.

Some men—generally the nicest—are so much more _themselves_ in the depths
of the country. He is.

I noticed that the very first evening he arrived here, when I went down
to meet him—to keep up appearances before his family—at this tiny station
on the branch line. Before the train stopped I saw his head and shoulders
blocking up the open window of his compartment in his hurry to arrive.
Catching sight of me on the platform, he took the pipe from between his
strong white teeth and flourished it over his head in greeting—his face
one broad smile because his holiday had begun; then the train slowed
down; he was out of the carriage door and taking a running stride towards
me.

“Hullo, Nancy!” he said, and grasped my hands. “You came? I wondered if
you would. It’s very—appropriate of you. How are you? You look very fit.
A sun-bonnet, eh?”—It was a haymaker’s cotton one, that I’d bought for
a shilling and a ha’penny at the post office, and rather becoming—“I’ve
never seen you in a pink sun-bonnet before.”

“You wouldn’t be likely to in Leadenhall Street,” I retorted. “How’s the
dear office?”

“I don’t know or care. I’m here to forget it,” he said gaily as we left
the station for the road between the sand-hills. “I think I shall take to
wearing a sun-bonnet myself!”

       *       *       *       *       *

But what he wears here is just a soft white shirt with a turn-down collar
and a pair of loose grey flannel bags belted at the waist; no hat at
all—his hair has got to look as if it must be permanently rumpled; no
one from the office would recognize him! Even his eyes seem a different
colour; so much warmer and bluer for the deepening of his tan. He drops
a year a day from his age, too. When one sees him striding about these
sandy lanes, or terrifying his mother by those efforts to walk on his
hands in six foot of water in the bay, or when he’s pretending to jabber
back Welsh to Mrs. Roberts and Blodwen, who openly adore him—yes, I can
imagine quite a number of people finding him positively attractive here
in the country.

In the country, too, as I’ve always heard, it’s so much easier to fall in
love than it is in town. Town, with its rush and racket and roar, seems
to insist that the things that really matter are getting on and making
money—or even the bare living for which half these grimy crowds are
struggling and toiling! But the country!—_that_ has a way of suggesting
itself as a series of lovely backgrounds for a grouping of Two, and of
coaxing home the idea that all that matters is Love. To a falling-in-love
kind of person the country here would seem as bad as Hamlet for being
“_so full of quotations_” from every poet who ever wrote about trysts,
and gathering rosebuds, and loves in valleys, and foolish, pretty
nonsense of that sort. _They’d_ be reminded of it by every dance of a
pair of blue butterflies over the dunes; every spread of the rosy arms
of sea-anemones in the pool towards the incoming wave; and as for these
other waves of scented gold that are poured over all the waste ground
hereabouts——

“It’s a blessing there’s such a lot of it out just now!” as Theo remarked
this morning at breakfast. “I suppose engaged people _would_ want to be
where there was plenty of gorse!”

Whereat her brother and I exchanged glances, across the table, of amused
intelligence. For it’s all very well for this child to think she can
“chip” us with that old tag about kissing and the gorse in bloom. We’ve
only got to remember how little she suspects that the only kiss between
us is that “duty good night” one of Uncle Albert’s visit, and the laugh
is all on our side!

       *       *       *       *       *

“You needn’t laugh, Billy,” Theo added. “You know you’re really
frightfully cross because you won’t be able to get Nancy all to yourself
this afternoon, with these people coming!”

It was the first I’d heard of any visitors, for I’d come down rather
late that morning. I hadn’t slept as well as I usually do. Outside the
window of my little sloping-ceilinged cottage bedroom the water, at
high tide, had seemed to make rather more noise than its usual soft
lap-lapping against the rocks. And then the moon, rising like a big round
primrose-coloured Chinese lantern in the star-sprinkled purple sky over
the Rivals on the other side of the Menai Straits, had poured a flood of
white radiance straight upon my bed, and I hadn’t bothered to get up and
pull down the yellow linen blind to shut it out. I had wanted to feel the
sea-scented night-breeze across my face. So I had lain there, tossing a
little between the snowy rough country sheets, watching the square of
light creeping inch by inch up the wall, and thinking idly of all sorts
of irrelevant things....

Of Cicely in Marconi Mansions....

Of “Smithie” at the office, and her boy. They didn’t prove much truth in
the theory that people fall more deeply in love in the country. I saw
again that crossing at the Bank, with the big motor-buses skidding across
the muddy road like beginners on skates; and there, in the middle of the
fog and the petrol-reek and the jostling luncheon-hour crowds, those two
anæmic, City-fied young faces shone as radiantly as if the lovers walked
the loneliest Eden that ever was....

Of a school-friend of my own, now very happily married, who had said to
me, long ago: “An engagement, Monica, is such a _skimpy_ time! It’s made
up of nothing but good-byes and good nights to the person you most want
to be always with!”

And of the difference between that sort of engagement and the
“arrangement” between myself and Billy Waters, which has converted itself
into such an entirely satisfactory and amusing friendship....

The result was that I’d dropped off to sleep again after Blodwen’s bang
on my bedroom door, and that I’d been the last down at breakfast.

“Who’s this that’s coming, Billy?” I asked. “Your Uncle Albert again?”

“No, thank—I mean, no, not him,” said Billy. “Some French people you
haven’t met yet. They’re touring North Wales in their car. He’s a man
I’ve had a good deal to do with in business.”

“And _she_——” began Theo, stopping uncharacteristically short as her
brother went on, tapping a letter he held.

“I’ve just heard from him that they’re in Holyhead now, and coming over
here to look us up this afternoon. So that puts a stopper on our plan of
painting that figure-head for Mrs. Roberts after lunch. We’ll have to
see if we can get it done this morning instead. Good thing I got that
paint last night at the wheelwright’s. Are you on, Nancy? Then, if you’re
ready, we’ll start now, shall we?”

“Blanche and I don’t think we’ll come, thank you,” said Theodora
punctiliously.

“What, not until you’re asked?” laughed her brother, rummaging for the
paint-pots under the southernwood bush at the cottage door. He gave me
one pot and the brushes to carry, taking the other two himself. “Well,
good-bye, all!”

“Come back, then, Cariad!” called Blanche, but the little white dog
frisked unheedingly in circles ahead of us, across the shingle at the
edge of the cove, over a couple of sand-hills, then up the steps cut in
the turf of the cliff where the Roberts have set up a flagstaff and the
wooden woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

She’d been the figure-head of the _Gwladys Pritchard_, Mrs. Roberts had
told us, which had been wrecked in the bay below, many years ago; the
name and the face alike having been copied from the real girl who was
“cariad” to the owner of the vessel.

“She must have been pretty,” I thought, the first time I climbed the
cliff.

For many coats of paint, roughly applied, could not spoil or disguise the
setting of the carved girl’s eyes, nor the tender oval of the up-tilted
chin, nor the lines of the neck flowing down into the sloping shoulders
and the figure held up in an unmodern curve above the corset of the
Sixties, which must have set the fashion of Miss Pritchard’s dress. She
wore a little jacket with basques and epaulettes and shoulder-seams set
far down the sleeves; and a tiny pork-pie hat, trimmed with a wing, was
perched upon her hair, which had been last painted yellow as the gorse
that grew in hummocks all around her. The jacket had been white, with
trimmings of emerald green; the same green, too, plastered the hat and
the wooden nosegay which she held up against her breast. Yet, for all
this crude green-and-white, for all the untaught modelling of it, there
was a vitality about this graven image which I’d never seen in any
statue. Was it because it had once been part of that live thing, a ship?

I could picture that image of a slender girl, leaning breast forward
again from the prow of her lover’s vessel as she heaved and dipped like a
gull on the waves; scanning horizons, joyously riding the gale, and free
to sea and sky!

Rooted in turf, the immobility of cliff and rock was now her prison,
while the gulls still screamed and wheeled above her....

And the real Gwladys?

“Did she go down with the ship?” I’d asked Mrs. Roberts.

“No, indeed, mam. There wasn’t one drowned on the _Gwladys Pritchard_,”
Mrs. Roberts had assured us. “That Miss Pritchard she was marry to my
cousin, Captain Lloyd, since—dear me, I don’t know when. They keepin’ a
public-house in Bluemaris now. Ô! she _is_ gone stout, too!”

“It would have been _prettier_ if she’d been drowned,” Blanche had said
softly.

“Mam?” Mrs. Roberts had said.

But Mrs. Waters had finished the story by telling us gently, “Anyhow, the
Lloyds have three of the _sweetest_ little grandchildren; I’ve seen them!”

Evidently _she_ had thought that for either woman or ship to be safe in
harbour like that was better than any more picturesque finale.... Well!
I don’t know....

       *       *       *       *       *

We reached the flagstaff, and set down our pots of paint among the
buffets of gorse that had sprays of purple ling and blue scabious growing
through and making a bouquet of each.

Billy’s shirt-sleeves are always rolled up to the elbow; the sleeves of
my white cotton frock are three-quarter length; so we were both equipped
for work, though I’d refused the offer of Mrs. Roberts’ sackcloth apron.
It was _too_ coal-y and butter-y and paraffiny and scented with hen! But
here the heady warm fragrance of the gorse almost drowned the smell of
our paints.

“Scarlet, and black, and white? Scarlet for her hat and jacket, eh?”
suggested Billy. “And how are we going to paint her hands and face? What
colour’s flesh?”

“Some people say it’s just the colour of honeysuckle,” I answered
absently. I can’t be perfectly certain that he _did_ retort so sharply,
below his breath, “_Does_ he, indeed!” or that the name of Sydney
Vandeleur had been threatening to crop up once more between us. Still,
I was glad of the wide pink shelter of my sun-bonnet as I added, in a
matter-of-fact way, “You _could_ get a sort of flesh-tint by mixing a
little of the red with the white paint, but I don’t think I should.
Suppose we leave the face and hands creamy-white as they are?”

“Very well; and her lips red, and the jacket and that toque affair, with
more dabs of scarlet for the flowers in her bunch,” he said, kneeling
on the sun-warmed turf on the other side of the figure from me, “with a
black wing in her hat.”

“And her hair left as it is, too,” said I.

“No, no! I got this on purpose for her hair,” he said, and drew a full
brushful of tar-black paint across the carven and crinkly locks in front,
“she must be a brunette, this time.”

“Oh, and Mrs. Roberts will be so annoyed to see her without her beautiful
golden chignon,” I protested, working away with the scarlet paint at the
back of the jacket, “she’ll think she’s quite spoilt.”

“Nonsense; looks much better like this,” he declared. “A black-haired
woman looks so much more _alive_ than the others. Like red wine, dark
grapes, crimson roses ... fairer colours are insipid, washed-out-looking!”

“No woman thinks so,” said I. “You never hear of a blonde tinting herself
dark. It’s always the other way about!”

“I know _one_ girl who wouldn’t change,” he argued, glancing over the
shoulder of the wooden woman at the border of dark hair between my bonnet
and my face. “You needn’t pretend you would, miss! Now what are you
smiling at?”

“Only something,” I said, “that I’d just remembered.”

“Yes? (You’re an unexpected sex, aren’t you?) Well, what was this?”

“Only—look out, Billy, you’ll let that black drop run down the side of
her face—only something a girl I know said about fair men being like weak
tea!”

“Meaning to say, I suppose, that she didn’t think much of _your_ taste in
_fiancés_?” suggested Billy Waters, with a mischievous laugh. I laughed
too. And for the several score of times since we have been here together,
I thought to myself what a delightful and unusual and thoroughly
satisfactory arrangement this friendship of ours had turned out to be.

I never dreamed that at that very moment _the life of that friendship had
about five more minutes to run_.

“There!” said Billy, picking himself up and taking a few steps back from
the figure, to survey it, with his fair head on one side. “You can’t say
it isn’t an improvement. What would your friend say to that coloured
hair?”

“Strong tea,” I suggested flippantly. “Tea that’s stood too long!”

“You aren’t looking at it. Come over here and see!”

I straightened myself and went and stood beside him.

“As a matter of fact, Nancy, the lady’s got rather a look of _you_!”

And actually something in the contrast of the glistening black locks
against the creamy-pale face with the now scarlet-tinted lips might have
been vaguely characteristic of what, night and morning, I see in my own
mirror.

“Well, but I hope _I_ don’t look as if I ‘made up’ my mouth!”

“Why, you _don’t_ make it up, do you?”

“Of _course_ not,” said I. And then I turned from looking at the painted
figure to the other deeper, tenderer colour of the sea washing a strip of
sand below the cliff.

“Oh, it _is_ lovely here,” I sighed, revelling in the beauty of that and
the sky. “Did you ever _see_ anything so blue as it is to-day?”

“Or so golden?” added Billy, nodding towards the hassocks of gorse in
full bloom. “I’ve never seen it like this before. D’you know that there’s
a Welsh proverb that calls this county ‘the land of thriftless gold’?
Rather pretty, isn’t it? It must have been wonderful here in the spring;
this is the second crop, you know. A man I know once told me that it was
like falling in love.”

“How d’you mean?” I asked, as he stopped. “Aren’t you going to paint the
wing in her hat while you’ve that brush full of black paint?”

“Presently.—Oh, yes, about that gorse. He said the first blooming was
more showy—more fuss made over it—first love, you know, and all that; but
that it was nothing like as sweet as the later time. Should you agree
with him, d’you think?”

“How _should_ I know?” I retorted rather flippantly, to hide my intense
surprise that Billy should possess—let alone quote!—a friend who sounded
so utterly unlike himself. “You might know me well enough by this time to
see I’m not that sort of girl!”

“Which sort of girl? The kind who doesn’t fall in love a second time?”

“The kind who doesn’t fall in love at all,” I said decidedly. “Anyhow,
I find the second blooming of the gorse, without any metaphors, quite
beautiful enough against that dragonfly-blue bit of Bay!”

“Ah, yes! You’re fond of the effect of flowering plants against the
blue sea, as I think you mentioned, the evening my uncle dined at The
Lawn,” said Billy, teasingly and unexpectedly. “Only, didn’t you specify
oleanders and myrtles and the Riviera——”

“Oh, Billy! I never thought you’d do that,” I interrupted him with real
reproach. “No; I _never_ thought you’d be so mean as to remind me, ever
again, of that ghastly evening! I didn’t!”

There was silence for a moment. He stared down at me. I wouldn’t look
at him. I turned to look at a brown velvet bee that was buzzing some
flattery or other into the golden ear of a gorse-blossom near by. Then I
heard him say slowly:

“‘Ghastly,’ you call it?”

“Well—! Of _course_!”

“I see,” he said, still more slowly. “You mean that it still rankles. You
haven’t forgotten.... You resent that still, in spite of agreeing to be
friends ... in spite of letting one suppose that—well! that it _wasn’t_
so sickeningly hard for you now, after all. You _do_ bear a grudge then,
still. You mean—” It came out, the last thing I ever expected to hear him
mention!—“that about that kiss!”

“That?” I retorted quickly, and with my airiest laugh, for this seemed
the only way in which to face the paralysingly embarrassing point
he’d seen fit to raise again. “Oh, that! I never gave it a thought,
Billy! I quite understood! Besides, you couldn’t possibly call that
private-theatricals sort of peck a _kiss_, exactly!”

“No,” he returned, as quickly. “You couldn’t, could you?”

He took a step towards me, then caught me to him by the shoulders, and
for a second I thought he was going to gratify the longing which I’d seen
in his eyes any time during that first week of my stay at The Lawn.

I thought he was going to shake me.

But no.

In quicker time than it can be told, his hands had flown from my
shoulders to the pink strings of my sun-bonnet; he’d untied them and
tossed the bonnet on to the nearest hassock of a gorse-bush. He put both
brown hands under my chin and turned my face up to his. Before I could so
much as gasp, he swooped down and kissed me, muttering, “But what could
you call this—and this—and this?” Three times—greedily—on the mouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a second I had to clutch at his shoulder to steady myself; for sea
and cliff and gorse seemed wheeling round me in swirls of blue and green
and gold.

Then I wrenched myself away and faced him—without seeing too distinctly
what was in front of my eyes.

“Don’t say anything to me,” I heard myself tell him, in a voice that
sounded unnaturally quiet and calm. “This—this can’t be forgiven. Don’t
ask.”

I heard him begin to say something about: “Do you think I am made of——”

“Don’t speak to me again, please,” I said, still in that unnaturally
quiet voice. “Not again.”

I snatched up my sun-bonnet from the gorse-bush, rammed it down over my
hair, and tied the strings so tightly beneath my chin that they nearly
throttled me. Then I turned, saying, “I forbid you to follow me,” and
left him standing there between cliff and sky, beside the wooden woman.

I walked on until I thought I was out of his sight, then I ran; ran
blindly across the cove and up the sandy path to the cottages.

On the doorstep of the larger one Theo was sitting, emptying her white
canvas shoes of sand on to the cobbles of the garden path.

“Hullo, Nancy! Do you know that Cariad was so bored with you that he ran
home?” she said. “What have you done with Billy the Beloved? Is he——”

“Let me pass, please,” I said quietly, and walked swiftly into the house.
The kitchen door was open and Mrs. Roberts was laying the table for the
mid-day meal. She began, “Was you finiss paint the——” but I couldn’t stop
to speak to her. I ran up the rickety wooden stairs to my bedroom. There
isn’t a lock on the door; I looked. So I just latched it, and went and
sat down on my bed, with its patchwork quilt of faded pinks and mauves. I
began tracing with my fingers the pattern made by the hexagonal patches
of purple. I don’t think I thought of anything at all.

And I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there before I heard light
steps on the staircase and a tap at the door. I raised my voice a little.

“Don’t come in.”

“Nancy,”—it was Blanche—“dinner’s ready!”

“I don’t want any dinner. I am not coming down.”

“Oh!—What’s the matter, dear?”—with quick concern. “Are you ill?”

“No! I’m not ill!”

“Have you got a headache?”

“No! I haven’t got a headache. Only please go away. I don’t want to see
anybody.”

I heard her go softly downstairs again—then the kitchen door opening, and
a murmur of voices.

His voice.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ah! that brought my anger surging over me at last like a great wave. I
sat bolt upright, with a crumple of the quilt clutched in each hand.

How dared he! How _dared_ he!

Taking odious advantage of a situation! _This_ was not what I agreed to
when I said I would be nominally engaged to him.

_This_ was not unavoidable, like that last time.

Oh! He needn’t have pointed out to me the difference between that time
and this! I’d _thought_ I was angry then. My anger now was as different a
thing as the difference between those two sorts of kisses.

_Oh!_

_He’s_ broken the contract—he knows that it was tacitly understood that
there should be nothing of this—In fact, it wasn’t so much as thought
of—_ever_.

_Right_ on my mouth!...

Well, I don’t owe him anything after this. I shan’t speak to him again.
I shall have nothing more to do with him. He’s a right to my name as his
official _fiancée_, he can keep that—at a distance! My name—nothing else.
I shan’t go on staying with his people after this! Let him make what
excuse he chooses to his mother about that. Let him explain it away as he
likes. I shan’t help him!

If it were to save his life, I’d never lift a finger to help him again!

I shall go away at once....

How could he! Whether it was a vulgar attempt at flirtation, or simply
that he was riled and meant to be rude to me in the most brutal manner he
could think of—I don’t care which it was!

What had I said—done—looked—that he should imagine he might?

After this, he might even say I’d encouraged him!

Hateful, _hateful_!

Well, I shall go away....

Brute!

To-morrow, I shall _go_!




CHAPTER XXIII

“MANY WATERS——”


Well! Anyhow there’s no sense in sitting up in my room brooding over this
thing, on a heavenly afternoon like this and all.

I’m not going to miss it all just to please _him_.

And if I am leaving everything—sea and sunshine and mountains—to-morrow,
I may as well take in as much of them as I can to-day. Besides, I suppose
I shall have to go down some time.

There are these people—whoever they are—expected this afternoon.
Obviously I shall have to be at tea to meet them? I shouldn’t in the
least mind letting _him_ down by remaining invisible until I’m all packed
up and ready for the little local train that must take me up to Holyhead
to meet the Euston mail. But there is his mother to consider—she has been
so sweet to me from the beginning. What I can’t understand about her is
how she ever managed to have such a son? There must have been something
odd and horrid about the father; and he must take after him. The _girls_
are all right.

There they are, going out now; down the sandy path to the station; Theo
bare-legged and bare-headed as usual, swinging a basket; off to buy jam,
I expect, for the visitors’ tea; Blanche carrying letters. I heard his
step on the cobbles ten minutes ago, and Mrs. Waters always rests in her
room until three o’clock. The coast’s quite clear, then. Why shouldn’t I
go out and have my bathe? I missed it this morning—thanks to all _that_!
Perhaps the cool green waves of the Bay will help me to feel as if I’d
washed a little of that memory away from me. Already it seems years since
my last bathe; only yesterday morning! When the girls and I ran down
together, to find him already in, practising walking under the water; and
he’d called out “I say! Isn’t it topping to be alive on a day like this?”
as he emerged, head up once more, dripping and glowing in his indigo-blue
sheath, his hair sleek once more with the wet, his arms and shoulders as
smooth and pinky-white as any of ours, but making ours look curiously
slender and delicate.

Years ago! Everything had been so different! I’d thought _he_ was so
different.

Well! This will be my last bathe for the summer, so I may as well enjoy
it, all to myself.

       *       *       *       *       *

I undressed quickly, slipped into my black woven silk club costume, and
twisted round my head the long orange silk scarf that keeps my hair from
getting too wet. I simply won’t take to one of those sponge-bag-like
rubber caps that some girls still wear for bathing. They’re too unsightly
for anything—and one doesn’t exactly want to look a blot on the seascape,
even if there doesn’t happen to be anyone else bathing, to see one....

As it happened, I found, to my great annoyance, that there was someone
else already in the little cove next to the cottages that it was Theo’s
idea to christen “The Bay of _Many Waters_.” There was a smooth head,
some distance out, dark against the afternoon glitter; a steady stroke
that I knew.

_Oh!_

So he’d come out first!

Well, that meant that I couldn’t have my bathe here after all—just like
him!... Fresh rage against him surged up in me as I caught up the white
wrap of Turkey-towelling that I had thrown down upon a seaweedy rock with
my string-soled shoes. I’d leave him to it. Perhaps I could get a dip in
the next bay under that cliff where the wooden woman leaned forward to
her watch?

But, even as I turned to slip away, I heard a sound from across the water
that seemed to make my heart, for a second, stop its beating.

It was a choking shout for help.

“Nancy!—Here!—Here!”

Then that dark head disappeared under the water.

It couldn’t possibly have been for as long as it _seemed_. No!

People can’t hold their breath for as long. Then it was up again. The
swimmer had flung himself on his back and was floating. And I—without
actually realizing what I had been doing, I must have cast off my wrap
again, have splashed through the creamy surf of the first waves into the
smoother jade-green depths beyond, for I found myself swimming, striking
out, out—from the shore....

Still I didn’t know how I’d started—or why. Except that here was a human
being in trouble whom, somehow or other, I had to help. I didn’t think
about who it was. It wasn’t because of that broken shout of “_Nancy!_”
I’m sure. No; I am sure that, just then, no thought of saving Still
Waters was in my mind. It was just another human being who had called to
me; and towards whom I swam so desperately, making, in my hurry, such a
splashing over each stroke that it seemed to me endless before I came up
to where he floated on his back.

Automatically I remembered something our swimming-instructor had
drilled into us at school. I found myself telling myself that it was
dangerous—dangerous to get within reach of a drowning person’s hands.
They’d grip you, and you’d both go under.

“Keep behind him,” I was telling myself. “Keep behind him!”

But there was no need for me to trouble about avoiding his clutch. When
he spoke, I realized that he, in his danger, was keeping his head far
better than I was. He was calm.

“Cramp,” I heard him say, “in my left leg. You’ll have to tow me. Can you
swim on your back?”

“Yes.”

Whether I could or not, I supposed, I should have to.

So in turn I flung myself on my back, and caught hold of him under those
hard, strong-feeling arms of his.

Then began the struggle back to shore.

The tide was setting in, thank heaven! and as long as we were in the deep
waters it was not so hard. Presently we came to where the waves began to
break. The wind was blowing off the shore, blowing the surfy crests of
the waves backwards as a girl’s hair is blown across her face ... and
presently I was half blinded by the spray that dashed over my head, into
my eyes and mouth.

I choked, panted....

“Rest a minute,” said a voice close to me. “No hurry. The tide will take
us both in.” ...

But, getting my breath, I struggled on again, yard by yard. Again I got a
mouthful; spluttered, coughed.

“All right—all right—take it easy!” the voice was saying.

I simply couldn’t pay any attention to that—I was labouring with all my
strength for both—for myself and this log in the water that I must—_must_
get ashore. I was startled when he gave a sudden powerful jerk of his
shoulders that altered our course.

“You’ll have us on to the reef,” he said. “I’ll steer—don’t work so hard—”

I heard myself gasping.

—“don’t get flurried, Nancy!”

“Nancy!” Yes! Then I did realize who it was that I was tugging along with
me for dear life. His life was in my hands—mine, when I’d felt ready
to murder him an hour ago. I’d had to save it.... “Serve him right,” I
thought wildly, as I struggled along. “Oh, serve him right! I’ll show
him—I’ll teach him to kiss me again.”

Indeed, I’m not sure that I wasn’t muttering this aloud to myself in
the water. Anyhow, voices seemed buzzing in my ears—one was his own as
I’d heard it yesterday—“I say! Isn’t it topping to be alive? Isn’t it
topping to be alive?”

And then it seemed to come to the very last effort I could make. “_Ah!_”
I heard myself groan.

The next thing of which I was conscious came with a shock of surprise. It
was the soft jolt of my shoulders against sand.

We were aground!

For a minute or so I must have been swimming furiously in my depth,
without even feeling the growing warmth of the shallows about me.

I let go my wild, unneeded clutch of his arms, staggered to my feet,
waded in, then dropped again, face downwards and panting, on to the
beach, a few yards below the tide-mark of crisp, black seaweed, straws,
and broken shell.

It was over—we were safe. And now—what?

I didn’t know.

Anyhow, for a moment I lay there unable to rise or speak. I threw my arm
across my eyes. Then I found that he’d dragged himself up beside me. He
was leaning over me; saying something I was too dazed to catch.

I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want him to say anything. He needn’t
suppose I’d intended to save his life. He needn’t think this absurd
crisis had made any difference. There was still this morning between us.
There always would be. This made no difference. None! None at all!

I got up again, hearing my teeth chatter a little. I turned to the rock
where I’d thrown down my peignoir, and as I did so, I heard him behind me
raise his voice a little:

“I say! I can’t, you know!—You’ll have to help me up to the cottages, I’m
afraid—”

I glanced down at him; he was sitting up, his face a little white under
the tan, but quiet and expressionless. And as I looked at him, sitting
there backed by the empty, sunlit cove and the cliff with the figure-head
and flagstaff small as toys in the distance, I passed through the one
second’s most extraordinary experience of my life.

Was it a waking-dream, or what? The result of shock and over-exertion,
like those buzzing voices, just before, among the waves? For of all
the mad, impossible fancies to dash into one’s mind—before one’s eyes,
even!—this was the maddest.

This was what happened in that second’s space:

_Vividly there flashed before me a picture of my own Self just as I
was then, in my black silk maillot with my wet black hair streaming
down my neck; for I’d lost my scarf, it floated like a torn-off strand
of orange-coloured seaweed on the waves. I saw it there.... And I saw
that mind-picture of myself fling herself down on her knees beside him
again—fling herself into his arms, cold from the sea-water and dripping
and hard; saw her bury her face against his throat; heard, more clearly
than in a dream, her gasping sob of, “Billy! You were drowning! I might
have lost you!”_

Then—flick! the picture vanished, and I was drawing my wrap about me
composedly enough as I replied to him coldly, “I will help you up—on one
condition. That you don’t speak to me.”

He said quietly, “You prefer that?”

“Only on that condition,” I repeated.

“Very well,” he rose slowly to his feet, trying them one after the other
in the sand. “Only—I’m afraid I shall have to lean on you a bit—not hard.”

So, after I’d helped him on with his own wrap, I stood for him to put his
arm about my shoulders. I don’t know if he leaned hard or no. Slowly and
in silence, we walked up so from the shore to the cottages. Just before
we got to the sandy path in front, his arm dropped, and he smothered an
exclamation:

“Hul-_lo_!”

For, tilted up between the deep ruts made by Mr. Roberts’ cart in the
sand in front of the cottage gardens, we caught sight of a motor-car;
a gaudy, cherry-coloured affair, all ablaze with sunlit brass. The
visitors. They’d come, then. I’d forgotten _them_. They were in my
cottage at tea, I discovered, after he had turned quickly in at the
little gate of the cottage he shares with Blanche; from behind the door
of the kitchen sitting-room of our larger one I heard a babble of talk
and much laughter. Must I face it? With this dreadful day behind me?
Slowly I mounted the wooden stairs to my room and began to dress. I was,
all of a sudden, deadly tired; why, I felt only half awake; what I would
have liked would have been to fling myself down on that patchwork-quilted
bed and sleep the time away until I was to leave Porth Cariad for ever.

That this must needs have happened this afternoon, to add to the
conglomeration of things between him and me that I longed to forget!
After the way he behaved this morning!

(Ah, Billy, why did you? We were such chums!) _Caddish_ of him! To think
that he _might_—that I could be treated so!

That fact remained—and all the waves in the Bay of Many Waters hadn’t
washed any of its bitterness away. As for that mad, mad fancy of mine
afterwards on the beach—well! it must have been something like the way
people declare that the whole of a drowning person’s past life rises
before them in the moment of peril. Only, of course, those would be
pictures of things that had happened—not the reverse of anything that
ever, ever _could_ happen!

One thing—I’d never let him thank me for the outwardly magnanimous act
into which I’d been just forced, and which had left me too utterly
exhausted even to rage over it as I might. My arms felt almost too
limp to raise to my head as I wrung my streaming hair into a towel and
pinned it, still wet, firmly about my head. It took me minutes to put
on each garment. Meantime those minutes were ebbing away, and these
people downstairs were being kept waiting, expecting to see his official
_fiancée_ at the tea-table. And if I felt I couldn’t stay up here as
I longed to do, it wasn’t on his account. It wasn’t the girl he’d
engaged—and insulted so!—it was his mother’s guest who confronted in the
wavy looking-glass her very washed-out appearance, her dark, ringed eyes
and damp hair plastered down to keep it from dripping on to the first
clean blouse that had come to hand.

Certainly I looked very little credit to him!

With a shrug I turned away and went downstairs.

       *       *       *       *       *

The warm kitchen seemed full of people and their voices, and of a
mingled scent of brewing tea and warm butter and—could it be a whiff
of perfume: _trèfle_? The tea-table was crowded with Mrs. Roberts’
gayest crockery, with her largest black teapot, with mounds of yellow
light-cakes and clusters of brown eggs and great slabs of Welsh farmhouse
bread-and-butter. In the middle a glass jug held a bouquet of heather and
honeysuckle and blue scabious. There was a dish of damson jam, and a very
golden, “shoppy” cake.

At the head of the table, Mrs. Waters was entertaining a stout, sallow
gentleman with a black moustache and a plaid tie, who was talking French
very fast and with a good deal of gesture. Blanche, elbows on the table,
was leaning eagerly across it to talk; opposite to her were her brother,
looking much as usual again, I saw, and Theodora in a state of flushed
animation, from whom, in the general babble, I caught something that
sounded like “tell Billy’s sweetheart—” and between Theodora and him
there sat, leaning back in her chair and laughing gaily, a young girl in
a wonderfully-cut and simple get-up of flame-yellow and white and cream,
with a swirl of feathery yellow about her midnight black hair; one of the
prettiest girls I’d ever seen in my life. Ah! it was she who’d brought in
that whiff of clover-scent?

She was laughing up into his face.

And she was calling my official _fiancé_ “Billy.”




CHAPTER XXIV

THAT GIRL


There was a scraping of wooden chair-legs on the tiled kitchen floor as I
came in, and the men rose.

Mrs. Waters introduced “Our friend Monsieur Charrier and his
daughter”—and the stout gentleman, who wore pale-hued boots shaped like
the blades of oars, bowed until I could see the rolls of fat beneath
his collar behind, then shot at me out of eyes like two black currants
a glance that made me feel utterly disapproved-of and “found wanting.”
The girl gave me a look less frankly measuring, while the whitest teeth
in the world flashed in her little face, oval and smoothly olive as the
shell of one of those eggs on the table.

She was very lovely....

She held out her hand and gave mine the violent shake that foreigners
seem to think so truly English; and then I slipped into the empty place
next to Blanche, feeling thankful for the tea which Mrs. Waters handed to
me in a large cup decorated with a group of Welsh women in the costume
never seen except on china.

I drank it in a kind of thirsty dream; I couldn’t have talked to save
anyone’s life just then; but the talk was buzzing on all around.

“—planned to go to-morrow; but shall you be here?”

“—since we find ourselves in such charming neighbourhood, we could
prolong our sojourn——”

“Oh, yes, _do_ prolong it! So ripping for Blanche and me to have Odette
to go about with! Of course, we never _see_ Billy and Nancy here!”

“Don’t believe her, Odette!” he was laughing quite naturally.

“—can’t call your shore your own, this year! _You_ don’t know what it is
to have an engaged couple in the place!”

“No? It is not agreeable?” The pretty French girl turned to smile at him
again. “You do not encourage me to come, so!”

“I’m writing a book about it——”

“Theo dear, finish your tea and don’t talk so much!”

“‘The Complete Gooseberry’ it’s called, if you know what that means.”

“Ah! Place where you find the little babies! Yes?”

“No! not place! People! Unengaged ones like us and you and everybody but
_Them_.”

“—Enchanted, madame!”

“—with rules like this: ‘_Don’t cough outside doors; they hate it. Far
better not go in_!’”

“—More hot water, please, Blodwen——”

“—_Don’t stalk them with a camera. You never get anything worth
printing!_”

“—And will I bring a two more fress negg, mam?”

“_If one of them’s away, don’t ask who’s got the ink!_”

“—No, but do you remember the bathing at Dinard?”

“—Next year, perhaps——”

“—start before lunch——”

“—if the tide’s right——”

“—But Monsieur Charrier, as you were saying——”

“—icy!”

“—as warm as warm!”

“How was it to-day, Nancy?”

“Nancy, I believe you stayed in too long, dear,” murmured Mrs. Waters
gently to me as she passed my cup down again.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said vaguely, trying to smile at her. She was
the only one of the party to whom I felt I could turn in my utter fatigue
and bewilderment. For in that party I felt myself as a sort of plain and
neglected little nursery-governess. It seemed impossible that anyone
should ever have admired _me_—that Major Montresor had ever paid me
compliments—or Sydney wanted to marry me!—or that, for at least a moment,
my employer had found me attractive enough to flirt with. I hadn’t looked
at him, but I knew he hadn’t glanced once at me. His attention was
entirely divided between Monsieur Charrier, to whom he listened with a
deference new to me, and that pretty French fashion-plate in white and
cream and tango-colour, who laughed whenever her host said anything at
all.

Yes! She was very lovely. She made me feel dowdy and drab and _gauche_
beyond words. Even at my best I should have felt that she outshone me;
even if I did possess longer eyelashes and a flush of pink and a dimple,
what were these compared with the finished _chic_ of the way she wore
hair and clothes—to her scintillating vivacity? No wonder the man beside
her was so obviously lost in admiration of her!

Men adore a girl who’s “_bright_,” who amuses them while she saves them
the trouble of thinking what to say. I believe that somewhere at the back
of every man’s mind there’s a fancy portrait of himself, in a sultan’s
turban, applauding condescendingly while some fair dancing-girl postures
and performs for his pleasure.

_Men!_ Even the ones who have seemed “whitest,” as Jack calls it, turn
out to be cads in the end. Trying to flirt with the girl to whom you’re
nominally engaged, and whom you’ll never marry, is the sort of “joke”
that appeals to a masculine sense of humour. Yes, even when the possessor
happens to be really attracted by quite another girl. For it didn’t take
me many seconds of silent looking-on to see what game was being played
between my employer and that girl.

“Odette, are these your gloves?”

He picked them up from the floor when at last we all rose.

“_Your_ gloves, Billy,” retorted Mademoiselle Charrier gaily. “Still a
pair from the beautiful great box you bought me. You remember, yes?”

“Ah, the box you won from me at that flying-meeting. Of course I
remember.”

And I too remembered hearing of those gloves and this bet, ages ago—the
afternoon after I had been out to lunch for the first time with my
official _fiancé_.

So this was the young French girl he’d told me about! And as I watched
them standing chatting together, a little apart from the group round the
motor outside, I suddenly gave a quick guess at something else he might
have had to tell me about her if he’d chosen.

_This very girl had something to do with his official engagement to me!_
Somehow or other, she was his “reason” for appearing to have a _fiancée_
at all—a _fiancée_ upon whom he’d been so particular to impress that
“this affair would never end in marriage!” Possibly my employer and that
girl were already secretly—but really, not nominally—betrothed to one
another?

It looked like it. It looked uncommonly like it.

At something he said she blushed quite rosily. Oh, and they mustn’t think
I didn’t notice her shake of the head and her quick little silencing
frown at my official _fiancé_ when her father, in a tea-coloured alpaca
dust-coat, at last left off fussing over his engines and asked them if
they—calling them “_mes enfans_”—were ready to start?

“Oh—but are you going too, then, Billy?” his mother put in quickly.
Monsieur Charrier answered with a flow of French about “_affaires_,” and
documents which he had left at his hotel in Holyhead, which it would be
so much, so much better if Mr. Waters would spare but a little half-hour
to investigate.

“Very good of you to give me the opportunity, sir,” said Mr. Waters. “I
can get a train back, mother.”

“Ah, but no, but no! The auto will be again at your service as soon as
we have dined at that dog of an hotel,” declared the stout Frenchman.
“I will bring your son home quite safely, madame, to you and”—with a
particularly hollow show of politeness—“to mademoiselle!”

Here his daughter murmured something about the four seats in the auto,
plenty of space for mademoiselle his _fiancée_ if she would deign to
accompany——

I expect Mademoiselle Charrier knew well enough how safe it was to issue
that invitation! So did my employer, when he struck in with “Ah, that’s
very nice of you,” then turned and addressed me directly for the first
time since we had walked up from the beach together.

“Yes! That would be a good idea, wouldn’t it? You’ll come along too,
won’t you, Nancy? We could get a trap back.”

I excused myself as naturally as I could manage it, with something about
being rather tired. It was true enough.

As that cherry-coloured car panted, jerked, then whizzed off down the
stone-wall-bordered Holyhead road, with its trio of passengers, I felt
almost as if it had driven straight over me.

And I felt as if I shouldn’t have cared very much one way or the other if
it had!




CHAPTER XXV

THE FIRST AVOWAL


I suppose I must have dropped off to sleep directly I threw myself down
on my bed, and have slept for some time.

It was growing dusk in my little bedroom; outside my window veils of
purple gauze were drawn over sand-hills and shore, and the tide was far
out again by the time I was awakened by a tap at my bedroom door.

“Yes?” I called drowsily, wondering, for a second, where I was, and
what horrible thing it was that seemed lying in wait for me to wake up
properly and remember it.

The door opened and Mrs. Waters came in, carrying a little tray.

“I’ve brought you this, dear.” It was a glass of ginger wine with two
biscuits laid over the top of it. “I know you stayed in the water too
long this afternoon; you were done up. Drink it up, child.”

I sat up, and she put out her hand to smooth my damp hair while I
finished the glassful.

“That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Much, thank you,” I sighed gratefully; for the wine had seemed very
heartening, and heartening was what I needed. The horrible memory had
come back to me. Two of them, in fact: that of this morning, even before
that of this afternoon. His mother knew nothing of either; _that_ I read
in the pink, December rose of a face under the grey hair. The dear! and I
must leave her....

“I’ve brought you something else too,” she said, almost shyly, like a
schoolgirl who isn’t sure that she won’t be snubbed; “something you’ll
like.”

She put her hand to her soft black muslin bodice, unfastened something
that was hidden inside, and brought out a thin, old-fashioned pendant of
flat gold, slung on a slender golden chain.

She opened it and held it out to me. I took it in my hand and carried it
to the window, where there was still enough light by which to see it well.

Coiled up below the oval glass, faintly gold as thistle-down in sunshine,
and fine as floss-silk, there was a baby’s curl.

“That was the very first curl I ever cut from Billy, the day that he
was christened,” his mother told me softly, sitting on the side of my
bed, while I stood, not knowing how to speak to her, by the window. “He
had such pretty hair always!” she went on, “quite as pretty as Theo’s
is now. Only boys—men always seem to look upon curly hair as a sort of
affliction; they’re never satisfied unless they’re flattening it out with
brushes and horrid stuff out of bottles, are they? And when we all go
back to Sevenoaks again, Nancy—”

I lifted my head to try to interrupt her, to say something about my being
forced to go away before, but no words came; she went on talking, as if
more to herself than to anyone else, of what seemed, just then, almost
unbearable to me.

—“I’ll show you heaps of other little things that belonged to him as
a baby. His very first tiny shirt! They put new babies into shirts
then, you know. Fine linen, with narrow, real lace round the neck and
the little sleeves.... Oh, of course I know those silk-and-wool vests
they have now are much more sensible. I’m _quite_ modern, really.
Still—there’s a lovely embroidered christening-robe of his ... all his
robes. I made others for Blanche and Theo. I’d a fancy to keep them all
separate, so that when they—my babies!—grew up and married they could
have them handed on. So all Billy’s will be for you, Nancy—and the little
locket. I knew you’d care to keep it.”

“I?” I cried, aghast and huskily. I held it back to her. “Oh, no! It’s
not for me!”

“Of course it is. I always meant to give it to his bride on her
wedding-morning.”

“Then you keep it for—for her, until then,” I broke in, with a little
laugh that sounded wild in my own ears, and I pressed the pendant with
the christening-day curl back into his mother’s hand. She said nothing
for a moment.

Presently, in the dusk, I felt her long arm slip round me, and her
hesitating, gentle voice was saying very earnestly and pitifully: “Nancy!
You do care for my boy, don’t you?”

And then into that day of queer and crowded horrible happenings, there
was packed yet another.

In my own ears I heard my own voice answering his mother’s appeal with
words I could scarcely recognize as my own. Yet it was no freak of
imagination this time. It was no mad fancy like that on the beach. It
was I, Monica Trant, who in that voice so shaking and strained cried
desperately:

“Oh, yes! _Yes!_ You _know_ I care for him!”

And with that avowal in my ears I felt as if some stranger had cried
aloud a secret that I had never even guessed, but that now—_now_ I knew
to be coming true.

I found myself putting out my hands before me, almost as if this growing
knowledge were something that I could hold away from myself. For a time
I must hold it away; I _must_! For at least as long as I remained here. I
clenched my hands tightly, dropping them to my sides, using all my will
to bring myself to speak in my usual voice again.

“Will you tell me what time it is, Mrs. Waters?”

“Half-past seven. You’ll go to bed early, dear, won’t you? You won’t stop
up!”

“No, I’ll go to bed.”

“And to-morrow—Nancy, I don’t want to say much more. Only, Life promises
to be so golden, dear, for you and him!”

It was then that she gave me a sting that I wish I could forget. I
_shall_ forget, but not at once, that his mother said:

“_Fate has been merciful to let you two meet._ Don’t let that be spoiled!
To-morrow——”

I held her hand with that little locket in it clutched for a minute
against my breast.

“It shall be different to-morrow,” I whispered before she went, keeping
my meaning to myself. It will, of course, be “different” enough!

       *       *       *       *       *

Half-past seven. There was just time, then, to send my wire.

I crept out silently over the sand-hills and away to the tiny post office
where, thank goodness, the postmistress’s literal English won’t allow her
to read much between the lines of this.

    “To Harradine, Marconi Mansions, Battersea, London.

    “Please send off immediately to Trant, care Waters, Porth
    Cariad, Anglesey, telegram as follows: (Begins.) ‘Please return
    at once; am ill, must see you, Cicely.’ (Ends.)—From TOTS.”

If she only has the sense to answer that correctly, and at once!




CHAPTER XXVI

“ALL CHANGE HERE”


Cicely’s answering wire—for a wonder correctly worded—arrived this
morning at breakfast as I came down.

I’ve shown it to the Waters: explained that I must be off at once. Only
Theo protested angrily, “Your chum ill? How _careless_ of her just when
we were such a jolly party, and going to Red Wharf Bay with the Charriers
to-morrow, and all!” The others accepted it with scarcely a word. They
didn’t even show that they found it odd that Miss Harradine, who lives
in Battersea, should hand her telegram in at Euston Station—though I
wondered over that myself. Not even Mrs. Waters said a word to press me
to wait and send a nurse instead; she didn’t ask when I thought I might
come back. If she _looked_ questions I didn’t see them; I was steadfastly
keeping my eyes for breakfast-cups, and clocks, and time-tables, and
anything but the faces of these people I’m going to leave—for good. All
the morning I’ve spent in my bedroom, packing-up.

Twice, while I was busily emptying drawers and laying out my things in
folded heaps on the bed, I heard outside my window a whistle like a
blackbird’s note; but this time I wasn’t taken in for a moment. I knew it
wasn’t a blackbird. I took no notice of him.

I went on packing, laying my string-soled bathing shoes at the bottom
of my trunk. A long time before I shall need _those_ again! I let him
whistle.

He tried something else.

Twice there was a sharp tap on the pane, just as when that thrush was
cracking a snail. But I knew that this time it really was a pebble thrown
up to catch my attention: thrown, not from the trimly-gravelled sweep
in front of a big house, but from the cottage garden planted with sandy
white pinks and lad’s-love—thrown to bring me down. I wasn’t to be either
whistled or tapped to his side.

I rolled my sun-bonnet—there was a little rip where it had caught on a
gorse prickle—into a tight pink bundle and rammed it down beside my shoes.

I wasn’t going down.

Then came a crunching on the cobbles of the path below, and a soft call
of “Nancy!”

Not I; I wasn’t going down.

“Nancy!”—more urgently. “I say!”

No! Let him think what he liked of me—rude, obstinate, childish, or
sullen—as long as he only didn’t guess _why_ I didn’t mean to go down, or
even look out the window to answer him. I couldn’t face it now. Not with
what my own lips had first told me of the thing which I had to hold away
from me, at arm’s length, for as long as I had the strength.

“Nancy!”

Evidently he was set on saying something to me—but whether it was about
yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon I didn’t care. I was equally set
on his not having the chance. Now I was afraid this chance would happen
after lunch, and I was grateful to that which prevented his taking me up
to Holyhead and seeing me off by the Euston mail alone.

I rejoiced over the timely and snorting arrival of that magenta-coloured
“auto” of the Charriers, bringing over Monsieur with some more of his
business-documents, and Mademoiselle with business that a child might
guess at.

I leaped at their proffered lift of luggage and all, back to Holyhead
Station, and the four of us went off together.

Then, sitting beside this French coquette, who seemed bent on seeming
sweet to me—(Why? I suppose because the girl to whom he _is_ engaged
feels that it’s “in the picture” to be generous to the girl he _has_
“engaged”)—my heart sank, and I wished I hadn’t accepted. We were
speeding along far too fast along the level road towards the purple hump
of the Holyhead mountain. We should be there too soon. Heavens! There’d
be half an hour to wait at the station, and he could get what he wanted
to say in then....

Why hadn’t I thought of that! If something would only happen....

It did.

Never, never has a motor breakdown been hailed with delight before by
a passenger; but I blessed the fortunate accident that kept Monsieur
Charrier and my employer fumbling, fidgeting and fuming about the
bonnet for over half an hour by the roadside. Mademoiselle, in her
lemon-coloured wrap and daring little hat, sat on the top of a low
stone fence with me in my brown silk coat and skirt in which I’d first
travelled down to The Lawn. I was so delighted by the delay that I could
even laugh quite gaily at her as she chattered.

“Always the same! Each time that we take a passenger to make very
quickly, there arrives this _malheur_!... Now, now, it is good? it is
well? it is right? No?... Regard my father, Miss Nancy, on the earth
under the auto nearly: he look like a little fat dog that has been run
over, not? Ah look at this brave Billy, always the same idea, _encore
un_ spanner! Now he will lick her into shapes!... It is finish, Billy?
No?... Ah, he is doing it express, on purpose.... You will loose the
train, and Mademoiselle must return with you—what a chancey day!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mercy! Return with him?—the midnight train would be impossible—I should
be kept until the next morning—Horrors! My heart was in my mouth at the
thought....

It was with two minutes to spare, however, that we flung ourselves,
with the hastiest of thanks, out of the motor, and rushed into the busy
station that stretches down to the quay, where a couple of slanted
funnels seemed as big as two leaning towers of Pisa painted red. No time
to lose. He found me a corner-seat facing the engine, in a carriage with
one other lady. He attended to my luggage with the speed and ease of a
man who can make men obey, then he looked straight at me and began: “I
haven’t time now, but look here, I shall——”

Again I baffled him.

“I have nothing to read!” I cried, as if in dismay over the fact. “Will
you fetch me a paper—anything.”

With a little jerk of his shoulders he turned away to the bookstall,
and I sat back in my corner looking dully out at the moving bustle on
the platform below the big Norman Wilkinson posters of steamboats on a
moonlit sea. Why couldn’t we start—it must be time! I’d said good-bye
to his people, said it as if I were going no further than for one of my
afternoon tramps at Porth Cariad with him. Now it was to him that I must
say good-bye.... I couldn’t take it in yet. I didn’t want to. Above all,
I didn’t want him to say it—or anything else.

Again the situation was unexpectedly saved.

The carriage-door burst open, and a man, panting with haste, flung a cape
and a blue-covered _English Review_ on to the seat opposite mine, drew
his handkerchief over his brow with a “Phew!” that meant “Only just done
it!” then leaped out again on to the platform, calling, “Porter! when is
this train due off?”

“She ought to be off now, sir; we’ve been kept back by the boat, we’re
ten minutes behind time.”

But it was not this that made me sit up and turn quickly to the man who’d
dropped back into the seat opposite to me. Slim shape, soft hat, Vandyke
profile—yes, I thought I’d recognized the voice. Sydney Vandeleur, of all
people—and at this moment! At any other, I might have longed to pick up
that _English Review_ and hurl it at his picturesque head, but, for just
this one occasion, I was overjoyed to see him. My employer wouldn’t be
able to say any last words now, before him.

“Monica—Miss Trant!” exclaimed Sydney quickly. “How odd! Did you see
_her_?”

“See whom?”

“Why, Cicely!”

Cicely! The tone in which he used her Christian name told me all there
was to know, _there_! I’d thought so!

“I’ve been seeing her off, you know, to Ireland—the Dublin boat—just gone
off.” He nodded towards the quay. “Had to get back to London to-night; I
am meeting the Mamma in Pont Street to-morrow morning, and——”

“Take your seats, please! Take your seats!” The guard’s whistle was at
his lips as my official _fiancé_ came racing back along the platform. An
armful of papers and magazines fell on to my lap.

“Here you are, Nancy. And, I say! I’m going to——”

What he was going to say broke off again with a snap. And the last glance
I had of his blonde, sun-browned face and quick eyes showed them frozen
in a stare of utter astonishment at the sight of my travelling-companion.

Yes—my goodness! What would he think of finding me with Sydney
again?—Sydney, whose name has so often nearly cropped up between us.
Would he think——?

What difference would it make if he did?

The train steamed out of the station across the flat Anglesey country,
between marshlands ghostly-white with bog-cotton in the dusk.... What
would he think?

This was what occupied me all the time Sydney was talking, for he was in
a mood to talk to anyone. I, for example, was not the Rose, but I had
shared rooms with the Rose, and he was eager to tell me about her, and
how she had gone to stay with his married sister until—something or other
to do with “the Mamma.” Poor Lady Vandeleur, fated to see her only son
falling in love with such totally ineligible girls! First a City typist
at twenty-five shillings a week; now a Bond Street mannequin!

But my employer didn’t know of this change. How could he? He
probably—yes, certainly!—imagines things are as they might once have
seemed to be.

Will he think I arranged this?

“Of course you know her—but not as one does now!—the last few
weeks! We were together at the Café Royal—He’s going to paint
her—Colouring!—Wonderful! You should have seen the costume I designed for
her—Five Arts Ball——Purposely giving the effect of——Quite in the period,
of course!—People who understand!—Such _souplesse_ of mind as she has——”
Sydney went on to the air. My whole attention was for someone very
different.

He can’t imagine I’d do anything so underhand! Even if he did imagine
that—well, I couldn’t explain unless he asked. If he did ask, I could
explain less than ever! Oh, why can’t I wipe four months straight out of
this year and begin again? But then, there would have been Jack to help!
But then, there would have been Sydney.... I should have been engaged to
this creature before me in that hat, talking of Cicely’s _souplesse_ of
mind! If he—the other one—only knew what I really think of Sydney!

“Fancy,” I commented haphazard to the rhapsodist before me. “Well; I
do hope everything will be all right.” And I took up the magazine my
employer had tossed on to my lap—there was a picture on the cover of a
pretty Summer-girl looking over the sea—and prepared to hold it up in
front of me for the rest of the journey.

Sydney—surprised and sulky—read his _English Review_. Presently I refused
his not too pressing invitation to join him in the dining-car, and he
left me for an hour and a half.

For love, that robs us women of the appetite for anything but Romance,
seems to make men even hungrier for their food.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Eus-tern!” came the familiar Cockney bawl again at last. “Eus-tern!”

It was a change, after what I’d been used to for the last few weeks, to
have to fend for myself in the matter of luggage and a taxi. One doesn’t
specially look to men in love for decent manners. Still—that other one
knew how to pay these attentions in spite of his Odette and her gloves!
Sydney’s evidently the type that pays homage to the Well-Beloved by being
casual towards every other woman. He seemed to efface himself until his
lukewarm offer of getting me a cab could be answered from the cab-window.

“Ah—may I tell him to drive to Marconi Mansions, Miss Trant?”

“I’ve told him, thanks. How fearfully hot it is here, and how stuffy”—I
sniffed with distaste—“after the country!”

“Yes, isn’t it?—one’s almost consoled for Her being away, in that lovely,
soft, pure air of Ballycool! Good night!”

The last sort of night I thought I’d have! But once back in my familiar
little camp-bed in Marconi Mansions, I tucked my cotton dressing-gown
round me because no sheets had been left out, and fell into that
dreamless trance of utter tiredness.

I slept like a log all night.

(_Next day._)

_How_ the flat seems to have shrunk! and what a state Cicely has left it
in! Has she moved _all_ our ramshackle furniture since I was here last?
Used that table to be right in the middle of the room, choking it up
like this?—and where’s my dear print of “Kitty Fisher” that used to hang
just _there_, where she’s put that framed oil-sketch of—what on _earth_?
It looks like a study, by Blossom, of that coloured tie of Sydney’s—and
there’s a little red “_sold_” label on it. I suppose he bought it for
her out of one of the shows at the Grafton Gallery. The couch, too,
is littered with books ... Marinetti ... Schnitzer ... Tangore ...
Strindberg’s “_Stronger Woman_” ... a slender volume, “_The Everlasting
Mercy_,” inscribed “_To Cicely, from her devoted S. V._”

       *       *       *       *       *

H’m! Cicely among the intellectuals? Well, I suppose some of us are made
adaptable as water, taking the shape of any vessel we’re poured into by
Man. Perhaps—perhaps I might have been the same, if——

But I do wish she’d had the _souplesse_ or the _something!_ to throw
away, before she left, this litter of florists’ half-dead flowers,
expensive stale roses and carnations, that fills up every one of our pots
and crocks.

I’d better do it, I suppose....

Also I’d better wash up my breakfast-things—and Cicely’s of the day
before, which are heaped upon the kitchen table.

On the top of an oily quarter-pound of butter there’s a very dirty note.

    “_Dear Miss I am unable to come to-day has my little girl is
    queer hoping no inconvenence yrs truely mrs skinner._”

All right. I’ll wash up ... loathsome job! That kettle always took so
long to boil—we ought to have a flat-bottomed one like the one they
use for picnics at the Waters’. It’s a good thing I’m able to think
so composedly of them. Doesn’t it show, after all, that—what I told
his mother, what I thought I should have to hold away from myself so
determinedly, may not really be true ... may not, anyhow, be the deep
and lasting sort of “true” that I imagined? Just a fancy, a passing,
summer-holiday attraction for someone who’ll never guess. It must—it
_shall_ be that. No harm in remembering him—all of them. Let’s see.
To-day was to be their excursion to Red Wharf Bay. I can see the whole
party—and their jolly, sun-browned faces against the throbbing blue of
sea and sky. Odette Charrier will be like some bright foreign bird just
alighted amid the homely gold of the Welsh gorse ... prattling away in
her pretty broken English that I believe she sometimes breaks on purpose
to hear Billy Waters’ amused, boyish laugh.

They’ll be together all the time to-day—no official _fiancée_ to
intervene with even the shadow of a claim....

Together they’ll be unpacking the picnic basket, hunting for the
corkscrew, picking up big, sun-warmed pebbles from the beach to lay at
the corners of the white picnic cloth to keep it from flying into the sea.

The others will be—oh, somewhere about....

Those two will stroll off after lunch, I suppose. I wonder if they’ll
bathe? _He_ wouldn’t have lost his nerve even after that afternoon
swim.... _Only yesterday?_ They’ll bathe from the rocks, I expect. And I
might still have been there....

A ring at the door of the flat. Milk, Mrs. Skinner, or—what?

I’d better go and see....

       *       *       *       *       *

They call _us_ the unexpected sex, of whom no man can ever say what we
shall be at next.

What about themselves?

Only last evening I’d left him standing, stiff with astonishment, on the
Holyhead platform. This morning here he was again, blocking up the tiny
entrance to our flat—my official _fiancé_!




CHAPTER XXVII

PARTING COMPANY


Thank heaven for the instinct that silenced the welcoming “Billy!” before
it broke from my lips. Thank heaven also for that numbness all over me
that allowed me to say in a voice as detached as if it had been the
piano-tuner to whom I’d just opened the door, “Oh! good morning.”

“Good morning.” A tone as blank as a whitewashed wall between him and me.
“I suppose you are surprised to see me.”

“Well, I—yes, I am, of course.”

“You didn’t expect me.”

“No.” We both glanced down at my sleeves, still rolled up from the
kitchen.

“I have something to say to you,” he went on in that same tone. His face
I couldn’t see in that little, dark drainpipe of a passage where we
stood. “That’s why I came.”

“Oh!”

What could it be that brought him an eight hours’ journey on my track?
Surely not that foolish old out-of-date apology still—or those unwanted
thanks for saving his life.

“Don’t you want to hear what it is?”

“Er—yes; oh, yes,” reluctantly. “But I’m sorry I can’t ask you to sit
down here; you see my friend is away——”

“Oh! She’s _away_. I’m glad she’s well enough. I thought she was ill.”

This I didn’t know how to meet.

“Where may I speak to you, then?” he added.

“Is it—about something very important?”

“Important enough to bring me up to London by the midnight train after
you’d left. I just had a bath and breakfast at an hotel and came on here.
So—”

Evidently there was no getting out of it.

—“Will you come out and talk? If it’s not troubling you too much,” he
added stonily.

“Well, if you will wait until I put on my hat and coat,” I said slowly,
“I will come out into Battersea Park with you. We can sit down there.”

In a few minutes we were sitting side by side on a couple of green-backed
wooden chairs on the path that faces the sluggish brown river and the
barges that slid slowly between us and the tower of Old Chelsea Church.

Why had he come?

“Important,” he’d said. Was it a recall? Must I go back for the five
remaining months of my year’s contract? I remembered, then, that it was
in writing—I’d forgotten that! Must I return to Porth Cariad to serve the
purpose of him and that girl?

If he insisted, I must.

I should be glad—(not, not to be with _him_ again! That passing feeling
I should no doubt manage to kill. I _must_ kill it)—to be back with his
mother and Blanche and Theo in that golden Anglesey, instead of in this
baked and dusty park, rowdy with Board-school children on holiday. For
the sake of the _place_ I could forget the man I was with; I could ignore
that morning when we painted the figure-head! Thank heaven I was feeling
so like “a wooden woman” myself.

For another moment I was kept waiting, wondering what he would say. Three
words told me everything.

They swept aside so many things that up to then had seemed real and
undeniable enough. They did away with hours in a music-room, of another
hour in the dusk under a copper-beech, when overtures were made of a
friendship that seemed as if it were going to work all right, (“_You
could be such a little brick to me!_”) but had broken down because,
after all, he was a man and I a girl—even though I didn’t happen to be
the right girl.... Those weeks of gay, open-air comradeship in Wales,
that morning of sunshine and hotly-snatched kisses on a cliff among the
gorse, that afternoon of a race and a struggle for life in the jade-green
waters of a bay.... All these were to be as though they’d never been.

It was all over in those three words:

“Now, Miss Trant!”

The unexpected sex? Oh, no! It’s we who can be trusted to do just what’s
expected of _us_ by our nearest man: to be heroic, petty, clinging or
capable. He meant me to be utterly business-like and formal. Well, he
found me so, my tone just matching his own.

“Now, Miss Trant!”

“Yes, Mr. Waters?”

“It’s about this nominal engagement of ours. That was to go on for a
year, I think.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be glad to hear it needn’t last so long, after all.”

“Not a year?”

“Not any longer at all. I’ve come to release you now.”

I found absolutely nothing to say. It was as if I’d been preparing to
walk down a long corridor that stretched before me, and had found, after
I’d gone a yard, that a door was slammed in my face. I seemed to stare
at blank walls in every other direction.... I’d better say something....
What was there?

“Thank you for letting me know.” Then, “As this has only lasted so much
less than the time you said, I will send back to you my cheque for——”

“You will do nothing of the kind, please,” curtly. “I made the
arrangement. I break it.”

“Yes, but that money——”

“I shall not take it, anyhow.”

“I shall send it somewhere, then,” I told him, and glanced round at the
nearest group of grimy little Cockneys on the brown grass. “The Fresh Air
Fund.”

“As you please.”

A pause. I was wondering if he meant me to say anything else. He began
again. “I expect you guess my reason for this change of arrangement.”

“I think—I do,” I said.

Yes, I thought, whatever it was that stood between him and an open
engagement to Mademoiselle Charrier must be at an end, and Miss Trant,
alias “Nancy,” is no longer needed for the rôle of the red herring on the
trail. But his next remark almost startled me out of my chair.

“Ah! You mean you quite realize that in breaking this contract, I’m
considering _your_ feelings. It is for _your_ sake.”

“_Mine?_”

“Naturally!” he said sharply. “When I saw that the arrangement had become
so irksome to you—when I saw _why_——”

I turned to stare up at his temper-set face, repeating “When?”

“Need you ask when? Last night,” he said, still more sharply, “at
Holyhead Station.”

Ah! Then he _had_ thought—what I’d wondered about. It was my turn to look
set with anger; I know I flushed. Let him go on.

“Yesterday, first thing in the morning, you get that wire, handed in at
Euston. A message that’s obviously—well, a fake. Didn’t you arrange to
receive it?”

“Yes,” I admitted shortly. “I did.”

“Ah. I knew that, Miss Trant. Following on that, I find you travelling
back to London the very same evening with that—that friend of yours, Mr.
Vandeleur. Rather a coincidence.”

“You mean,” I said, my heart thumping with rage, partly against Cicely’s
adorer for making this trouble, partly against this other man with his
savage tone and suspicious eyes, “that you think I told him to send the
wire!”

“There was the wire! And there _he_ was.”

“Even if it had been so, why not?”

“With you engaged to me?”

“Nominally!”

“Makes no difference to the circumstances!” he shot out. “Who knows that,
but you and I? To anyone else, it would have looked uncommonly——”

“I don’t see it!” I declared, but I saw the reason of his anger and it
made me angrier still. _His_ dignity compromised! His official dignity as
a _fiancé_! So I had heard of married men, with wives to whom they were
utterly indifferent, still showing that furious male jealousy of other
men. “But I should have been doing nothing against our contract.”

“Nothing against the letter of it, you think? But when I asked you to
enter into it, one of my first questions, you’ll remember, was whether
you were already engaged.”

“Well?”

“Well! I shouldn’t have troubled you if I’d known all this. I’m sorry.”

“Known all _what_?”

“Remember, it’s not the only time I’ve seen you with him!” he went off at
a tangent. “There was that first occasion—at the Carlton. I thought there
seemed something, when he congratulated me! And then that time at the
flat. He had eyes for nothing but you.”

“Oh, _hadn’t_ he!” I was breaking in, but my late employer went on with
his indictment.

“Even Montresor, at our house, seemed to know all about it! And now his
meeting you in Wales—You won’t tell me that wasn’t by appointment?”

“I will,” I said, lifting my head. “I do, Mr. Waters. It wasn’t.”

He was silent for a moment.

“Please take my word.”

“Of course, if you say so!” he agreed quickly. Then, more quickly still,
“But if he didn’t send that telegram, who did?”

“You saw it! It was signed.”

“Yes; by your friend Miss Harradine. That says nothing. You asked
her to send it—wired the night before, perhaps.... Didn’t you?” he
cross-examined me. “Didn’t you?”

“Well—if I did? Yes!”

“Why did you, Miss Trant?”

I looked away from him, mutinous but helpless, at the border of the
path in front, with its little clumps of heat-shrivelled purple
pansies, drooping over the powdery earth. There was something that no
cross-examination should get out of me! Let him know that I couldn’t bear
to stay in the same place with him—first, because he’d kissed me; next,
because there was no reason that he should ever kiss me again ... every
reason that he would not? Never!

“Why had you to go?”

“Oh!” I cried, with a little stamp of my shoe on the gravel. “Why need
you pry into—into what’s my affair alone? Is even an _official fiancée_
allowed to keep nothing to herself?”

“Very well,” he said savagely. Then, off at another tangent, “But at
least you won’t tell me that the fellow didn’t want to marry you himself?”

“What difference does it make if he did? That was ages ago, months!” I
let out hastily. “Anyhow—one’s not supposed to tell these things, but,
as we’re talking business, I may tell you as a business-secret that I
refused him!”

“You did?”—quickly. “Was this before—before our arrangement was made?”

“N-no. Just afterwards.”

“Ah! You weren’t free, you thought. Otherwise——May I ask if you would
have accepted him?”

“You’ve no right to ask!”

“I know that,” he admitted angrily, “but have you—had you a right to make
me look foolish—about him?”

“I never have done that!” I snapped. “You believe me that last night was
an accident.”

“Yes,” he argued, “but you must confess that other things look rather
mysterious.”

“Mysterious? Need _you_ talk about things being mysterious,” I argued
back, “when the whole of what you wanted me for has been such a mystery
to me? You’ve never given me a hint of the reason!”

“I haven’t been able to! You were to have known later! But about this
other——”

He broke off as a mild-looking old man plumped himself down on the green
seat next his, and began to scatter crumbs out of a paper-bag to the
sooty sparrows twittering on the path.

“I can’t tell you, here——”

“I am rather deaf,” said the bird-feeder, mildly looking up, “and quite
elderly. Don’t mind me.”

Still Waters looked as if he could have choked him with his paper-bag.

“We’ll walk about a bit, if you don’t mind,” he said curtly to me.

And it seems to me now that for hours and hours we two walked Battersea
Park, talking, talking, still repeating ourselves over “_that wire_”
and “_nothing to do with you_” and “_yes, but I’d at least a right to
object to your making me look_——” ... Round the lake we went, up and down
the path of the river front, on the broad bald grass patches, passing
communities of little motherly girls with perambulators and picnic-bags
in the shadow of the elms, skirting little boys’ cricket-matches
conducted with crooked bats, shrill yells—it was all noise and glare and
dust that morning, and I couldn’t really say why we should be walking up
and down in it like this, endlessly discussing what had no point, now....
Hadn’t we come, long ago, to the end?

At last he did raise a fresh point.

“Anyhow,” he blurted out, “I stand in your way no longer.”

This roused me beyond all the rest.

“D’you mean,” I cried, exasperated, “in the way of my possibly marrying
Mr. Vandeleur?”

“Exactly!”

Was I to stand this? Was I to let him go away imagining _that_ was
the sort of girl I was? Was I to allow him, later on, to think of his
official ex-_fiancée_ (if he ever thought of her again) as being quite
contented to accept a dangling _dilettante_ with those tastes and that
tie, an indoor object who pottered amiably about Art-galleries and girls’
studios, between the Tiny Theatre and the Cave of the Cub, a pampered
amateur who couldn’t earn his living to save his life?... was a real man
to think of me, married to That? No—fear!

So I said, very distinctly, “Even if his extremely easy attention
_hadn’t_ been caught by another girl—the girl he was seeing off to the
Irish boat last night at Holyhead, if you must know!—even if he were
the only man left on board a—a desert-island, I shouldn’t want to marry
Sydney Vandeleur, so now you know!—And you needn’t think, as men always
_do_ think, that it’s sour grapes!” I rushed on before he could put in
a word. “You might ask my chum about that—the very afternoon we had
tea there I nearly offended her by letting her see what I thought of
_him_!—even though he still imagined himself in love with me——”

Here I broke off, for a flying cricket-ball from one of those shrieking
teams we passed had knocked off my companion’s straw hat. He had to pick
it up and then to sling the ball in back to the small and grimy bowler
before he could speak; and I, worked up to it now, didn’t see why he, the
man, should be allowed the passing of every vote of censure, so I went on:

“As for your accusing me of making you look foolish, Mr. Waters, what
about you, with me? What about the other girl? I was, after all, your
official _fiancée_. And—and in that capacity, I might just as well have
objected to your paying so much attention to _her_!”

“What’s this?” he took up very sharply, stopping on the path. “When have
you seen me with another girl?”

“Why! Yesterday! The day before, too!”

“_What——?_” he said, long drawn-out. “Can you mean—_can_ you mean the
daughter of Monsieur Charrier?”

(What did he imagine? Could I mean the figure-head of the _Gwladys
Pritchard_?)

“Of course I mean Mademoiselle Cha——”

“Object to Odette Charrier?” he cried, almost as loudly as Theo might
have done.

And, staring up at him, I saw that the set mask of his face had broken up
into its broadest, most boyish smile. His eyes were full of laughter and
delight....

Ah! How she must hold him, I thought, for her very name so to irradiate
him in a moment!

“_That_,” he said, with the laughter running through his voice,“was so
utterly different.”

“Ah, yes! It’s always ‘different’ in one’s own case. You and another girl
can do as you choose—but you wouldn’t have allowed an inch to me and
another man—_you_ mustn’t be compromised. Well, you should know your own
side of it. All that, I suppose, is what you can’t tell _me_.”

“Exactly!” he said again, and all the smile went out of his face. “This
_dashed_ tangle!”

“But considering it’s all at an end now,” I said reasonably enough, “why
need we go on talking about it?” And then I found that I was holding my
breath in suspense.

Terrified suspense lest he should take me at my word....

I knew then. I knew why I felt so. If we _could_ only “go on”! I asked
for nothing more.

More clearly with each minute, these hours had been showing me one thing
at least. Whatever he chose to say, however he rated me, dictated to me
what I should or should not have done—to listen to his voice was pure
joy. Just to be—in Battersea, Anglesey, anywhere!—the sea itself, but
_with him_, was like coming out of a stifling tunnel into sunshine and
air.

He didn’t want me, but I was helplessly his.

A mere summer-holiday attraction? No, so much the worse for me. _That_
wouldn’t have meant this sense that every thread of me was knit up and
together into one strand that drew me, tied me to him; and must be broken
or unravelled now; for neither broken nor unravelled threads are much
more good for working!

A passing fancy? Not it; not this helpless enchantment that had been
growing and growing over me—for how long I didn’t know. It didn’t even
allow me to wish that I’d never known the man beside me except as Still
Waters of the Near Oriental, that I’d never seen him in his home, never
listened to tones of his voice unknown before, never realized what a
perfect darling he could be, this “real Billy,” or how it would be heaven
to be made love to by him!

His hand up the cliff-path once or twice....

Three kisses ... three-and-a-half, if I count that Sevenoaks time, were
all I should have to think of for the rest of my life.... Wildly I
thought that, if he suggested it, I’d be humbly content to remain his
official _fiancée_ for ever. Only not to be sent away! Not to be cut off
from the sight and sound of him! Not left to a life that must be all
echoes and shadows; desperate, threadbare memories of everything he’d
looked and said, every note of his songs, the very gestures with which
he’d feel in his coat-pocket for matches, each movement of his lips and
eyes!

I had to keep my own eyes resolutely from his as we turned away from the
cycle-track, afraid that even he might notice.

Presently he stopped again.

Already?

I daren’t look at him. I looked down at his shadow on the dusty road,
a pool of black—the sun was high above us, time was getting on. And I
mustn’t show him how desperately I would have clutched it back if I
could. (Oh, to think of those other hours, days—a whole long week of
them!—that I had wasted in sulks, in “baiting” him, at The Lawn!)

We were standing by one of the bridges. Here, where I had once thrown
away flowers of his—oh! how could I?—I remembered something else that
must come into our parting. A smaller thing, but a more barbed one. Not
to be shirked, though.

“Your ring!” I said.

I took it off and handed it to him.

It flashed its green and blue and orange sparks in the sunlight as it lay
in his palm. He looked at it, hard. No harder than I did. I was looking
my good-bye to something that had meant so little—and so much. Too much.
I didn’t know how I was going to bear another second of this; and then,
quickly, he closed his brown hand over his diamonds and dropped them into
his jacket-pocket. Gone.

Then, looking eastward over the bridge, he said, “We’d a discussion about
this before.”

“Had we?” I said.

I wondered what had become of my pride, so frantically was I hoping that
this might lead to another “discussion” now. Anything to keep him for
another few minutes.... That gesticulating _trèfle_-scented French beauty
would have him for the rest of her life; she might spare him to me for
just one more squabble!

“Yes: don’t you remember how you informed me you’d send the ring back at
the year’s end? I said then——But look here!” he broke off, “isn’t there
anywhere near here where we could get some lunch while we settle about
this?”

Ah! Then I should have my few minutes longer!

       *       *       *       *       *

There’s a little creamery in the King’s Road where he and I lunched
together again: this time off rolls and butter and boiled eggs. There he
began again. “An engaged girl who had been _really_ engaged,” he said,
“would insist upon sending back the ring as a matter of course; but why
in this case?”

And so on.

It was just because I was so afraid of seeming to linger, as I longed to
do, that I appeared to be in such haste to finish the meal that nearly
choked me, and to draw a glove over that ringless finger that felt,
suddenly, so bare and unfamiliar—and lonely.

“You’ll have coffee, won’t you?”

“No, thanks.” Oh, why hadn’t I said, “Yes”?

He’d lost that scowl, he seemed so much nearer the old friendly terms
again, and it was for the last time!

“I will; unless you’re in a hurry, Miss Trant? Just a moment—”

Yes! Just a moment! It was all I asked, that, and that my heart should
not beat so fast and make me feel so weak and dizzy.

—“Here, boy!”—this was to a newspaper-boy who was strolling past the shop
behind a large pink poster and a bundle of early evening editions.

“D’you mind if I just look up something——”

The man opposite to me unfolded the still damp sheet; his eyes on the
paper gave mine the chance of one more direct, long, hungry look at his
face.

Then came surprise on surprise.

I saw his face change utterly, turn blank, agitated. An odd-sounding
“_Ah!_” broke from his lips. Then he looked up again alert, decisive.

He stuffed the paper into his pocket, paused one instant, frowning in
thought. Then counter-ordered the coffee.

“No time for it,” he said. Then rose to take his hat from the rack beside
the little mirror.

So soon? Oh, so soon? What had brought this about? Why “no time”? It
seemed scarcely a minute since I’d opened the door of our flat to him,
and now he was off! In this hurry! Why?

But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that, after all, I was a
soldier’s daughter: that it was expected of our family that they should
show no sign of being under fire, and that I’d got to go through what was
coming without a tremor or glance to betray the sick sinking of the heart
within me; lightly and steadily, holding myself well in hand. Afterwards
I could get back to the flat....

So, as one tells the dentist, “I’m ready—_now!_” before a wrench, I
picked my minute and was holding out my hand to him as he turned from the
waitress.

I must say it first.

“Well, good-bye, Mr. Waters!”

He didn’t seem to hear that.

“Miss Trant, I find I’ve got to get down to the City at once.”

“Oh, yes?” (It sounded all right, I think.) “Then here we part company.”

Sharply concise, in his old orders-for-the-day voice, came Still Waters’
“No. If you don’t mind, I want you to come on with me.”

With him?

And presently I was whizzing down King’s Road to Sloane Square in a taxi
beside him, wondering, as even he had never made me wonder yet, what this
further unexpectedness might mean. He said nothing. He was intent upon
the paper he had taken out again.

Business, of course—but why take me with him?

At the post office he stopped the cab, got out and strode to the
telephone, then out again.

“As quick as you can,” he told the driver, “to the Near Oriental Shipping
Company’s offices, Leadenhall Street.”




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FIRST GLEAM


At the office, which to my experience seemed to belong to a previous
existence, but to my eyes seemed only of yesterday, every familiar object
was in its place and unchanged. The first of these was the figure of Mr.
Dundonald. He confronted us just outside the door of the Principal’s
office, and after a bow to me which a week ago would have made me long to
shriek with amusement, came forward with his most _affairé_ manner and
said something, gravely and in a low voice, to his chief.

“I know. Can’t attend to it now. Presently!” the Governor put him aside,
but also seriously. “When Mr. Albert Waters comes in; I’ve ’phoned him.
Send the boy to me when I ring.”

Then he opened the door of his room.

Here, too, all looked exactly as it had done that afternoon four months
and an eternity ago! The light and spaciousness of it, the mile-walk
stretch of deep red carpet, the round-topped mahogany clock on the
wide mantelshelf, that big desk, bare but for the turnover date ticket
upon it, his revolving chair in front of it, and that other plump
green-morocco-covered arm-chair that he had first pointed at, that
afternoon, for me to take.

He pointed to it now.

“Sit down, please.”

Down I sat, watching him as he turned to the desk. He was writing rapidly
telegraph-forms. Then his hand went out to the well-known row of electric
bell-pushes on his desk. One thing there, after all, was new: the
extending bracket-telephone. Ah, yes; he’d put that in his letter....

The equally well-known sharp little Cockney face of Harold appeared at
the door; the boy came up and took the forms, which the Governor had
gathered into two bundles.

“These to go off at once. These to be coded.”

“Yessir.”

I sat there wondering. If this business of his meant so much haste, why
had he made Mr. Dundonald wait for it? Above all, what had I to do with
it that I should be there at all?

We were alone again. He glanced at the clock, then wheeled round in his
chair and faced me. He spoke with matter-of-fact politeness.

“Now, Miss Trant! I suppose you want to know what all this is about?
Not only my bringing you on here, but about the whole of our past
arrangement?”

Did I want to know? After all, what did it matter to me now? For me, all
had been summed up in his dropping of my—of his name for me, and in the
remembrance of another girl’s laughing face. What stones would he give
_her_ to wear? Not diamonds.... I said nothing.

“Shall I tell you,” he began again, “now?”

“Well, I don’t think any explanation was promised when you drew up that
contract,” I said wearily. “I don’t really mind ... you needn’t trouble.”
...

“I might _wish_ to clear it up,” he suggested. “Well, suppose we begin
with this.”

He handed over to me the newspaper which seemed to have hurled such a
bomb at him.

I read the paragraph his finger marked as he passed it to me.

                      END OF THE FREIGHT WAR.

                 _From our Hamburg Correspondent._

    I am in a position to state that an arrangement has been
    completed between the interests represented by Messrs. Holmes,
    Laing & Co., of Liverpool, and a powerful combination of this
    port, of which the Allgemeine——is chief. The terms of the
    compact are naturally secret, but it is believed that they
    include a large setting apart of capital for the purpose of
    carrying on the recent freight war to lengths that no rival
    combination can hope to equal. Should such a combination
    care to lease the river, it can ascertain to what extent the
    amalgamation is “bluffing.” From the point of view of exporters
    generally, this will mean that the cheap rates that have
    obtained during the last two years to all ports of the Near
    East will not last much longer.

I read it again. I was feeling much too tired and stupid to read
newspapers—a lengthy, fruitless and exhausting occupation at any time, I
consider.

“I’m afraid,” I said forlornly, passing it back, “that this doesn’t
convey very much to me.”

He smiled, I thought as much as to say, “These _business_-girls!”

Then he said, “Well, but you’ve met this Monsieur Charrier, this big
French shipping man, in Anglesey? Perhaps you didn’t realize that I’d
business reasons for remaining on cordial terms—keeping in with him
at all costs? Anyhow I may tell you now that this was in view of the
amalgamation which he and my firm might be forming. I couldn’t, you
understand, say anything before, but there was to be an alliance——”

“Yes?” (Between himself and that Charrier girl. Why go on explaining it
all to me? I didn’t want to hear all this.) But he went on more quickly:

“You saw the sort of man he was. Touchy, excitable, easily put off! I
had to be always on my guard with him. So that when I heard that he—this
important person to me, Miss Trant—seemed inclined to do me the honour of
selecting me, not only as a business-ally, but also—”

He paused and looked at me. Of course I was attending, if that was what
he meant!

—“also as a possible son-in-law, what was I to do?”

I said nothing. Of course he could do nothing but accept such a bride
with enthusiasm; but why apologize to _me_?

“I realized,” he went on, “that I might offend him to the verge of
breaking off the other deal. I explained to you at our first interview
here that I’d _had_ no intention of getting married?”

(Had. Then he’d fallen in love with her later.)

“Last Easter, which we spent at Dinard with the Charriers,” he went on,
“I—we all were on the most friendly terms with Mademoiselle Charrier—”

I clenched my hands together; they were feeling, on that August
afternoon, cold as ice.

—“And she was soon quite confidential to _me_,” continued the Governor.
“Told me lots of things about herself, just like a child—”

(A minx! That assumed frankness!)

—“told me, even, of her own understanding with a young airman who was
over there then. A secret from her people—you know what these French
parents are—but I don’t suppose it’s a secret any longer now this is all
up.”

(Ah, no! Odette Charrier wouldn’t find it hard to jilt an airman or an
archangel—for him!)

“It was she herself who told me, perfectly candidly, of her father’s
idea of the offer of her hand to me. You know that rum French way they
have—pretty awkward, that,” went on the Governor, beginning to speak
almost as rapidly as for that dictation he used to gabble off to me. “I
was in a tight corner then! There was the risk of turning a possible
friend—and such a powerful one!—into a certain enemy. I knew how offended
he’d be by a refusal that _might_ seem due to reluctance! Then there was
the young lady to consider—What’s the matter, don’t you follow me?”

“No—I don’t understand,” I made myself say quite coherently, “what you
mean by ‘refusal.’”

“Well, _she_ didn’t want to marry me! She’d got this aviator-chap. _I_
didn’t want to marry anybody—then.”

(_Then._ Was he going to inflict upon me the whole of their love-story?)

“And I could only forestall the proposal she told me he meant to make
by showing her father some really tangible proof that I was out of the
question. You see?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “_I_ was—a nominal _fiancée_ was to be the tangible
proof.”

“Exactly. Well! Now comes the news that does away with that necessity.
I’d been expecting the corroboration of it for some days. However, it’s
out at last; here.” He tapped the paper. “It means that the alliance
Waters-Charrier has been knocked on the head; it means that my firm
isn’t going to be quite the almighty concern I hoped it might; but it
also means that something—a big thing!—is saved out of the fire: namely,
that I needn’t take these drastic measures to avoid Monsieur Charrier’s
displeasure. If I don’t want to marry into his family, I can say so if I
choose.”

(_If—!_ He meant that _now_ Odette and he could show that theirs was
nothing but a love-match!)

“And if I hadn’t broken off our nominal engagement this morning, Miss
Trant, I should be able to do it this afternoon; _now_.”

This meant that he was positively eager to get rid of me. Knife-thrust
as it was, I was glad to feel it. It spurred me for what I had to do,
this time without even being allowed to pick my minute; to rise, smile
conventionally, hold out my hand in farewell.

He took it lightly, dropping it almost at once. In a tone of
unmistakable, undisguised relief he added, “So that’s the end of _that_.”

“Yes!” I returned, quite casually enough to deceive a man, though it took
my last ounce of effort. “Good-bye!”

“Wait a minute. I said ‘the end of _that_,’” took up my late employer.
“Now here’s something that begins. Will you sit down again, please?”

The influence of the place we were in, I suppose, made me obey him. Again
I sat back in the green-leather chair, wondering if it made it better or
worse to have this leave-taking so dragged out, wondering why he chose
this form of torture.

He came and stood above me. He began, quite gently, “I’ve taken your word
that that about Vandeleur was an accident, not an appointment. Well,
then! If it wasn’t on _his_ account that you had that wire sent to recall
you, if it wasn’t because of _him_ you bolted like that from me—from
Anglesey,” he spoke more emphatically, “_Why was it?_”

Again this cross-examination? What was I to say? I looked desperately
about the big room and its handsome fittings, at the side-table where I
used to sit with my notes.

“_Why?_” he insisted.

“Oh!” I cried angrily. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does. Why did you run away?”

I shook my head. He couldn’t _make_ me say....

“_Why?_” he repeated mercilessly. “Was it because of what occurred the
morning before that tussle of ours with the Bay, that time you were so
reluctantly compelled to save my life?”

“Oh, _yes!_ if you must bring that up again!” I threw at him, struggling
to call back the helpful, self-respecting anger which I’d been able to
feel quite easily then. “It’s all done with now, so——”

“So it _was_ because I kissed you.”

“_Well?_”

He stood looking at me. I couldn’t look at him, but I held my head up and
stared hard at a distant pale-green wall.

“Are you—are you _surprised_ at that? Any girl,” I forced myself to say,
“would have been furious.”

“You mean,” quickly, “that any girl is furious when she’s kissed.”

“Oh, _I_ don’t know. I’m not thinking of other girls!”

“Any girl _I_ kissed, then?”

“No”—the Charrier girl’s face flashed before me, and a bitter little
laugh escaped me as I spoke—“oh, _no_.”

“You mean only yourself, then?”

“I suppose so, but——”

“_You_ objected, strenuously enough. Why?”

“‘_Why?_’—”

“Was it”—he was cross-examining me again—“because it was I who kissed
you, or,” he paused, “because it was a merely official lover who did so?”

I was caught; there was no direct answer I could make.

“I hated it!” I cried defensively.

He varied the form, not the question.

“It, or the circumstances?”

“Oh! Anything you like.”

“But which?” he persisted. “There’s a world of difference between the
two. If you please, Miss Trant—”

(How dared he use that authoritative tone for which I detested and adored
him so!)

—“I want to know which it was?”

“Do you think I would stay”—I tried to fence—“after being treated like
that? It was”—I groped for a strong enough word—“infamous of you, Mr.
Waters!”

“Of me?” he said. “It would have been equally so of any man?”

“Far worse of _you_!” I blurted out before I could recall it.

“Why? Because I’d no right?—But nor has any other man, apparently?” he
added questioningly.

“Oh, _none_.”

“Then,” he said, and it sounded almost triumphant, “am _I_ so specially
hateful to you?”

“Yes.”

“_Yes?_” he caught up.

“_No!_ Oh—” I felt myself shaking all over as I tried to wriggle out of
this corner into which he’d got me. What was he doing? Had he guessed?
Guessed that I cared? Then why drive it home?... It was worse than
cruelty ... it was—“anything you like, if you must go on like this.
Only—please—please _don’t_ ask—anything.” And I stopped on the sob that I
could only just keep back.

“Ah,” he said slowly. Still I couldn’t look at him, but I heard a change
in his voice as he added, “Very well; what excuse do you expect me to
offer?”

“Excuse?” I flamed. I was too afraid I should break down in earnest and
disgrace myself. “There _is_ no excuse you can possibly make.”

“Isn’t there? There might be more than one, I think,” he said, quite
gently still. “I might put forward, for instance, that I’m only an
ordinary man, subject to temptation, and that you—if you’ll allow me to
say so, Miss Trant—are a very lovely girl.”

“Ah, no! Don’t!” I cried out, stung. “_Not_ that sort of thing.”

“Quite right,” he broke in promptly, but still quietly. A second’s pause,
then—

“There _would_ be no excuse for snatching at you like that, Nancy, if
there weren’t a reason. And the reason, if you really haven’t guessed it,
is, as it happens——”

Once before, that day, three words from him had made a series of
situations crumble away and become as though they’d never been. Once
again a whole set of relations—that between a typist and the head of
the firm; that between a paid official _fiancée_ and her employer;
that between a man and a girl who played that drawn game of platonic
friendship; that other between two who quarrelled and fenced and
misunderstood and hurt each other and themselves so cruelly—was brushed
aside by another three words.

Billy Waters, still standing there and looking down gravely at me, said
very simply, “I love you.”

What could I say? I was too dazed. I gasped, as when at Porth Cariad
I waded out for a swim, and a racing wave met me and dashed above my
breast, catching my breath. Sentences formed themselves and died away
before I opened my lips.

“You can’t mean——” “Then why——” “A mistake——” “This is the first gleam
I’ve had that you——” “If it’s because you’re _sorry_——” Then, of them
all, I could catch firmly at only one thought. I said breathlessly,
holding the arm of the chair, “_But that girl_——”

“Won’t you understand? I never gave her a thought of that sort, or she
me,” he declared rapidly, “except about how we were to get out of it.
If you only knew, that unfortunate French child and I had as much ado
to keep from getting married as some couples have to pull it off! I
tell you she and that young Lenoir—man who’s just beaten the record for
upside-down flying—were—but it’s not _their_ affair I’m bothering about
just now—it’s——”

“But she was so pretty!—so much smarter—she——”

“She was quicker than you! _She_ spotted, that day at tea in the cottage,
how her plan for me of an official _fiancée_ was working out.”

“_Her_ plan?” Even in that moment I remembered that the idea had never
seemed quite like him!

“Yes—_I_ was at my wit’s end. _She_ told me the only plan was to say
I was already booked! Yes! But who to? ‘Anyone,’ she said. ‘You engage
someone—like a courier, an interpreter—someone you pay to understand it
is a farce’—(You know the way she talks!) ‘You go to an office—your own,
perhaps. You choose one of your stenographistes—you have of them, yes?’ I
told her I’d got four. I think I said three of the lot would be more or
less impossible as a _fiancée_, but the fourth—But never mind that.”

“Yes, but I do! What did you say about the fourth?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, laughing a little, “some time. We have plenty
of time, I hope.”

“No, now,” I said. It _was_ my turn to insist. “What about the fourth?”

“Oh, I forget! Well, then,” hurriedly. “I believe I said she seemed quite
a nice, quiet, unassuming little mouse of a person—look here, you’ll
_have_ to forgive me if I do tell you!—not particularly brilliant at her
job, but dependable; and that perhaps she _was_ the kind of girl one
could take about when it seemed necessary, and leave a good deal to one’s
people—mind, I’d scarcely _seen_ you! I hadn’t seen you! I said I thought
you seemed——”

“Well?”

“Well, perfectly _tractable_!”

He broke off to laugh again, and moved nearer to me.

“A fortnight after that, Nancy, you were defying me in my own den! That
frock, and—_chucking_ my ring about the piano! And now ...” he said, with
a hand in his jacket-pocket, “now, Miss Trant, I’m going to put that ring
back, if I may, in its proper place.”

He would have taken my hand, but all in my flurry of delight I put them
both behind me.

“No! Wait! Your people—what will they say to—all this?”

“But ... bless me! they know we’re engaged!”

“Yes, _that_ way,” I said shakily. “But _this_?”

“D’you suppose, Nancy-Monica Trant, that they’re ever going to know that
there’s any difference? D’you think ‘Theo will notice’ any? I doubt if
they’d believe that yarn if we told them! Very soon we shan’t believe it
ourselves! So——Wait? I’ve waited too long!”

But I was, all of a sudden, shy of him as I’d never been in my trembling
typist days. I put him back with a look.

“_How_ long?” I asked falteringly. “Can’t you tell me when?”

His face was full of protest, but he leaned, half-sitting, against the
edge of his desk.

“What can I tell you?” he said. “That it was just now in Battersea Park,
seeing that the girl one can’t stop squabbling with is the girl one _has_
to make love to——”

“Yes, but really——”

“Or that it was mere gratitude to you for dragging me out of the water?
Or—as soon as I saw how disappointed my people would be if I ever let
you go. (My mother, last night! In tears—declaring it must be all _my_
temper!) Or that—well, that as soon as I got you down to my home I began
to wonder what on earth I was thinking of, not to see that I kept you
there.”

“No, but really——”

“Hang it all, Nancy, after all these weeks and months!” he cried, gaily
impatient, throwing back his handsome fair head. Could I ever have
thought he wasn’t handsome? He strode up to me, sat sideways on the
green-leather arm of my chair, put his hand in front of me on the other
arm, and so faced me. It brought his eyes, gay with laughter and delight,
nearer than they had ever been, except once, to my face.

And I felt those eyes of his flash swiftly, from the ripple of hair over
my ear to the hot scarlet wave that I knew was dyeing my cheek, then
to my mouth. And it was as though I had felt his lips first here, then
there, and then there again, even before he drew closer yet and kissed me
as though he could not stop.

But I pulled away. “Oh, Billy! No! _Please!_” I heard myself sob. “I
can’t bear it. Not—not all at once. Not so _much_——”

“Little _miser_!” he muttered, and took my hands down to clasp behind his
neck. “Am I _never_ to be allowed anything——”

“But I thought——”

“How _could_ you?” he whispered. “Haven’t you _eyes_?... Dashing away
from me like that, before I could get in a word! You spitfire! ‘Don’t
speak to me,’ at every turn! And that first time, I was only given a
scrap of your hair to kiss!”

“S-sorry you don’t like my hair——”

“Not like it?” He pressed his cheek to it. “Not all that lovely soft
stuff that I always wanted to touch?—and mightn’t—not even that time
after it came loose in the water—”

“Looking _horrid_!”

—“and clung all down you! D’you know what I shall do to it, presently?”

I didn’t speak; I shut my eyes against his shoulder, and sighed.... And I
had once thought I was not the “falling-in-love-type” of girl! I had once
called him “that frozen ogre!”

“I shall twist this hair of yours into a great rope of black silk,” he
said, “and haul you off by it to that cave! Only question is, how soon?
Nancy! How soon?”

“A cave?” I said, half hearing, with my mouth against the cloth of his
sleeve, “what d’you mean?”

“Why, the sort of cave with a rose-garden to it, and perhaps a little
white wicket-gate at the top of the stairs—don’t you remember?”

       *       *       *       *       *

But we’d certainly forgotten the author of that long-ago _contretemps_ at
the breakfast-table of The Lawn, the elderly _enfant terrible_ of that
age-old week-end! Our heads were close together over the date-ticket that
the head of the firm had grabbed from his desk to reckon up “how soon
it could possibly be,” my finger with the ring on it was caught between
his lips, when the briefest of taps at the door was followed by the most
sudden of entrances—by Uncle Albert Waters.

“Ah!” he began, “what’s to be done now?” His rosy, John Bull face was
unrecognizably worried, but it suddenly lighted up. “What, the little
girl too?”

I had sprung away—I hope!—before he could have noticed that there, in
that most official-looking of offices, I had been sitting on his nephew’s
knee; but I was still so fluttered that I could think of nothing to do
but offer the old gentleman my cheek! At all events, _he_ was absurdly
pleased.

“_Nancy_, my dear!... But what brought _you_ back to London?”

“Furnishing,” said Billy, without a quiver.

“Glad to hear it, my boy! First bit of good news to-day,” said Mr.
Waters, turning grave again. “I say, Billy! About this——”

“I’m going,” I said quickly, picking my hat up from the side-table where
it had been tossed down as upon a gorse-bush. “I only meant to stay a
minute.”

“_Nancy_—I say!” came resentfully from the desk.

“I’ll be in the waiting-room, then,” I promised. “Or, if I may, I’ll
go and look up Miss Robinson and the girls while you talk over your
business.”

I don’t know why, exactly. Only I felt I must see those three girls
again with this new look on my face. They might not know the difference!
Still—I walked to the door.

“Sensible little woman, this of yours, William,” his uncle trumpeted
approvingly, holding it open for me. “Knows there’s a time for
everything.... All to yourself for good, presently; _that’s_ been
official for months now. Don’t you glower at me, lad, I saw you——”

The door shut behind me. But through it I heard Uncle Albert’s
robustious: “Why! Bless my life! Anyone would think I’d interrupted you
before you’d been engaged five minutes!”




POSTSCRIPT

FULL MOON


“This,” said Billy, taking in a full breath of the sea-scented air of
Porth Cariad, “is better than your old idea of a Riviera honeymoon,
Nancy!”

We had just walked down from the larger of the cottages towards the
shore, and were watching that great primrose-coloured Chinese lantern
of a moon rise slowly, slowly over the jagged, purple silhouette of the
Carnarvonshire mountains into the pale mauve September dusk.

Presently it would cast a glittering path of light across the Bay of Many
Waters, and throw a black shadow from the cliff of the wooden woman on
to the sands of our cove. There was a soft lap-lapping of the high tide
beneath us, and a softer scurrying of rabbits among the sand-hills; now
and again a gull called, or we caught the distant shouts of the men in
the fishing-boats putting out for the night.

Beyond these small sounds there was a great and brooding Peace; we were
two hundred miles and more from the noise and sunshine and merriment
of the morning, from the great green lawn sown with all the colour and
movement of the wedding-party, living confetti!—from the white house,
echoing with laughter, and voices—Theo’s above the rest—calling far after
us: “Good luck! Good luck!”

“And are you glad to be back here, with me, to-night?”

“To-morrow,” I said dreamily, “we’ll go everywhere where we used to go——”

“Over to that cliff, Nancy——”

“Yes, and finish painting that figure-head——”

“Yes, or _not_ finish painting her. We’ve wasted too much good time at
Port Sweetheart as it is!”

But I felt that all our time here had all been so lovely—all! And now,
this cool white radiance was bathing the place in a light more magical
than any day I had seen. It made of it one of those dream-countries
one walks in, half-waking, as a child: a wide and lonely, lovely land;
secret, too! of which one would not give the entrance to one’s very
dearest; a land I had scarcely dreamed of since I was a half-grown girl.
Why did those dreams come back to me now? I stared out to sea; I didn’t
want to move or speak; just to be there, watching that moonlight on
those waves, was enough. I was as still as that image of that other girl,
high up on the cliff....

At that moment I felt ... not myself at all, but outside myself and part
of it all—of the quivering, whispering sea under that chill and silver
light, of those fairy hills, of the sighing, cool air, and of the dewy
earth. There was something of all these in my own being—something of mine
in all of them. For that one moment I had forgotten the lover beside me;
for just that last rapt moment he was nothing to me....

Then he spoke.

“The lights on the boats down there ... like glow-worms! Only those are
putting out to sea. And a glow-worm lights up—did you know why? to guide
its mate home.”

I sighed; slowly, slowly growing back again, out of the inhuman white
glamour and that silver distance....

“Are there,” I asked, a little absently, “any glow-worms in this place?”

“Further inland, perhaps,” he said.

Very gently, he drew me round to face the cottages. A warmer, dimmer,
rosier light streamed through the door of the kitchen, where we caught
the pinky round globe of the lamp, the gleam of the white cloth, the
small, dark, cosy shape of Mrs. Roberts moving to and fro, setting, with
a little chinking of plates and forks, our supper.

She came to the door and called in her insidious voice, “_Mae’n barod
rwan, sir!_”

“That means it’s ready now,” said Billy softly. “Come in, dear. Yes—those
lights are outward-bound, Nancy. But you—you’re anchored, aren’t you? All
fast?”

“Ah, but as I love to be,” I said, this time with a happy sigh; and
turned—to his breast.

He clasped me, crushing against my neck a kiss that has left there, rosy
and distinct, the impression of a chain....

It’s that slender gold chain which holds the little oval pendant framing
a christening-curl. His mother fastened that gift beneath the white
shimmer of my bridal-gown this morning.

And I remember something that she said when first she offered it.

Presently, I shall tell my husband what it was.


THE END

_Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._