Part 21

Ordham acquired a certain adroitness in changing the current of his mother’s thought by introducing the subject of her poverty. This was real enough. Her father grew stingier day by day, and her mother, once the essence of worldliness (she, too, had been a beauty), now compromising with heaven through the expensive medium of royal charities, gave her smaller checks every year. How she lived at all heaven only knew. To be sure she had friends, and, thank God! was invited for Homburg or the Riviera every season, and never got round to the same country houses two years in succession. But all that meant clothes, clothes! Heavens, how things did cost! Sometimes she had wished that the boys were girls, but think what _they_ would have cost in clothes. And girls made slaves of their mothers. As to the boys, they were better off without her and could be kept in the country the year round. Their health was wonderful. If they had ever had even the measles or whooping-cough, she had not heard of it. Mortimer (the family solicitor) paid their bills.

If Lady Bridgminster had a preference for any of her children, for any mortal, indeed, save herself, it was for her oldest son, whom she understood in some things so well, and in others not at all. He was interesting, he never bored her. The other five were fine orthodox straightforward English boys, who were only happy when out of doors or satisfying their mighty appetites. She was a little uncomfortable about her second son, Stanley, now twenty-two, and, no doubt, expecting to be entertained in town occasionally. But until her brilliant eldest brought gold to the coffers Stanley must content himself where he was, and there was plenty of room for him, during his holidays, in the dower house. She ran down to see him occasionally, as well as to Kent, and the boys were immensely flattered; Stanley, in particular, when she honoured Sandhurst, showing her off to his companions with a pride not without its pathos. She would willingly have showered money on them, poor souls, and had the youngest up for the pantomimes; but what could she do?

Ordham went one day to visit his brothers. He was fond of them in the abstract, although after the first half hour he was at a loss for subjects of conversation and wearied of theirs. They were somewhat in awe of their magnificent brother, whom they regarded as the head of the family, Bridgminster being more or less of a myth to them. Ordham upon this occasion felt pride as ever in their fine manly appearance, but when the youngest frankly demanded tips was mortified not to be able to respond generously, and wished that he had not come. To them he stood in the shoes of their indulgent father; moreover, Ordham was one of those unfortunate persons who, while possessing the very special gift of wearing new clothes for the first time as if they had been in his wardrobe for at least two months, yet impressed the beholder as a young man of unlimited income, and on the Continent sent the prices up in every shop he entered. He left the house in Kent so deeply vexed at being obliged to give his brothers silver instead of gold that he was in a frame of mind to call on Rosamond Hayle; but in London he found a note from his mother informing him that she had run down to Brighton for the night with that paragon, and he dismissed all things disagreeable from his mind and spent the evening with the Cuttings.

He had lunched or dined or driven with them every day for a fortnight, always entering the cool exquisite house with a sensation of gratitude, especially now that he spent his mornings in the Foreign Office, for the weather continued hot. And this house, with shades drawn and great bunches of flowers in priceless bowls, always struck him afresh as the most perfect setting possible for the young châtelaine, always drifting about in a pale diaphanous gown; she wore a new one every time he saw her. Mrs. Cutting invariably wore black,—jet, lace, or net,—and he sometimes wondered if she deliberately were making a foil of herself; she was still young enough to take pleasure in colours. This question did not give him pause, however, his mental processes being now wholly engaged with the riddle of his sentiments toward Mabel Cutting. Was he on the edge of love, at last? He had gone so far as to resolve to marry her if she would have him, for wed he must, and never could he hope to find another girl with so much to recommend her. But he was still reluctant to give up his liberty; could he but fall a victim to the grand passion, hesitation would be consumed, and he should count himself the happiest of mortals—that is, if she would accept him. He forced his mind to dwell upon her and angrily reproached himself for being as cold as a fish. That she interested and intrigued him beyond any girl he had ever met was indisputable, and he increasingly longed for talks alone with her, that he might explore the tempting by-paths of that mind and character. But Mrs. Cutting was a stickler for the proprieties and did not believe in exposing young people to the criticism of servants. Occasionally Mabel enlivened and talked rapidly and pleasantly about a new play or a bit of news in the artist or social world, but soon relapsed into her usual dreamy silence and left the burden of the conversation to her mother. Once she deliberately picked up a book and read for an hour; and upon another occasion, when the weather was more than commonly warm, she took a little gold box from her pocket and powdered her nose. This Ordham found quite adorable, and was even fascinated by the independence that prompted her to turn from the conversation that did not interest her to the literature that did.

Mrs. Cutting was ever bright and entertaining, being a passed mistress of the art of small talk, but there were times when Ordham hated the sound of her voice, and was not sure whether his impatience were due to his desire to talk with the daughter, or to the possible fact that Margarethe Styr had spoilt him for the conversation of other women. Although grateful that she was not close enough to divert him from his purpose, he felt the sudden deprivation of her society; the more as her letters were brief and unsatisfactory. She was on her _Gastspiel_ and the weather was very warm; but she promised him long letters upon her return to Munich—that is, unless he delightfully returned, as he had promised. This he now knew he should not do until he was safely married; but he was not the man to give his beloved friend a hint of the matrimonial state of his mind or the fluid condition of his affections. Styr pictured him dutifully dancing attendance upon his mother, who, for reasons, was detained in London.

Once he gently insinuated to Miss Cutting that he should like to read with her during the long afternoons, or at least discuss with her the books that occupied her morning hours. But to these hints she was impervious, and, by way of compensating him, Mrs. Cutting proposed a game of tennis every morning before his duties commenced. To this bait Ordham rose like a famished trout, and it somewhat surprised him that Mabel accepted the suggestion no less eagerly than himself. The three drove out to a court in Chelsea every morning at half-past eight, and he played for an hour or two with a radiant vision in a short skirt, a red jersey, and tumbling yellow hair. Mabel did not play a particularly good game, but her interest was youthful and eager, and her admiration of his so outspoken, when her manners, like her toilette, were in déshabillé, that he wondered if there were no end to the charms of this remarkable girl.

XXXV YOUTH

One Saturday morning, while dressing, Ordham received a note from Miss Cutting, which, in phrases as light and graceful as her handwriting, conveyed the information that her mother was in bed with a headache, and that unless dear Lady Bridgminster—who, she feared, no longer liked them—would consent to act as chaperon, their game of tennis must be postponed until Monday. He answered that he knew of nothing that would give his mother more pleasure, but as she always slept until ten he hesitated to awaken her. He was disconsolate, and so forth, and so forth. At eleven, he casually presented himself at the familiar door in Grosvenor Square, and upon being told that Mrs. Cutting was indisposed, entered, as a matter of course, waved the footman aside, and wended his way up to the music room, whence issued the strains of Chopin’s _Impromptu in D_. He stood in the doorway until the unconscious Mabel had finished, listening critically, for Mabel had always refused to play for him. Ordham had no technical knowledge of music, but he had heard a great deal of it because it appealed powerfully to those tracts in his brain which were not mental; he therefore realized that if Mabel’s performance lacked the subtle appeals that go with the velvet touch and depth of expression, there was no doubt of the correctness and brilliancy of her execution. He was rather gratified than otherwise at this lack of a quality that belonged to the maturer mind, not to innocent girlhood. When she had finished, he went forward, and she rose with a blush, the first with which she had favoured him. She looked startled, almost frightened.

“Mom—mother—” she began.

“You will forgive me? Please do. I really could not put in the whole day alone. If you turn me out, I shall be driven to accept an invitation to the country, and I should hate it. Come and talk to me for a bit.”

His eyes coaxed even more than his voice. She led the way to the front drawing-room and seated herself in a chair beside the open window, her poise quite recovered, and talked to him with her inimitable girlish graciousness about nothing in particular. Her old loquacity was outgrown, it was evident; but with her mother ill and a guest on her hands, courtesy demanded that she should make an effort.

But Ordham was determined to seize this opportunity to explore her mind; he had come for no other purpose. Only for the moment was he content to sit and admire her, although she had never looked more like a lovely French princess; that puzzled one, perhaps, who asked why, since the mob had no bread, they did not eat cake. She wore a white gown with a blue sash and a blue ribbon in her hair. Her repose was extraordinary in so young a girl, but once or twice Ordham fancied he detected a nervous compression of her lips. Her large golden brown eyes, however, from which the dreams had been politely banished, smiled at him with a concentration singularly flattering after his many failures to capture even their wandering attention.

“I wish you would tell me what you read,” he said abruptly; “I have wondered and wondered if you care for any of my favourites.”

“I should never dare to tell you what mine are, for I am sure you would despise them. I happen to know what your favourites are—and I have been permitted to read only a few of the foreign classics—mother does not think I should. But books were made to be read and studied, not to be discussed; don’t you think so? I am reading hard in the hope of one day becoming something more than a butterfly, but I have had so little time! Don’t examine me!”

Ordham thought this enchantingly modest. “Why should not we read together? There is so much I should like to get through, but one needs an incentive in this weather. That would be the strongest!”

An expression singularly like alarm flitted through those radiant orbs, but the explanation came in her cry: “Not yet! Not yet! When you come back to England next time. Then I shall know so much more. How perfectly wonderful of you to have passed those terrible examinations—I don’t mean that it was wonderful for you, although so many fail, but you have so much to distract your mind from study. Where do you expect to go first?”

“Oh, St. Petersburg, Rome, Constantinople.”

“It is like you not to want to go back to Paris or to be sent to Washington. All of those capitals must be so perfectly interesting.”

It was a few moments before he realized that she had deftly led the conversation far from literature and was making him talk about himself. He deliberately returned to his exploitations, for nothing in life now interested him as much as the mind hidden behind that full luminous brow, those unfathomable eyes. He had taken a long drive the night before, thinking of Styr and sharply realizing that life without mental companionship would be insupportable. There had been a return of those half-comprehended mutterings of a deeper companionship still, and the whisper that Styr alone held the key to a locked room in his soul; but he was by no means inclined to force the lock and analyze the contents of that room, being vaguely but uneasily conscious that if he did he should suddenly find himself shot out of his present harbour into stormy seas. He had concluded that if this beautiful and accomplished girl really possessed an intellect that could be cultivated to understand and companion his own, and would marry him, he should be an ingrate to ask more of life.

“Why ‘not yet’? Do you forget that I am only twenty-four? I really know nothing at all. If it were not for the fact that nobody ever forced me to study and I put in a good part of the time reading in the library at Ordham, and again, if I had not happened to be much attracted by the Continental theatre, I should be quite ignorant.”

“Really?” She opened her eyes at this paradoxical jumble in a fashion which suggested the old simile, “saucer.” “You have the reputation of being quite too frightfully clever.”

“I wish I were! It is merely that I am not athletic. All my numerous relations are, and they think that as I am not, I must have contracted the vice of brains. But it is all a mistake. I am sure you could teach me. Let us read Meredith together.”

She looked as if about to cry. “I—I—have been dying to read Meredith,” she faltered; “but mother does not think he is quite proper. She does not approve very much of novels, anyway. I console myself with history and memoirs,—and—and—I—well—”

Her cheeks were stained with a beautiful color. She dropped her long eyelashes, hesitated for a full minute, during which Ordham—why, he could not define—held his breath, then raised her eyes to his with a glance of dazzling, of unmistakable coquetry. Its effect, after her long period of indifference, was electrical, and the remark which followed that direct appeal of youth to youth made him turn white.

“Let us talk about that fortnight in Munich,” she almost whispered. “I was so desperately in love with you, poor little soul; and you—you were not quite indifferent. You might have written me one little letter.”

“I—I—” he stammered. “I banished your memory. It was my only refuge. I should not have learned the little German I did. I should have followed you—”

“I am glad that you did not. I was such a little goose—”

“You were enchanting!”

She shook her head. “But only for two weeks! Otherwise, German or not, you would have followed. Even now, I am afraid you think me stupid; but at least I have learned not to bore people when they can listen to mother. Besides, she does not approve of girls talking very much. But I have thought of ten thousand things I should love to talk to you about. Books? Oh, that is only one. Of course I cannot think of any of them now. That is always the way.”

“You might have given me a glance once in a while to let me know you recognized my existence! I have always been made to feel that I was exclusively your mother’s friend.”

“Well—” She lifted her shoulder in the French manner which expresses many words. Then her eyes discarded coquetry and became sombre. “One hates the idea of being put on exhibition. That was spared me until you came. But of course you know—you would be a fool if you didn’t—that mother is dying to have us marry. That is enough to make a girl hate a man. But now that I can see you don’t care a bit about it, I like you much better.” And she rewarded him with the sweetest smile he had ever seen.

Ordham was cold from head to foot, but he answered steadily: “But I do care about it. I want to marry you very much.”

“Oh!” She pouted until her lips looked so kissable that Ordham flushed darkly. Then she became dignified and reserved once more. It was as if she dropped a veil before all that was still too young in her, and became the maiden of many millions and superior mind. But he saw that she clenched her hands in a fold of her gown to keep them from shaking.

“Are you proposing?” she asked gently.

“Is that the tone you assume when about to refuse a man?”

“I don’t think I ever want to marry.”

“Nor did I until I met you. I hated the thought of it.”

“I don’t mean—I mean that one should love very much to marry. That seems more difficult than learning Chopin or—or—literature! All girls dream of the prince—but he does not seem to come to me.”

“You just told me that you were fond of me once.”

“Oh, at that age! It is quite ten years ago. I like to have you come here—oh, immensely! But love!”

“Then you do not hate me? Sometime I have felt sure that you did.”

“Sometimes I have. As I said—no girl enjoys being thrown at a man’s head. I feared you would think I had a hand in it.”

“I never flattered myself.”

“Then you really are unlike other men.”

“Do you care for any one else?”

“Oh, no. I have an American cousin, Bobby Driscom, who is arriving in a week or so from New York. He and his father are bankers and take care of our affairs. I used to think him handsomer than any god could possibly be, but I have not seen him for two years.”

Ordham experienced such torments of jealousy that he bit his lips and beat a tattoo on the floor with his foot. “Does that mean—Tell me—do you dislike me now that you find I want to marry you? You said that my only charm—”

“Was that you were not in love with me.”

“But I am!”

“I think you only want to marry me—as you put it before. I won’t say a word about my horrid money, because I know perfectly well you would not marry for that alone. But you think I would make a good all-round wife for a diplomat—”

“How can you say such things?”

“I really think I should. And I am positive that you do not love me—yet, at all events. I may not be quite nineteen, but I have had a good many men in love with me, all the same. They began while I was in short frocks and wore my hair in plaits. If I don’t know much about anything else, I am not quite a fool on that subject. Ah, here is luncheon being announced and I cannot ask you to stop. How hateful are all these little _convenances_ that hedge a girl about!” She rose and held out her hand. “But we will play tennis on Monday? Meanwhile do not let us think of such serious things as love and marriage. Youth does not last so very long. When you are thirty and I am twenty-four, come and propose to me again. And please, please do not tell mother that you proposed to me to-day, or I shall not have a happy time. Mother is sweet and dear, but when she sets her mind upon a thing—Will you promise?”

“Of course. But I don’t intend to wait until I am thirty to propose again.”

He was dismissed with a bewildering, tantalizing smile beneath sad, unfathomable eyes, that sent him up the wrong street and caused him nearly to be run down twice by hansom cabs.

XXXVI THE RACE

During the ensuing fortnight he looked as if a blight had passed over him. His face grew pinched and white, he lost his magnetism, his fine remote dignified assurance, even his good manners. His mother, in as superb an outburst of disdain as he had ever witnessed on the stage, told him that the very cabbies, to say nothing of the servants, must see that he was in the throes of his calf-love, and that he was even more odious than young men usually were during that last and worst of children’s diseases; thanking her stars that she was not forced to remain under the same roof with him, she flounced off to Paris with Rosamond Hayle. Ordham, could he have experienced pleasure in anything during this excruciating period, would have felt delight in being rid of her.

Alas! he could no longer flatter himself with doubts regarding his feeling for the young American beauty, indulge in mental analyses. He had forgotten Styr, his ambitions, his calm belief in himself and his star. But one woman, one object, existed on this earth for him, and he only paused to wonder that he had ever thought himself incapable of love. No man ever got sharper wounds from the archaic darts. He was sentimentally, passionately, wretchedly in love. He thought of nothing else. For the first time in his life appetite and sleep were affected. Several people from whom he had received much hospitality while in Paris paid a short visit to London and sought him out as a matter of course. He took no notice of them. Styr, at last, found time to write him a long letter. He did not even read it. He forgot the existence of the Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, he saw the young lady daily. If she had been merely indifferent before, she was now almost rude, regretting, no doubt, her girlish recrudescence. Mrs. Cutting, were it possible, was even more impressive in her attentions to him. He felt as if tossed between fire and ice, and although this torment had its fascination, he sometimes wished that the mother would gratify the daughter and turn him out. Then he could flee to the ends of the earth, and make some attempt to extinguish the flames that devoured him. He was quite aware of his changed appearance, and one morning, while brushing his hair and scowling at his nervous white face, recalled what Styr had said about young people in the ferment of first love being the mere victims of the race, reversions to type. That, no doubt, was what was the matter with him, and it was no consolation to reflect that it was so much good passion thrown away. If a man had to undergo such torments, why, in heaven’s name, didn’t the girl catch the fever? He should not in the least mind being one of Nature’s victims if he were permitted to be happy with a fellow-victim. Otherwise, there was no sense in it.

The tennis games were abandoned, as he slept late after his bad nights, and Hines, after one conscientious attempt to awaken him, declined the office of mentor a second time. But he spent a part of every day in Grosvenor Square, from which he could not keep away; although he believed that no old-time martyr boiling in a cauldron and pinched with red-hot nippers ever suffered such agonies as his. But at last pride revolted, his spirit cried out under its crushing load, and he had an attack of acute indigestion. He pointedly broke an engagement for luncheon, and presented himself at five o’clock determined to say good-by and leave England next day. He should not return to Munich, for he never wanted to see another woman; probably he should go out to India and remodel himself upon the commonplace family likeness by shooting tigers and sending home the skins.