XXX LADY BRIDGMINSTER, POTTER

But he was not to return to Munich and Margarethe Styr at present. That excellent friend of his, Princess Nachmeister, having ascertained throughout the summer that, although indefatigable in his attendance upon the prima donna, he wore neither the hopeless mien of rejected love nor that of sublime content, had kept her lance in rest. Moreover, she well knew that the vestal Lutz would never have lent her countenance to a liaison, neither could it have escaped eyes sharp with an old maid’s resentful curiosity. Therefore, although uneasy, Excellenz had not thought it worth while to interfere with his studies; but upon the day she learned of his departure for London she wrote to Lady Bridgminster, with whom she had some time since fallen into correspondence, advising her to prevent her son’s return to Munich. Only he could have resisted Styr during long months of intimacy, and then only because she had chosen that he should. But he was growing older every hour, there was no telling in what moment he might awake and call himself an ass, nor, in faith, when Styr would recover from her long attack of virtue. Sudden interruptions in deep but continent intimacies had proved fatal before. They would not be the first to discover that they could not exist apart. Better divert his mind at once.

Therefore, when Ordham drove up to his mother’s house on his return from the north, he was surprised to find the curtains up, the door opened by a footman instead of the caretaker that had attended to his wants during his previous visit. He wished that he had driven from Paddington to Victoria, for he was in no humour to meet any other member of his family at present; but when the footman informed him that her ladyship would expect him for tea in the drawing-room in half an hour he summoned what grace was in him, and sent her word that he would join her as soon as he had rid himself of soot and dust.

His bath braced him somewhat, and he went downstairs resignedly to answer his mother’s questions. He hated questions, and she could ask more than any one he knew. Lady Bridgminster was seated at the tea-table, and knowing better than to wait for him, had just finished her first cup. She rose and met him halfway, for it was several years since she had treated him negligently, and even her kiss, if not too maternal, was something more than a peck. He told her that she was looking very handsome, and in that rosy light she seemed little older than her portrait. She wore clinging trailing garments of smoke-colored chiffon embroidered with peacocks’ feathers, and long strands of dull green and blue beads covered her flat chest and were wound through the mazes of her beautiful silvery blonde hair. She looked as ?sthetic as Wilde himself, and, indeed, he designed more than one of her gowns.

“Glad to see you so fit, Johnny dear,” she said in a very light musical voice. “It is too delightful that you have passed those tiresome examinations. How is Bridg?”

“Beastly drunk, probably.”

Lady Bridgminster, who had floated back to her chair, opened her eyes very wide. She rarely altered her expression, as it was then the belief that immobility made for perpetual youth, but she allowed her well-trained orbs to shed forth her astonishment.

“What? Does Bridg drink?”

“Rather.” Ordham had selected the most comfortable chair in the room and pushed it to the table. He received his cup of tea and disposed himself in the depths.

“Don’t be tiresome. Has he taken to drink as a habit?”

“He can barely handle a gun, eats next to nothing, and is now quite, instead of half, a boor. His face is twice its former size. There is no doubt that he is going the pace in his own quiet way.”

“And his health?”

“Good enough.”

“That accounts for several things I noticed when I was there last, but never thought of attributing to drink. Of course you did not get the money?”

“I got it.”

Lady Bridgminster drew a deep sigh of relief. “Then those wretched creditors of yours can be disposed of. The interviews I have had with them! What is the world coming to? My own are not more vulgar and impertinent. But this is only a respite, Johnny. Two years hence you will be in the same predicament; worse, no doubt. Bridg is good for twenty years yet. Did you persuade him to increase your income?”

“No, and he never will.”

“Then you must marry at once. Let us not beat about the bush.”

“I am not ready to marry. Please remember that I am barely twenty-four.”

“Fiddlesticks! You are forty. You are the sort in whom years count for next to nothing. Besides, your father was married at twenty-two, my father when he was six months younger. But that has little to do with it. There are certain times in life when opportunities seem fairly to fly at one. Ignore these caprices of Fortune, and you may spend the rest of your life chasing her. One of the greatest heiresses in England is dying to marry you. Not only have I carefully prepared her mind, but she has always been more or less in love with you, although she has not seen you now for five years.”

“Who can she be?”

“Manlike! Probably you will not even recall her when I tell you her name, for when she used to come to Ordham with her mother you were following the yellow curls of Jessie Middleton about her father’s park and never looked at poor Rosamond.”

A dark flush rose to Ordham’s very hair and he drew his brows together. “You surely do not mean Rosamond Hayle?”

“Ah! You do remember her?”

“Her front teeth stuck out. Her hair was like tow. Her pasty skin was covered with green freckles—”

“Oh, that was years ago. She has vastly improved.”

“Time cannot have altered the formation of her upper jaw. I doubt if it could put colour into her hair. You know quite well that I shall never marry an ugly woman. I even hate ugly men and children. I don’t set up to be an ?sthetic ass, but beauty I will have if I can command it, and at least I need not fasten myself for life to a woman whose ugliness is not even distinguished. As I recall Rosamond Hayle she was the apotheosis of the commonplace—and that was only five years ago.”

“My son, remember that she has forty thousand a year in her own right. They discovered coal mines on unentailed lands in Nottinghamshire and she was the only child.”

“I hope she may enjoy it. What of the American beauty and heiress you were so keen about?”

“Do you mean Mabel Cutting?” Lady Bridgminster dipped her tones in ice.

“Of course. Are there so many?”

“I thought favourably of her at first; but really, Mrs. Cutting was too keen. It was indecent. If we must put ourselves up for sale, let us not admit the fact to these outsiders. Her silly pedantic little daughter may have more money than Rosamond, but she is not our sort.”

“Pedantic?” Ordham had lost the rest of his mother’s observations. A vision of the deliciously pretty empty-headed little chatterbox had risen before him, alluring indeed after the frightful menace of Lady Rosamond Hayle. “Are we talking of the same person?”

“Rather. When the child first came over I liked her. She was a sweet, innocent, well-bred little thing, who knew no more than a young girl should. But the change soon began. Nearly every marriageable man in London ran after her, which was natural enough. I will do several the justice to believe that they were really in love with her, irrespective of the millions. Youth and beauty and sweet manners go far, and I suppose there is romance left even in London. I did not mind her head being turned. That also was natural, with artists painting her for the Academy and all the rest of it—although it was too silly of her to insist upon having that ridiculous LaLa in every picture. Well—when after a mere three months of such a success as few girls enjoy, she suddenly announced herself bored with society, declared that she did not yet know enough to waste so much time, that men talked only nonsense to her, and therefore taught her nothing, she forced her unfortunate mother, who loves society more than any woman I ever met, to retire to the country with a staff of tutors—oh, I have no patience with such nonsense. When girls have youth and beauty, the less brains they have the more attractive they are.”

“Oh?” Ordham had risen to his feet, his eyes very bright.

“Is not that too brief period for enjoyment pure and simple? Intellect does well enough when everything else has deserted a woman. What a waste of time and energy before! It has made this little American insufferable. When I heard yesterday they were in town I went out of common civility—as well as curiosity—to call. The girl looks moonstruck. She had not a word to say. No doubt her brains are addled.”

“Then they are in town? I must call to-morrow.”

Lady Bridgminster rose, and, sweeping over to her son’s side (she never merely walked), laid her hand on his shoulder. Her face was flushed and there were tears in her voice.

“My son,” she said solemnly, “let these people alone. Their ways are not our ways. They never make themselves really like us. It was only my desire to see you care-free in your youth that made me consider Mabel Cutting for a time. I have always disapproved of these international marriages. Americans are a thin, passionless, hybrid race, and, I am sure, vulgar at the core, no matter how deep the veneer. How could it be otherwise? Marry a woman of your own class and race—”

“Not Rosamond Hayle.”

“Don’t be tiresome.” She almost shook him. “No man knows how his wife looks six months after he has married her.”

“Think of those six months.”

“And a plain wife is so safe. In a diplomatic career, of all things, you want no scandals. How should you like being married to a professional beauty?”

“I should not mind a bit. I should find it insufferable to be the husband of a wife that every other man rejoiced was not his.”

“No man ever rejoiced that a woman with forty thousand pounds a year was not his wife.”

“I should if she were ugly.”

“Are you going to Grosvenor Square?”

“Of course. They showed me great politeness in Munich. It is a matter of common decency.”

“I believe they came up on purpose.” Lady Bridgminster’s well-composed features were in disarray. “What else would bring them up at this season? Their excuse, that Mabel wished to attend a series of concerts, was too silly. I might have suspected at once. You will not be such a silly little fly as to rush into their parlour?”

“There is no moat and drawbridge about the house in Grosvenor Square, I suppose? Don’t be foolish, Lady Pat.” (Everlastings rarely train their children to address them as “mother.”) “I must call on Mrs. Cutting. It commits me to nothing. If you can find me a beautiful and not too-English English girl, I will marry her, but not Rosamond Hayle.”

“I don’t know of another English girl of her class with such a fortune. I know these upstarts will get you!”

“Well, I shall not propose to-morrow,” he said lightly. And then he changed the conversation so deliberately that his mother sighed and rested on her arms for the present.