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.