The Hoyden Part 71

"Awkward?"

"Yes. Nasty people go about asking their ages, especially the age of the eldest little horror, and then they can guess to a nicety how long one must have lived. It's a mean way of finding out one's age.

I'm thankful _I_ have no children."

Mrs. Chichester leans back in her chair and laughs.

Perhaps--_perhaps_--there is a regret in her laugh.

"I think it is the _children_ who ought to be thankful," says old Miss Gower, covering her with a condemnatory glance.

Mrs. Chichester turns her eye on her.

"Do you know, Miss Gower, you have for once hit a happy truth," says she.

She smiles blandly on the terrible old maid. But t.i.ta, who has just come down from her room, and has entered the hut, is struck by the queer expression in her eyes.

"You have come at last, t.i.ta," says Margaret, going to her.

"I have had such a headache," says t.i.ta, pressing her hands to her brow. "It has worried me all day. But I came down now, hoping the air and"--sweetly looking round her--"all of you would cure it."

"I think you ought to be lying down," says Margaret, seeing the pallor of the young face before her, and pitying the determination, so plainly to be seen, to keep up.

"Maurice"--to Rylton, who has come on the scene a moment later than his wife, so immediately after her, indeed, that one might be forgiven for imagining he had come in her train, only for one thing, he had come from an opposite direction--"Maurice, I think t.i.ta should be induced to lie down for a bit. She looks tired."

"Nonsense," says t.i.ta.

Her tone is almost repellent, although it is to Margaret she speaks.

But in reality the tone is meant for Maurice.

"I've got a headache, certainly. But I firmly believe that it has grown out of the knowledge that you are all going to desert me to-morrow."

This little speech, most innocently meant, she points by smiling at her cousin, Tom Hescott. She had been unkind to him down there in the shrubbery awhile ago, she tells herself, and now she is telling him in silent, sweet little ways that she meant nothing nasty, nothing cold or uncourteous.

Her husband, watching her, sees the glance, and grinds under it. He misunderstands it. As for Tom! Poor Tom! He, too, sees the pretty glance, and he, too, misunderstands it.

All at once a quick but most erroneous thought springs to life within his heart. Her glance now! Her tears awhile ago! Were they for him? Is she sorry because he is leaving her? Is her life here unbearable?

Mrs. Bethune has risen and come up to t.i.ta.

"You speak as if we were going to leave you to immediate destruction?" says she. "Are you afraid of being left alone with--Maurice?"

Mrs. Chichester, who has a great deal of good in her, mixed up with a terrible amount of frivolity, comes forward so quietly that t.i.ta's sudden whiteness is hardly seen, except by one.

"Fancy being afraid of Sir Maurice," says she. "Sir Maurice,"

casting a laughing glance at him, _"I_ shouldn't be afraid of you."

Sir Maurice laughs back, and everyone laughs with him, and Mrs.

Bethune's barb is blunted.

"I am not afraid of anything," says t.i.ta lightly. "But I confess I feel sorry at the thought of losing you all, even for a time----"

This prettily, and with a glance round her as good as an invitation for next year.

"I know you, Minnie" (to her cousin), "are going to delightful people--and you," turning suddenly to Mrs. Bethune, "I hope you are going to friends?"

"Friends! I have no friends," says Marian Bethune sombrely. "I have learned to forbid myself such luxuries. I can't afford them. I find them too expensive!"

"Expensive?"

"Yes. A loss to me of peace of mind that can never be made up." She smiles at t.i.ta, a cold, unpleasant smile. "Do you know what my definition of a friend is? Someone who takes delight in telling you all the detestable things your _other_ friends have said of you."

"I don't think much of _your_ friends, any way," says Mrs.

Chichester, who as a rule is always _en evidence_. "Do you, Sir Maurice?"

"Do I what?"

"Do you agree with Mrs. Bethune?"

"I always agree with everybody," says Rylton, smiling.

t.i.ta moves abruptly away.

"What a hot day it is," says she petulantly, "and nothing to do.

Tom," beckoning Hescott to her, "tell us a story. Do. You used to tell beautiful ones--in--the old days."

"Do you still long for them?" asks Mrs. Bethune, always with her supercilious smile, and in a tone that is almost a whisper, yet quite loud enough for Rylton, who is standing near, to hear.

"Do _you?"_ demands t.i.ta, turning upon her with eyes ablaze with miserable anger.

"I?" haughtily. "What do you mean?"

t.i.ta lifts her eyes to Rylton--_such_ eyes.

_"He_ will tell you," says she, and with a little scornful lifting of her chin she turns away.

"Now for your story, Tom," cries she gaily, merrily.

"You take me very short," says Hescott, who seems, in his present mood, which is of the darkest, to be the last man in Europe to tell an amusing tale. "But one occurs to me, and, of course," looking round him, "you all know it. Everyone nowadays knows every story that has and has not been told since the world began. Well, any way, I heard of a man the other day who--it is a most extraordinary thing--but he hated his wife!"

"For goodness' sake tell us something new," says Mrs. Chichester, with open disgust.

"Isn't that new? Well, this man was at a prayer-meeting of some sort. There is a sort of bad man that hankers after prayer-meetings, and, of course, this was a bad man because he hated his wife. It was at the East End, and Job was the subject. Job is good for an East-End meeting, because patience is the sort of thing you must preach there nowadays if you wish to keep your houses from being set on fire; and he heard of all the troubles of Job, and how he was cursed--and how his children and cattle and goods had been taken from him--and _only his wife left!_ That struck him--_about the wife!_ 'Hang it! That was a big curse!' said he. 'Fancy leaving the _wife!'_ And the odd part of it was," says Hescott, lifting his eyes and looking deliberately at Rylton, "that his wife was an angel, whereas he--well, _she_ was the Job of _his_ life. She had to endure all things at his hands."

Rylton looks back at him, and feels his brow grow black with rage.

He would have liked to take him and choke the life out of him.

"A delightful story," says he, with a sneer. "So fresh, so _original!"_

"Very dull, I think," says Mrs. Chichester, who _can't_ hold her tongue. "An everyday sort of thing. Lady Rylton, what do you think?"