Red Hair Part 13

However, she was awfully kind to me, and lovely, and has asked me to go and stay with her, and lots of nice things, so it is all for the best, no doubt. But when Lord Robert came in, and came over to us, it did feel hard having to get up at once and go and pretend I wanted to talk to Malcolm.

I did not dare to look up often, but sometimes, and I found Lord Robert's eyes were fixed on me with an air of reproach and entreaty, and the last time there was wrath as well.

Lady Verningham kept him with her until every one started to go to bed.

There had been music and bridge, and other boring diversions happening, but I sat still. And I don't know what Malcolm had been talking about; I had not been listening, though I kept murmuring "Yes" and "No."

He got more and more _empresse_, until suddenly I realized he was saying, as we rose:

"You have promised! Now remember, and I shall ask you to keep it--to-morrow."

And there was such a loving, mawkish, wobbly look in his eyes, it made me feel quite sick. The horrible part is I don't know what I have promised any more than the man in the moon. It may be something perfectly dreadful, for all I know. Well, if it is a fearful thing, like kissing him, I shall have to break my word, which I never do for any consideration whatever.

Oh, dear, oh, dear! It is not always so easy to laugh at life as I once thought. I almost wish I were settled down, and had not to be an adventuress. Some situations are so difficult. I think now I shall go to bed.

I wonder if Lord Robert---- No, what is the good of wondering; he is no longer my affair.

I shall blow out the light.

300 PARK STREET,

Sat.u.r.day night, _November 19th._

I do not much care to look back to the rest of my stay at Tryland. It is an unpleasant memory.

That next day after I last wrote, it poured with rain, and every one came down cross to breakfast. The whole party appeared, except Lady Verningham, and breakfast was just as stiff and boring as dinner. I happened to be seated when Lord Robert came in, and Malcolm was in the place beside me.

Lord Robert hardly spoke, and looked at me once or twice with his eyebrows right up.

I did long to say it was because I had promised Lady Ver I would not play with him that I was not talking to him now like the afternoon before. I wonder if he ever guessed it. Oh, I wished then, and I have wished a hundred times since, that I had never promised at all. It seemed as if it would be wisest to avoid him, as how could I explain the change in myself?

I hated the food, and Malcolm had such an air of proprietors.h.i.+p it annoyed me as much as I could see it annoyed Lady Katherine. I sniffed at him, and was as disagreeable as could be.

The breakfasts there don't s.h.i.+ne, and porridge is pressed upon people by Mr. Montgomerie. "Capital stuff to begin the day--burrrr," he says.

Lord Robert could not find anything he wanted, it seemed. Every one was peevish. Lady Katherine has a way of marshalling people on every occasion; she reminds me of a hen with chickens, putting her wings down and clucking and chasing till they are all in a corner. And she is rather that shape, too, very much rounded in front. The female brood soon found themselves in the morning-room, with the door shut, and no doubt the male things fared the same with their host--anyway, we saw no more of them till we caught sight of them pa.s.sing the windows in scutums and mackintoshes, a depressed company of sportsmen.

The only fortunate part was that Malcolm had found no opportunity to remind me of my promise, whatever it was, and I felt safer.

Oh, that terrible morning! Much worse than when we were alone; nearly all of them, about seven women beyond the family, began fancy-work.

One, a Lady Let.i.tia Smith, was doing a crewel silk blotting-book that made me quite bilious to look at, and she was very short-sighted, and had such an irritating habit of asking every one to match her threads for her. They knitted ties and stockings, and crocheted waistcoats and comforters and hoods for the North Sea fishermen, and one even tatted. Just like housemaids do in their spare hours to trim Heaven knows what garment of unbleached calico.

I asked her what it was for, and she said for the children's pinafores in her "guild" work. If one doesn't call that waste of time, I wonder what is.

Mrs. Carruthers said it was much more useful to learn to sit still and not fidget than to fill the world with rubbish like this.

Mary Mackintosh dominated the conversation. She and Lady Let.i.tia Smith, who have both small babies, revelled in nursery details, and then whispered bits for us, the young girls not to hear. We caught sc.r.a.ps though, and it sounded grewsome, whatever it was about. Oh, I do wonder when I get married if I shall grow like them!

I hope not.

It is no wonder married men are obliged to say gallant things to other people, if, when they get home, their wives are like that.

I tried to be agreeable to a lady who was next me. She was a Christian Scientist, and wore gla.s.ses. She endeavored to convert me, but I was abnormally thick-headed that day, and had to have things explained over and over, so she gave it up at last.

Finally, when I felt I should do something desperate, a footman came to say Lady Verningham wished to see me in her room, and I bounded up, but as I got to the door I saw them beginning to shake their heads over her.

"Sad that dear Ianthe has such irregular habits of breakfasting in her room; so bad for her," etc., etc. But, thank Heaven, I was soon outside in the hall, where her maid was waiting for me.

One would hardly have recognized that it was a Montgomerie apartment, the big room overlooking the porch, where she was located, so changed did its aspect seem. She had numbers of photographs about, and the loveliest gold toilet things, and lots of frilled garments, and flowers, and scent-bottles; and her own pillows propping her up, all blue silk, and lovely muslin embroideries; and she did look such a sweet, cosey thing among it all, her dark hair in fluffs round her face, and an angelic lace cap over it. She was smoking a cigarette, and writing numbers of letters with a gold stylograph pen. The blue silk quilt was strewn with correspondence, and newspapers, and telegraph forms. And her garment was low-necked, of course, and thin like mine. I wondered what Alexander would have thought if he could have seen her in contrast to Mary. I know which I would choose if I were a man.

"Oh, there you are!" she exclaimed, looking up, and puffing smoke clouds.

"Sit on the bye-bye, snake-girl. I felt I must rescue you from the h.o.a.rd of holies below, and I wanted to look at you in the daylight. Yes, you have extraordinary hair, and real eyelashes and complexion, too. You are a witch thing, I can see, and we shall all have to beware of you."

I smiled. She did not say it rudely, or I should have been uppish at once.

She has a wonderful charm.

"You don't speak much, either," she continued. "I feel you are dangerous.

That is why I am being so civil to you; I think it wisest. I can't stand girls as a rule." And she went into one of her ripples of laughter. "Now say you will not hurt me."

"I should not hurt any one," I said. "Unless they hurt me first, and I like you, you are so pretty."

"That is all right," she said. "Then we are comrades. I was frightened about Robert last evening, because I am so attached to him; but you were a darling after dinner, and it will be all right now. I told him you would probably marry Malcolm Montgomerie, and he was not to interfere."

"I shall do nothing of the kind!" I exclaimed, moving off the bed. "I would as soon die as spend the rest of my life here at Tryland."

"He will be fabulously rich one day, you know, and you could get round pere Montgomerie in a trice, and revolutionize the whole place. You had better think of it."

"I won't," I said, and I felt my eyes sparkle. She put up her hands as if to ward off an evil spirit, and she laughed again. "Well, you sha'n't then. Only don't flash those emeralds at me; they give me quivers all over."

"Would _you_ like to marry Malcolm?" I asked and I sat down again. "Fancy being owned by that! Fancy seeing it every day! Fancy living with a person who never sees a joke from week's end to week's end! Oh!"

"As for that--" and she puffed smoke. "Husbands are a race apart--there are men, women, and husbands; and if they pay bills, and shoot big game in Africa, it is all one ought to ask of them; to be able to see jokes is superfluous. Mine is most inconvenient, because he generally adores me, and at best only leaves me for a three weeks' cure at Homburg, and now and then a week at Paris; but Malcolm could be sent to the Rocky Mountains, and places like that, continuously; he is quite a sportsman."

"That is not my idea of a husband," I said.

"Well, what is your idea, snake-girl?"

"Why do you call me 'snake-girl'?" I asked. "I hate snakes."

She took her cigarette out of her mouth, and looked at me for some seconds.

"Because you are so sinuous; there is not a stiff line about your movements, you are utterly wicked-looking and attractive, too, and un-English, and what in the world Aunt Katherine asked you here for with those hideous girls I can't imagine. I would not have, if my three angels were grown up, and like them--" Then she showed me the photographs of her three angels--they are pets.

But my looks seemed to bother her, for she went back to them.

"Where do you get them from? Was your mother some other nation?"