Set in Silver Part 6

By the way, the left arm seems all right now. Anyhow, he uses it as arms are meant to be used, so far as I can see, so evidently it improved with time.

The papers tell about his coming back to England, and his Warwicks.h.i.+re castle, and the fire, and Mrs. Norton giving up her house in--some county or other; I've already forgotten which--to live with her "distinguished brother." Also, they say that he has a ward, whose mother was a relative of the family, and whose father was the Honourable Frederic Lethbridge, so well known and popular in society during the "late eighties." Ellaline was born in 1891. What had become of him, I'd like to know? Perhaps he died before she was born. She has told me that she can't remember him, but that's about all she has ever said of her father.

We are to stay at the Ritz until we start off on the motor trip, which is actually going to happen, though I was afraid it was too good to be true. The new car won't be ready for a week, though. I am sorry, but Mrs. Norton isn't. She is afraid she will be killed, and thinks it will be a messy sort of death to die. Besides, she likes London. She says her brother will be "overwhelmed with invitations"; but he hates society, and loathes being lionized. Imagine the man smothered under stacks of perfumed notes, as Tarpeia was under the s.h.i.+elds and bracelets! Emily has not lived in London, because she wanted to be in a place where she particularly valued the vicar and the doctor; but she has given them up for her brother now, and is only going to write her symptoms, spiritual and physical. She enjoys church more than anything else, but thinks it will be her duty to take me about a little while we're in town, as her brother is sure not to, because he spurns women, and is not interested in anything they do.

I suppose she must know; and yet, at lunch yesterday, he asked if we were too tired, or if we should like to "do a few theatres." I said--because I simply _had_ to spare them a shock later--that I was afraid I hadn't anything nice to wear. I felt myself go red--for it was a sort of disgrace to Ellaline--but he didn't seem as much surprised as Mrs. Norton did. Her eyebrows went up; but he only said of course school girls never had smart frocks, and I must buy a few dresses at once.

One evening gown would be enough for a young girl, Mrs. Norton said, but he didn't agree with her. He said he hadn't thought about it, but now that it occurred to him, he was of opinion that women should have plenty of nice things. Then, when she told him, rather hurriedly, that she would choose me something ready made at a good shop in Oxford Street, he remarked that he'd always understood Bond Street was the place.

"Not for school girls," explained dear Emily, who is a canny person.

"She isn't a school girl now. That's finished," said Sir Lionel. And as she thinks him a tin G.o.d on wheels, she ceased to argue.

By the by, he has the air of hating to call me by name. He says "Miss Lethbridge," in a curious, stiff kind of way, when he's absolutely obliged to give me a label; otherwise he compromises with "you," to which he confines himself when possible. It's rather odd, and can't be an accident. The only reason I can think of is that he may feel it is really his duty to call me "Ellaline."

I promised to write to Ellaline, as soon as I'd anything to tell worth telling; and I suppose I must do it to-day; yet I dread to, and can't make up my mind to begin. I don't like to praise a person whom she regards as a monster; still, I've nothing to say against him; and I'm sure she'll be cross if I don't run him down. I think I shall state facts baldly. When I get instalments of allowance--intended for Ellaline, of course--I am to send the money to her, except just enough not to be noticeably penniless. I'm to address her as Mademoiselle Leonie de Nesville, and send letters to Poste Restante, because, while I'm known as Miss Lethbridge, it might seem queer if I posted envelopes directed to a person of my own name. It was Ellaline who suggested that, not I. She thought of everything. Though she's such a child in some ways, she's marvellous at scheming.

I really can't think yet what I _shall_ say to her. It's worrying me. I feel guilty, somehow, I don't know why.

Mrs. Norton suggested taking me out shopping and sight-seeing this afternoon. Sir Lionel proposed going with us. His sister was astonished, and so was I, especially after what she had said about his not being interested in women's affairs. "Just to make sure that you take my tip about Bond Street," he remarked. "And Bond Street used to amuse me--when I was twenty. I think it will amuse me now--to see how it and I have changed."

So we are going, all three. Rather awful about the gray serge and sailor hat, isn't it? I felt self-respecting in them at Versailles, and even in Paris, because there I was a singing teacher; in other words, n.o.body.

But in London I'm supposed to be an heiress. And here, at the Ritz, such beautiful beings come to lunch, in dresses which they have evidently been poured into with consummate skill and incredible expense.

I tasted _Peche Melba_ to-day, for the first time. It made me wish for you. But it didn't seem to go at all with gray serge and a cotton blouse. I ought to have been a Gorgeous Being, with silk linings.

How am I to support the shopping ordeal? Supposing Mrs. Norton chooses me things (oh horror!). They're sure to be hideous, but they may be costly. As it says in an English society paper which Madame de Maluet takes: "What should A. do?"

If only Telepathy were a going concern, you would answer that Hard Case for

Your poor, puzzled

"A.," alias "E."

P. S. Nothing more heard or seen of the White Girl's Burden, Richard of that ilk. I was afraid of his turning up at the Grand Hotel in Paris, or even at the station to "see us off," but he didn't. He has disappeared into s.p.a.ce, and is welcome to the whole of it. I should nearly have forgotten him, if I didn't wonder sometimes what his mysterious profession is.

VI

SIR LIONEL PENDRAGON TO COLONEL P. R. O'HAGAN, AT DROITA, EAST BENGAL

_Ritz Hotel, London_, _July 8th_

My Dear Pat: You were right, I was wrong. It _is_ good to be in England again. Your prophecy has come true. The dead past has pretty well buried its dead. A few dry bones show under the surface here and there. I let them lie. Is thy servant a dog, that he should dig up buried bones!

As you know, I was a.s.s enough to dread arriving in Paris. I dreaded it throughout the whole voyage. When I got to Ma.r.s.eilles, I found a wire from Emily, saying she would meet me in Paris. a.s.s again! I had an idea she was putting herself to that trouble with the kindly wish to "stand by," and take my thoughts off old days. But I might have known better, knowing that good, practical little soul. She had quite another object.

Came to break the news of a fire at Graylees; but it seems not to have done any serious damage, except to have wiped out a few modern frills.

They can easily be tacked on again. I'm glad it was no worse, for I love Graylees. I might have turned out a less decent sort of chap than I am if it hadn't been for the prospect of inheriting it sooner or later. One has to live up to certain things, and Graylees was an incentive.

You asked me to tell you if Emily had changed. Well, she has. It's eighteen years since you saw her; fifteen since I did. I must tell you honestly, you'd have no sentimental regrets if you could see her now.

You will remember, if you're not too gallant, that she was three years older than you; the three seem to have stretched to a dozen. Luckily, you didn't let Norton's s.n.a.t.c.hing Emily from under your nose prey upon cheek or heart. Nothing is damaged. You are sound and whole, and that is why your friends.h.i.+p has been such a boon to me. You have saved me from tilting against many windmills.

I suppose you'll think I'm "preambling" now, to put off the evil moment of telling you about Ellaline de Nesville's girl. But no. For once you're mistaken in me. After all, it isn't an evil moment. I'm surprised at myself, doubly surprised at the girl; and both surprises are agreeable ones.

I don't ask you if you remember Ellaline; for n.o.body who ever saw her could forget her; at least, so it seems to me, after all these years, and all the changes in myself. As I am now, hers is the last type with which I should fall in love, provided I were fool enough to lose my head for anyone. Yet I can't wonder at the adoration I gave her. She was exactly the sort of girl to call out a boy's love, and she had all mine, poor foolish wretch that I was. There's nothing more pathetic, I think, at this distance, than a boy's pa.s.sionate purity in his first love--unless it's his disillusionment; for disillusion does no nature good. It would have done mine great harm if I hadn't had a friend like you to groan and grumble to.

You understand how I've always felt about this child she wished me to care for. I was certain that Ellaline Number 2 would grow up as like Ellaline Number 1 as this summer's rose is like last summer's, which bloomed on the same bush.

At four years old the little thing undoubtedly had a dollish resemblance to her mother. I thought I remembered that she had the first Ellaline's great dark eyes, full of incipient coquetry, and curly black lashes, which the little flirt already knew how to use, by instinct. The same sort of mouth, too, which to look at makes a boy believe in a personal Cupid, and a man in a personal devil. I had a dim recollection of chestnut-brown hair, falling around a tiny face shaped like Ellaline's; "heart-shape" we used to call it, Emily and I, when we were both under our little French cousin's thumb, in the oldest days of all, before even Emily began to find her out.

I wonder if a child sheds its first hair, like its first teeth? I've never given much thought to infantine phenomena of any kind; still, I'm inclined to believe now that there must be such cases. Of course, we know a type of blond, nee brunette; for instance, Mrs. Senter, young Burden's fascinating aunt, whom we suspected of having turned blond in a single night (by the way, whom should I run across in Paris but d.i.c.ky, grown up more or less since he chaperoned his female belongings in the Far East). But I'm not talking of the Mrs. Senters of the world; I'm talking of Ellaline's unexpected daughter. She has changed almost incredibly between the ages of four and nineteen.

Before I knew Emily intended meeting me in Paris, I wrote the school-ma'am asking that my ward might be sent, well chaperoned, to the Gare de Lyon. It was bad enough to have to face a modern young female, adorned with all the latest improvements and parlour tricks. It would have been worse to face several dozens of these creatures in their lair; therefore, I funked collecting my ward at Versailles. I was to know her by a rose pinned on her frock in case she'd altered past recognition. It was well, as things turned out, that I'd made the suggestion, otherwise the girl would have had to go back to Versailles, like an unclaimed parcel; and that would have been bad, as she had no chaperon. Something had happened to the lady, or to the lady's relatives. I almost forget what, now.

Instead of the dainty little Tanagra figure in smart French frills, which I expected, there was a tall, beautiful young person, with the bearing of an Atalanta, and the clothes of a Quakeress. She tacked my name on to the wrong man, or I should have let her go, in spite of the rose, so different was she from what I expected. And you'll be amused to hear that her idea of Lionel Pendragon was embodied by old "Hannibal"

Jones, who got into my train at Ma.r.s.eilles. He's taken to parting his name in the middle now, and is General Wellington-Jones. She ought to have known my age approximately, or could have learned it if she cared to bother; but I suppose to nineteen, forty might as well be sixty.

That's a thing to remember, if one feels the sap pulsing in one's branches, just to remind one that after all it's not spring, but autumn.

And at the present moment, by the way, I'm not sure that I shan't need this kind of taking down a peg, for I am feeling so young that I think I must be growing old. I have begun to value what's left me of youth; to take it out and look at it in all lights, like a fruit which must be gloated over before it decays--and that's a fatal sign, eh? I have the most extraordinary interest in life, which I attribute to the new motor-car which will be finished and ready to use in a few days; also to the thought that Graylees is my own.

But I'm wandering away from the girl.

She is as unlike Ellaline de Nesville as one beautifully bound first volume of a human doc.u.ment can be from another equally attractive.

"First volume of a human doc.u.ment" isn't inexpressive of a young girl, is it? Heaven knows what this one may be by the time the second and third volumes are ready for publication; but at present one turns over the leaves with pleased surprise. There's something original and charming in each new page.

Her first hair must have been shed, for the present lot--and there is a lot!--is of a bright, yellowy brown; looks like a child's hair, somehow.

There are little rings and kinks about it which I take to have been put there by the curling-tongs of nature, though I may be mistaken. And I suppose I must have deceived myself about the child's eyes, for they are not black, but of a grayish hazel, which can look brown or violet at night. She is a tall young thing, slim and straight as a sapling, with frank, honest manners, which are singularly engaging. I look at her in amazement and interest, and find her looking at me with an expression which I am not able to make out. I hardly dare let myself go in liking her, for fear of disappointment. She seems too good to be true, too good to last. I keep wondering what ancestress of Ellaline de Nesville's, or Fred Lethbridge's, is gazing out of those azure windows which are this girl's eyes. If Fred's soul, or Ellaline's, peeps from behind the clear, bright panes, it contrives to keep itself well hidden--so far. But I expect anything.

I had no notion until now that a young woman could be a delightful "pal"

for a man, especially a man of my age. Perhaps this is my ignorance of the s.e.x (for I admit I locked up the book of Woman, and never opened it again, since the chapter of Ellaline), or it may be that girls have changed since the "brave days when we were twenty-one." At that remote epoch, as far as I can discover by blowing off the dust from faded souvenirs, one either made love to girls, or one didn't. They were there to dance with and flirt with, and go on the river with, not to talk politics to, or exchange opinions of the universe. They--the prettiest ones--would have thought that valuable time was being wasted in such discussions. Yet here is this girl, not twenty, a child fresh from school--a French school, at that--radiant with the power of her youth, her beauty, her femininity; yet she seems actually interested in problems of life unconnected with love affairs. She appears to like talking sense, and she has humour, far more subtle than the mere, kittenish sense of fun which belongs to her years--or lack of them. I dreaded the responsibility of her, but I dreaded much more being bored by her, flirted with by her. I'm hanged if I could have stood that from the kind of girl I was prepared to see; but as I said, I've found a "pal"--if I dared believe in her. Instead of avoiding my ward's society, and shoving it on to Emily, as I intended, I excuse myself to myself for contriving pretexts to bask in it.

To-day, for instance, what do you think I did? A shopping expedition was in question. Emily, who never had much taste in dress, and now clothes herself as if in punishment for sin, seems to know when other women are badly turned out. She thinks it right that young girls should be simply dressed, but considers that in the case of Ellaline simplicity has been carried too far. You see, she doesn't know what you and I know about that wretched fellow Lethbridge's end, and she believes his daughter has plenty of money, or will have, on coming of age. Naturally, I don't undeceive her. Emily is a good soul, but over-conscientious in questions of money, and if she knew the truth she might be inclined to hold the purse-strings tight. She might even be tempted to hint something distressing to this poor girl, if the child vexed her by any thoughtless little extravagance; whereas I wouldn't for a good deal have Ellaline's daughter guess she owes anything to me.

Emily offered to choose frocks for Miss Lethbridge; whereupon that young lady cast such a comical glance of despair at me--a glance which I think was involuntary--that it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. I saw so well what was in her mind! And if you will believe me, O'Hagan, I volunteered to go with them.

Having committed myself, I had all the sensations of a fly caught on a sheet of "Tanglefoot," or a prisoner of war chained to a Roman chariot; but in the end I enjoyed myself hugely. Nothing better has happened to me since I used to be taken to look at the toyshops the day before Christmas. No, not even my first pantomime could beat this as an experience!

Emily's economical soul clamoured for Oxford Street. I stood out for Bond, and got my way. (You will grin here. You say I always do get my way.) My idea was to make of myself a kind of Last Resort, or Court of Appeal. I meant to let Emily advise, but to sweep her aside if she perpetrated atrocities. The first shop, however, went to my head. It was one of those where you walk into a kind of drawing-room with figurines, or whatever you call them--slender, headless ladies in model dresses--grouped about, and other equally slender, but long-headed ladies in black satin trains, showing off their dummy sisters.

It was the figurines that intoxicated me. I saw Ellaline's head--in imagination--coming out at the top of all the prettiest dresses. They were wonderfully simple, too, the most attractive ones; seemed just the thing for a young girl. Emily walked past them as if they were vulgar acquaintances trying to catch her eye at a d.u.c.h.ess's ball, but they trapped me. There was a white thing for the street, that looked as if it had been made for Ellaline, and a blue fluff, cut low in the neck, exactly the right colour to show up her hair. Then there was a film of pink, with wreaths of little rosebuds dotted about--made me think of spring. (I told you I'd lost my head, didn't I?)

I stopped my ward, pointed out these things to her, and asked her if she liked them. She said she did, but they would be horribly expensive. She wouldn't think of buying such dreams. With that, up swam one of the satin ladies (whose back view was precisely like that of a wet, black codfish with a long tail; I believe she was "Directoire"); and hovering near on a sea of pale-green carpet she volunteered the information that these "little frocks" were "poems," singularly suited to the style of--I expected her to say my "daughter." Instead of which, however, she finished her sentence with a "madam" that brought a blush to my weather-beaten face. I was the only one concerned who did blush, however, I a.s.sure you! The girl smiled into my eyes, with a mischievous twinkle, and minded not at all. A former generation would have simpered, but this young person hasn't a simper in her.

I said "Nonsense," she could well afford the dresses. She argued, and Emily returned to help her form up a hollow square. They were both against me, but I insisted, and the codfish was a powerful ally.

"Would they fit you?" I asked the girl.