Bird of Paradise Part 23

"Bertha, isn't it terrible! I've told him everything and he refuses me.

He's sent me back. He says if I'm engaged to Charlie it's my duty to marry him. He's fearfully hurt with me and shocked at my conduct to Charlie. Oh, it's too dreadful; I'm heartbroken!"

"Oh, what an irritating creature!" cried Bertha. "It's just the sort of thing he would do. I'd better see him at once, Madeline."

"You can't; he's going to Venice to-night," said Madeline, and burst into tears.

CHAPTER XVII

MORE ABOUT RUPERT

Rupert had gone through a great many changes during the last few weeks.

He had begun to grow rather captivated by Miss Chivvey and in his efforts to polish, refine and educate her had become rather carried away himself. But towards the end she began to show signs of rebellion; she was bored, though impressed. He took her to a serious play and explained it all the time, during which she openly yawned. Finally, when she insisted on his seeing a statuette made of her by her artistic friend, an ignorant, pretentious little creature, known as Mimsie, they positively had a quarrel.

"Well, I don't care what you say; I think it's very pretty," when Rupert pointed out faults that a child could easily have seen.

"So it may be, my dear child--not that I think it is. But it's absolutely without merit; it's very very bad. It could hardly be worse.

If she went all over London I doubt if she could find a more ridiculous thing calling itself a work of art. Can't you see it's like those little figures they used to have on old-fas.h.i.+oned Twelfth Cakes, made of sugar."

"No, I can't. Shut up! I mayn't know quite so much as you, but ever since I was a child everybody's always said I was very artistic."

They were sitting in her mother's drawing-room in Camden Hill. Rupert glanced round it: it was a deplorable example of misdirected aims and mistaken ambitions; a few yards of beaded curtains which separated it from another room gratified Moona with the satisfactory sensation that her surroundings were Oriental. As a matter of fact, the decoration was so commonplace and vulgar that to attempt to describe it would be painful to the writer whilst having no sort of effect on the reader, since it was almost indescribable. From the decorative point of view, the room was the most unmeaning of failures, the most complete of disasters.

Rupert had hoped, nevertheless, to cultivate her taste, and educate her generally. He was most anxious of all to explain to her that, so far from being artistic, she was the most pretentious of little Philistines.

Why, indeed, should she be anything else? It was the most irritating absurdity that she should think she was, or wish to be.

Rupert was growing weary of this, and beginning to think his object was hopeless.

A certain amount of excitement that she had created in him by her brusque rudeness, her high spirits, even the jarring of her loud laugh, was beginning to lose its effect; or rather the effect was changed.

Instead of attracting, it irritated him.

About another small subject they had a quarrel--she was beginning to order him about, to regard him as her young man, her property--and was getting accustomed to what had surprised her at first--that he didn't make love to her. She had ordered him to take her somewhere and he had refused on the ground that he wanted to stop at home and think!

She let herself go, and when Moona Chivvey lost her temper it was not easily forgotten. She insulted him, called him a blighter, a silly a.s.s, a ma.s.s of affectation.

He accepted it with gallant irony, bowing with a chivalrous humility that drove her nearly mad, but he never spoke to her again.

Perhaps nothing less than this violent scene would have shaken Rupert into examining his own feelings, and with a tremendous rebound he saw that he was in love with Madeline, and decided to marry her at once. How delighted the dear child would be!

He had seen very little of her lately, and he appreciated her all the more.

In her was genuine desire for culture; longing to learn; real refinement and intelligence, charm and grace, if not exactly beauty. Ah, those sweet, sincere brown eyes! Rupert would live to see her all she should be, and there was not the slightest doubt about her happiness with him.

It never occurred to him for a single moment that anyone else could have been trying to take his place. Far less still that she should have thought of listening to any other man on earth but himself. When she came and told him all that had happened, the shock was great. He had never cared for her so much. But he declined to allow her to break her engagement; she could not play fast and loose with this unfortunate young man, Charlie Hillier, and although she declared, with tears, that she should break it off in any case, and never see him again, Rupert kept to his resolution, and started for Paris that night.

In answer to one more pa.s.sionate and pathetic letter from her, he consented to write to her as a friend in a fortnight, but he said she must have known her own mind when she accepted Charlie.

Rupert clearly felt that he had been very badly treated; he said he never would have thought it of her; it was practically treachery.

When he went away he felt very tired, and had had enough, for the present, at any rate, of all girls and their instruction. Girls were fools.

He looked forward to the soothing consolations of the gaieties of Paris.

He was not the first to believe that he could leave all his troubles and tribulations this side of the Channel.

CHAPTER XVIII

"A SPECIAL FAVOUR"

"I admire Madeline's conduct very much. I think it was splendid how she stood up to all the reproaches, and even ridicule; she told me that she had once, and only once, in her life been untrue to herself (she meant in accepting Charlie), and since then she has spoken the absolute truth to everybody about it all. She has been very plucky, and very straightforward, and only good can come of it. Honesty and pluck, especially for a girl--it's made so difficult for girls--they're the finest things in the world, _I_ think."

Bertha was speaking to Nigel.

He had remained away for what seemed to him an extraordinarily long time. He was afraid that she was slipping out of his life, without even noticing it. Stopping away until she missed him was a complete failure, since she _didn't_ miss him. And the day was approaching for the party Mary had consented to give. He knew that Bertha had accepted but was afraid she didn't mean to come. That would be too sickening! To have all that worry with Mary, all that silly trouble and fuss for a foolish entertainment that he detested, all for nothing at all! And Mary was secretly enjoying the fact that she felt absolutely certain Percy would never let her come to Nigel's house. She did not suppose Percy had guessed the writer of the letters; but he must have thought his wife was talked about, and some effect certainly they had had; for in the last few weeks, she happened to know for a fact, Nigel had neither called on or met Mrs. Kellynch. This afternoon she knew nothing of, for her suspicions were beginning to fade, and she was not, at present, having him followed. Nigel had taken his chance and dropped in to tea and found luck was on his side--Bertha had just come in from a drive with Madeline.

"It's all very well," he answered, "to say you admire her conduct, her bravery, and all that! Whom had she to fight against? Only her mother, whom she isn't a bit afraid of, and Charlie, who, poor chap, is more afraid of her. The engagement wasn't even public before she broke it off."

"Yes; but, Nigel, it was very frank of her to tell everything so openly to Charlie. And now, poor girl, she's very unhappy, but very courageous--she's absolutely resolved never to marry. She says she's lost her Rupert by her own faults, and it serves her right."

"And suppose Rupert goes teaching English to an Italian girl at Venice, or gives her history lessons, or anything? Now he's once thought of marrying, he may marry his third pupil. Wouldn't Charlie have a chance then?"

"Never, unfortunately," Bertha replied.

"Do you think she'd wait on the chance that Rupert might have a divorce?"

"Nigel, how horrid you are to sneer like that. You never appreciated Madeline!"

"I think I did, my dear, considering I was especially keen on her marrying my brother, even when I knew she liked somebody else."

"Oh, that was only for him."

"Or, perhaps, do you think a little for me? I might have felt if my brother married your greatest friend that we were sort of relations," he said, with a laugh.

Bertha glanced at the clock.

"You can't send me away just this minute," he said. "You like honesty and frankness, and I've honestly come to ask you--are you coming to my party?"

Bertha paused a moment.