Ladies Must Live Part 7

"You're not serious?"

She nodded, still behind her handkerchief, "Yes, I am. This will be something I shall have to live down, as much as you would if you had robbed a bank."

She now raised her head, and wiping her eyes hard enough to make them a little red, she glanced at him.

Really she thought it would save a great deal of time and trouble, if he could just see the thing clearly and ask her to marry him now.

But apparently his mind did not work so quickly.

"Who will repeat it?" he said. "Not the Usshers--"

"Nancy Almar won't let it pa.s.s. She'll have found the evening dull without you, and she'll feel she has a right to compensation. And that worm, Wickham; it will be his favorite anecdote for the rest of his life.

I was horrible to him last night at dinner."

"Sorry you were?"

"Not a bit. I'd do it again, but I may as well face the fact that he won't be eager to conceal his own social triumphs for the sake of my good name. Can't you hear him, 'Curious thing happened the other day--at my friends the Usshers'. Know them? A lovely country place--'--"

"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "What a bore! Is there anything I could do--"

"Well, there _is_ one thing."

He looked up quickly. If ever terror flashed in a man's eyes, she saw it then in his. Her heart sank, but her mind worked none the less well.

"It's this," she went on smoothly. "There's a lodge, a sort of tool-house, only about half a mile down the road. Couldn't you take a lantern, couldn't you possibly spend the night there?"

"It isn't by any chance," he said, "that you're afraid of having me here?"

"Oh, no, not you," she answered. "No, I should feel much safer with you here than there." (If he went her case was ruined, and she was now actually afraid perhaps he would go.) "I should be terrified in this great place all by myself. Still, I think you ought to go. It's not so very far. You go down the road a little way and then turn to the right through the woods. I think you'll find it. The roof used to leak a little, but I dare say you won't mind that. There isn't any fireplace, but you could take lots of blankets--"

"I tell you what I'll do," he said. "No one will come to rescue us to-night. I'll sleep here to-night, and to-morrow as soon as it's light, I'll go to this cottage, and when they come, you can tell them any story you please. Will that do?"

It did perfectly. "Oh, thank you," she said. "How kind you are! And you do forgive me, don't you?"

"About the cereal? Oh, yes, on one condition."

"What is that?" She was still meltingly sweet.

"That you wash these dishes."

She felt inclined to box his ears. Had he seen through her all the time?

"I never washed a dish in my life," she observed thoughtfully.

"Have you ever done anything useful?"

She reflected, and after some thought she replied, not boastfully, but as one who states an indisputable fact: "Never."

He folded his arms, leant against the wall and looked down upon her. "I wish," he said, "if it isn't too much trouble that you would give me a detailed account of one of your average days."

"You talk," said she, "as if you were studying the manners and customs of savages."

"Let us say of an unknown tribe."

She leant back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. "Well, let me see," she said. "I wake up about nine or a little after if I haven't been up all night, and I ring for my maid. And about eleven--"

"Don't skip, please. You ring for your maid. What does she do for you?"

Imagine any one's not knowing! Miss Fenimer marveled. "Why, she draws my bath and puts out my things, and while I'm taking my bath, she straightens the room and lights the fire, if it's cold, and brings in my breakfast-tray and my letters. And by half-past ten, I'm finally dressed if no one has come in to delay me, only some one always has. Last winter my time was immensely occupied by two friends of mine who had both fallen in love with the same man--one of them was married to him--and they used to come every day and confide in me. You have no idea how amusing it was.

He behaved shockingly, but I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for him. They were both such determined women. Finally I went to him, and told him how it was I knew so much about his affairs, and said I thought he ought to try and make up his mind which of them he really did care for. And what do you think he said? That he had always been in love with me." She laughed. "How absurdly things happen, don't they?"

"Good Heavens!" said Riatt.

"But even at the worst, I'm generally out by noon, and get a walk. I'm rather dependent on exercise, and then I lunch with some one or other--"

"Men or women?"

"Either or both. And then after lunch I drive with some one, or go to see pictures or hear music, and then I like to be at home by tea time, because that's, of course, the hour every one counts on finding you; and then there's dressing and going out to dinner, and very often something afterwards."

"Good Lord," said Riatt again, and after a moment he added: "And does that life amuse you?"

"No, but it doesn't bore me as much as doing things that are more trouble."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, being on committees that you don't really take any interest in." She rather enjoyed his amazement.

"Now tell me one thing more," he said. "What would you do if you had to earn your living?"

The true answer was that she would marry Edward Hickson, but, though heretofore she had been fairly candid, she thought on this point a little dissembling was permissible. "I should starve, I suppose," she returned gaily.

"And suppose you fell in love with a poor man?"

She grew grave at once. "Oh, that's a dreadful thing to happen to one,"

she said. "I've had two friends who did that." She almost shuddered. "One actually married him."

"And what happened to her?"

Miss Fenimer shook her head. "I don't know. She's living in the suburbs somewhere. I haven't seen her for ages."

"And the other?"

"She was more practical. She married him to a rich widow ten years older than he was. That provided for him, you see, at least. But it turned out worse than the other case."

"How?"

"Why, he fell in love with this other woman--"

"His wife, you mean?"