Patricia Brent, Spinster Part 17

It was Peel's voice that broke in upon his reflections.

"Oh, d.a.m.n!" cried Bowen as he threw his legs out of bed and sat looking at Peel.

"I beg pardon, my lord?"

"I said d.a.m.n!" replied Bowen.

"Yes, my lord."

Bowen regarded Peel narrowly. He was confoundedly irritating this morning. He seemed to be my-lording his master specially to annoy him.

There was, however, no sign upon Peel's features or in his watery blue eyes indicating that he was other than in his normal frame of mind.

Why couldn't Patricia be sensible? Why must she take up this absurd att.i.tude, contorting every action of his into a covert insult? Why above all things couldn't women be reasonable? Bowen rose, stretched himself and walked across to the bath-room. As he was about to enter he looked over his shoulder.

"If," he said, "you can arrange to remind me of my infernal t.i.tle as little as possible during the next few days, Peel, I shall feel infinitely obliged."

"Yes, my lord," was the response.

Bowen banged the door savagely, and Peel rang to order breakfast.

During the meal Bowen pondered over the events of the previous evening, and in particular over Patricia's unreasonableness. His one source of comfort was that she had appealed to him to put things right about her aunt. That would involve his seeing her again. He did not, or would not, see that he was the only one to whom she could appeal.

Bowen always breakfasted in his own sitting-room; he disliked his fellow-men in the early morning. Looking up suddenly from the table he caught Peel's expressionless eye upon him.

"Peel."

"Yes, my lord."

"Why is it that we Englishmen dislike each other so at breakfast?"

Peel paused for a moment. "I've heard it said, my lord, that we're half an inch taller in the morning, perhaps our perceptions are more acute also."

Bowen looked at Peel curiously.

"You're a philosopher," he said, "and I'm afraid a bit of a cynic."

"I hope not, my lord," responded Peel.

Bowen pushed back his chair and rose, receiving from Peel his cap, cane, and gloves.

"By the way," he said, "I want you to ring up Lady Tanagra and ask her to lunch with me at half-past one. Tell her it's very important, and ask her not to fail me."

"Yes, my lord: it shall be attended to."

Bowen went out. Lady Tanagra was Bowen's only sister. As children they had been inseparable, forced into an alliance by the overbearing nature of their elder brother, the heir, Viscount Bowen, who would succeed to the t.i.tle as the eighth Marquess of Meyfield. Bowen was five years older than his sister, who had just pa.s.sed her twenty-third birthday and, as a frail sensitive child, she had instinctively looked to him for protection against her elder brother.

Their comrades.h.i.+p was that of mutual understanding. For one to say to the other, "Don't fail me," meant that any engagement, however pressing, would be put off. There was a tacit acknowledgment that their comrades.h.i.+p stood before all else. Each to the other was unique.

Thus when Bowen sent the message to Lady Tanagra through Peel asking her not to fail him, he knew that she would keep the appointment. He knew equally well that it would involve her in the breaking of some other engagement, for there were few girls in London so popular as Lady Tanagra Bowen.

Whenever there was an important social function, Lady Tanagra Bowen was sure to be there, and it was equally certain that the photographers of the ill.u.s.trated and society papers would so manoeuvre that she came into the particular group, or groups, they were taking.

The seventh Marquess of Meyfield was an enthusiastic collector of Tanagra figurines and, overruling his lady's protestations, he had determined to call his first and only daughter Tanagra. Lady Meyfield had begged for a second name; but the Marquess had been resolute.

"Tanagra I will have her christened and Tanagra I will have her called," he had said with a smile that, if it mitigated the sternness of his expression, did not in my way undermine his determination. Lady Meyfield knew her lord, and also that her only chance of ruling him was by showing unfailing tact. She therefore bowed to his decision.

"Poor child!" she had remarked as she looked down at the frail little mite in the hollow of her arm, "you're certainly going to be made ridiculous; but I've done my best," and Lord Meyfield had come across the room and kissed his wife with the remark, "There you're wrong, my dear, it's going to help to make her a great success. Imagine, the Lady Tanagra Bowen; why it would make a celebrity of the most commonplace female," whereat they had both smiled.

As a child Lady Tanagra had been teased unmercifully about her name, so much so that she had almost hated it; but later when she had come to love the figurines that were so much part of her father's life, she had learned, not only to respect, but to be proud of the name.

To her friends and intimates she was always Tan, to the less intimate Lady Tan, and to the world at large Lady Tanagra Bowen.

She had once found the name extremely useful, when in process of being proposed to by an undesirable of the name of Black.

"It's no good," she had said, "I could never marry you, no matter what the state of my feelings. Think how ridiculous we should both be, everybody would call us Black and Tan. Ugh! it sounds like a whisky as well as a dog." Whereat Mr. Black had laughed and they remained friends, which was a great tribute to Lady Tanagra.

Exquisitely pretty, sympathetic, witty, human! Lady Tanagra Bowen was a favourite wherever she went. She seemed incapable of making enemies even amongst her own s.e.x. Her taste in dress was as unerring as in literature and art. Everything she did or said was without effort.

She had been proposed to by "half the eligibles and all the ineligibles in London," as Bowen phrased it; but she declared she would never marry until Peter married, and had thus got somebody else to mother him.

At a quarter-past one when Bowen left the War Office, he found Lady Tanagra waiting in her car outside.

"Hullo, Tan!" he cried, "what a brainy idea, picking up the poor, tired warrior."

"It'll save you a taxi, Peter. I'll tell you what to do with the s.h.i.+lling as we go along."

Lady Tanagra smiled up into her brother's face. She was always happy with Peter.

As she swung the car across Whitehall to get into the north-bound stream of traffic, Bowen looked down at his sister. She handled her big car with dexterity and ease. She was a dainty creature with regular features, violet-blue eyes and golden hair that seemed to defy all constraint. There was a tilt about her chin that showed determination, and that about her eyebrows which suggested something more than good judgment.

"I hope you weren't doing anything to-day, Tan," said Bowen as they came to a standstill at the top of Whitehall, waiting for the removal of a blue arm that barred their progress.

"I was lunching with the Bolsovers; but I'm not well enough, I'm afraid, to see them. It's measles, you know."

"Good heavens, Tan! what do you mean?"

"Well, I had to say something that would be regarded as a sufficient excuse for breaking a luncheon engagement of three weeks' standing.

Quite a lot of people were invited to meet me."

"I'm awfully sorry," began Bowen apologetically.

"Oh, it's all right!" was the reply as the car jumped forward. "I shall be deluged with fruit and flowers now from all sorts of people, because the Bolsovers are sure to spread it round that I'm in extremis.

To-morrow, however, I shall announce that it was a wrong diagnosis."

Lady Tanagra drew the car up to the curb outside Dent's. "I think,"

she said, indicating an old woman selling matches, "we'll give her the s.h.i.+lling for the taxi, Peter, shall we?"

Peter beckoned the old woman and handed her a s.h.i.+lling with a smile.

"Does it make you feel particularly virtuous to be charitable with another's money?" he enquired.

Lady Tanagra made a grimace.