Princess Mary's Gift Book Part 8

"I am a credulous as well as a sinfully indulgent parent," said Mr.

Thorold, stepping back to view his sketch; "but I don't believe a word of your story."

"'Doc.u.mentary evidence was instantly forthcoming,'" retorted Kitty, extending a tiny paw with a card inserted delicately between her fingers.

Her father took it, read aloud: "Lady Hawborough, 209, Belgrave Square,"

and then emitted a low whistle.

"My word, Kitty, you've gone and done it!" he said. "If this is _the_ Lady Hawborough--and Nature, with all her audacity, cannot have made two of them--you've run up against a celebrity of the deepest dye."

"Oh?" said Kitty. "Never heard of her. What's she celebrated for?"

"For good works--which means, in most cases, a disposition and a capacity for interfering in the affairs of other people. And her ladys.h.i.+p is one of the biggest and most incorrigible interferers in this crank of a world of ours. She is immensely rich; she is also 'powerful,'

as the novelists say; she is a tyrant to her relations, a terror to her friends, and a well-meaning, charitable bugbear to the world in general."

"Oh!" said Kitty, somewhat dismayed. "But how is it you are so intimately acquainted with the history and characteristics of this lady of lofty rank and goodly oof?"

"My dear Kitty, 'oof' is not nearly such a good word as 'wealth.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Ant Lion

_Painted for Princess Mary's Gift Book by E. J. Detmold_]

"Maybe, but it's easier to p.r.o.nounce," retorted Kitty.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Thorold, as if he were weary of the subject. "Heard some one at the Club talking about her; seen her name in the papers. Take my advice and don't call. She'll enlist you in one of her gangs of workers, hustle you into a hospital as a nurse, make you into a district visitor, or turn you a lecturer on vegetarianism or some other fad."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Oh no, she won't," said Kitty, with sublime confidence; "not that I should object to being a nurse--that is, if I hadn't already to look after an aged and infirm parent. Yes; much as I value your advice, Dad, I think I'll call. I'll go to-morrow; and if I come back, say, in a Salvation Army kit, and banging a tambourine--and, mind you! I might do worse: I've a whole-hearted admiration for the S.A. and the uniform is distinctly fetching--you can indulge in the exquisite pleasure of exclaiming, 'I told you so!' What are you on this morning, Dad?" she asked, going to him, putting her arm round his neck, and giving him a little hug.

"Sketch for an ill.u.s.tration for the _Long Acre Magazine_," he said, with a kind of resignation; for your most gifted artist has to do pot-boilers nowadays: and generally he does them well.

"The girl's all right, anyhow," said Kitty. "Where's the man?"

"Oh, I'm going to stick him in directly," said Mr. Thorold. "He's to be a soldier, and I've got a young fellow coming as a model presently. Ran against him in a rather extraordinary way. He called on me yesterday with an introduction from Bloxham: said he had never sat as model before; but that he was hard up, and would do his best. Fine young fellow, and a nice taking sort of chap altogether."

"Burglar in disguise, coming to inspect the premises, no doubt,"

surmised Kitty cheerfully.

"Well, he's welcome to anything he takes a fancy to," remarked Mr.

Thorold.

"Oh, well!" she said. "I'm off to consult Selinar-Ann as to whether it's to be bread-and-b.u.t.ter pudding or a baked roly-poly; expect me back, or what remains of me, in an hour."

Carefully rumpling her father's already disordered hair, she screwed up his patient face between her hands, kissed him and ran out, singing as she went.

In less than an hour she re-entered the studio, still singing; but the song snapped off suddenly, and she stood just within the doorway, staring with wide-open eyes at a young soldier in khaki who stood on the model's dais, one arm in a sling, the other extended with a sword in the hand, in the kind of att.i.tude beloved by the populace, and forming the picture which bears inevitably the legend, "Charge!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The young man turned his eyes--he dared not move anything else--and, at sight of the stricken maiden, his tanned face grew the colour of a healthy beetroot.

"Getting on famously, Kit," remarked Mr. Thorold in a preoccupied manner. "Arm a little higher, if you please, Captain----Pardon, didn't catch your name."

"Barnard," said the model, in a small voice quite inconsistent with his fine and manly proportions.

"Ah, thank you! Could you--er--put on something of a scowl? You're wounded, you know, and you're leading a forlorn hope, or something of the sort."

The young man's good-looking face a.s.sumed as much of a scowl as it was capable of doing, and Mr. Thorold dashed it on the paper.

"Capital! Now you can rest a minute. I've got to go and get some more ochre. Perhaps you'd like a drink?"

"Thank you; I should," confessed the young man, with a slight huskiness.

"All right; I'll bring it," said Mr. Thorold; and, as he was leaving the room, he said over his shoulder, "My daughter; Captain Barnard."

Kitty closed the door carefully; then, seating herself on the divan, she rested her chin in her hand and, regarding the young man severely, she demanded sternly:

"Perhaps you'll be kind enough to inform me of the--the meaning of this?"

He had seated himself on the edge of the dais and was wiping his face, as if he were just going through a dangerous action, with the enemy pressing on all sides.

"I beg your pardon?" he faltered, with meekness in his voice, mien, and eye.

"I asked you why you are masquerading here?" she said, uncompromisingly.

"Well, come to that, I'm not masquerading. This is my own kit; I'm a soldier, as you know. This is a genuine wound, not a fake; and I'm really hard up: had a run of bad luck lately. No harm in earning an honest s.h.i.+lling."

"But why come to my father, this particular studio, to earn it?"

demanded Kitty, cutting short his feeble attempts at plausible explanation.

"Oh, well," he replied desperately: "you see, when I met you at the Thomsons' the other night, and asked you if I might have the honour of calling on you, you said that your father was a very busy man and that you yourself had no time for receiving visitors."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Well?" demanded Kitty, as icily as before.

"Well," he resumed, looking down and then up at her, as if he could not keep his eyes from her face, stern and almost ferocious as it was, "well, I asked the Thomsons who your father was, and when they told me, I thought--I thought----Well, don't you know, it seemed to me that he might want a model. War pictures are all the go now, aren't they? And so----" He broke down, made a little gesture with his unwounded arm, and blurted out, "Of course you know why I've come. I wanted to see you again. I told you so the other night; like my cheek, of course, but--I don't know how it is--I feel as if I'd _got_ to see you, to know you.

Look here, Miss Kitty--I beg your pardon, all the Thomsons call you that--I hope you won't mind my saying that I've fallen in love with you?"

"Excuse me; I mind it very much," Kitty informed him with distressing prompt.i.tude; but her eyes wavered and the colour came into her face and made it, in the unfortunate young man's opinion, more maddeningly fascinating than ever.

"Oh, well, I'm sorry," he said, but without much penitence in his tone; "but the truth should always be told, shouldn't it? And it is the truth."

"Is it?" queried Kitty. "You've seen me only once before, and then only for an hour or two."

"Two hours and three-quarters," he said, as if he were a stickler for accuracy; "and I fell in love with you after the first quarter of an hour. That being the case--as it certainly is--what was I to do? I shall have to go back to the regiment as soon as this old arm of mine is right; and it's getting right quickly; and I felt that I couldn't go without at any rate telling you what--what was the matter with me."

"You speak as if--as if love were a disease," said Kitty, with an attempt at mockery which was an abject failure.