CHAPTER XI
LICENTIOUS BEHAVIOR OF THE GREEN
CHARTREUSE
THE heir to the barony was a dull young man—it is idle to pretend that he wasn’t—yet in his slow-witted way he had a habit of turning things over in his mind. If he married Adela it would give pleasure to his excellent parents; it would advance him in the eyes of the world; people would say here is a young man with more in him than we thought—see how well he has married. But there was no shirking the fact that if he married Adela he was bound to be miserable for the rest of his days.
Weak, disgraceful thoughts, Shelmerdine, quoth the Twin Brethren, Eton and Christ Church. It was not on our playing fields you learned to be so puerile. No girl in London makes a more distinguished appearance in black velvet. You will shoot at High Cliff. With what grace and charm will the seventh married daughter preside over that dear little house in Grosvenor Street, on the left, going to the park, which your admirable parents have promised her admirable parent to take for you on a lease, in order that you may both be near them. Shelmerdine, we don’t know when we have been so ashamed of an alumnus of ours. If you haven’t enough character, sir, to tackle the very ordinary job of driving a young woman on the curb—as every young woman ought to be driven for her soul’s welfare at the beginning—you are a miserable shirker, sir, and unworthy of your liberal nurture.
Sir, in that event, we wash our hands of you; and you are free to form an alliance with this underbred Bohemian—it is not our custom to mince our language when our emotions are deeply stirred! You will bring down the gray hairs of your admirable parents in sorrow to the grave; your portrait will receive the freedom of the gutter press; you will never be asked to shoot at High Cliff; you will bring tragedy into your own life and into the life of others—in fact, sir, and in a word—one understood these infernal safety-razors were guaranteed not to cut gashes into one’s neck!
Little recked Cinderella of the reason why the heir to the barony had to appear at tea-time on Friday done up in court plaster. He was also strangely pensive and embarrassed.
She was as gay and as charming as usual; and she had just been engaged to create the title rôle in Mr. Wingrove’s brilliant new play at the Millennium, that was to be produced in the middle of Lent. But poor Philip was far from being himself. Still, he insisted on walking home with her to Bedford Gardens.
However, by the time they had reached the Strand, that romantic thoroughfare, the murder was pretty well out. It really came out at the moment they stood on the edge of the kerb opposite Charing Cross, waiting to commit their frail lives to the maëlstrom of mechanically propelled vehicles.
“Fact is, old girl,”—the heir to the barony gripped Mary firmly by the arm to see that she didn’t step off the kerb too soon—“fact is, old girl, I want a pal. Will you be a pal to me?”
“Why, of course I will, Philip,” said Mary, as they walked arm in arm into the jaws of a Barnes and Hammersmith ’bus.
“A pal for life, I mean, old girl.”
By the time they had reached the opposite kerb, Mary was quivering. And the color in her face surmounted the natural pallor of her profession.
“Oh!—but, Philip—”
“You will, old girl!”
“I don’t think that Granny—besides—!”
“Besides what, old girl?” The knitted chocolate waistcoat was being grievously assaulted.
“It wouldn’t do—for you, I mean—although it is sweet of you to have asked me, Philip.”
“It’s whether it would do for you, old girl. I’m not much of a chap, I know, but I should begin to pick up a bit—I’m sure I should—if I had got a real pal like you to pull my socks up for me.”
“It isn’t because I don’t like you, Philip,” said Mary, so nicely that the owner of the knitted chocolate waistcoat wanted to clasp her to it in one of London’s most important thoroughfares. “It is because I do.”
“Won’t you risk it, anyway?”
“But I don’t think I ought—really. Your people, you know. And I’m sure that Granny—”
“Oh, but this is our affair. I’ve thought it all out; and if a chap wants a wife, I don’t see that anybody has a right to meddle. It’s askin’ a lot, I know—your career and all that—but I’ve enough for two, and you wouldn’t have to sing and dance to three thousand people when you were feeling so cheap you didn’t know how.”
Mary was troubled by this importunity as a girl as nice as she was bound to be. She had already grown to like this rather heavy young man. She felt capable of being a father, a mother, a brother and a sister to him, or any equally near relation whose function it would be to pull his socks up for him. But she was also a very sensible and unselfish girl, moreover, a pretty clear-sighted one; and when she said that Granny would never, she really meant what she said, and a great deal more than she did say.
All the same, she was very proud and happy as she turned up Bedford Street, with the hand of Philip still gripping her arm very tightly, although in this haven there was not a solitary Barnes and Hammersmith ’bus to warrant a continuance of such a course of behaviour.
The heir to the barony, in our humble judgment, was about the luckiest young fellow in London just then to be walking up Bedford Street with a girl as good as gold in his possession. Very nearly, but not quite in his possession. He had come at his fence so boldly; it was an inspiration to have taken off just where he did in the welter of Barnes and Hammersmith omnibuses in front of Charing Cross; his solid, manly British qualities had shone out suddenly so clear and free, that where another might have hesitated and come a purler, this sportsman had gone straight at the obstacle and very nearly come home a winner. Very nearly captured the queen of beauty, but not quite, although she was feeling very proud and happy because of the honor done to her—and it is an honor, O you young ladies of Newnham and Girton, the highest that can be paid to you, so please to remember, my dears, when you turn down your thumbs to the next undesirable—and she blushed so charmingly all the way up the street that it was a pity there were not more lamps in Long Acre by which you could have seen her.
Their feet swayed together in a delightful rhythm, in their radiant progress: spats by Grant and Cockburn, and Mr. Moykopf’s most superior hand-stitched russia leather, and eight and eleven penny Walk-easies made by the gross at Kettering, which had no spats upon ’em. Yes, it was a lovely walk in the dark amid the purlieus of Long Acre. Several times they lost their way, and didn’t try very hard to find it. And then, suddenly, from out the distant mirk, where the time-spirit was keeping its grim eye upon ’em, the hour was tolled from Saint Martin’s Church.
One—two—three—four—five—six—seven!—the excited heart of the Principal Girl counted each stroke. Cinderella must fly. She would only just have time to drink her Oxo, and to get into her rags—which were not rags at all really—and fix her war paint, if the great British public was not to receive one of the severest disappointments in its annals.
“Well, think about it, old girl—although I don’t mean to take ‘No.’ I’ve made up my mind to that.”
They were on Granny’s doorstep now. And there let us leave them without waiting to see what happened.
Did something happen?
There is no need to gratify idle curiosity upon the subject.
The really important thing that did happen, before Cinderella slipped her latch-key in the door, was that Mr. Philip re-affirmed his manly determination not to take “No” for an answer. He vowed, moreover, that he would come and interview Grandmamma after she had had her siesta on the afternoon of the Sabbath Day.