CHAPTER XIX

"My dear," said Lady Garnett, accepting a cup of tea from the hands of her niece, and regarding her at the same time, from her low cushioned chair, with a certain drollery, "do you know that it is exactly one week since Mr. Sylvester called?"

Mary Masters' head was bent a little over her long _Suede_ gloves--they had just returned from their afternoon drive in the Park--and she paused to remove her hat and veil before she replied.

"And it is at least three weeks since Mr. Rainham was here."

"Ah, poor Philip!" remarked the old lady, "he is always irregular; he may come, or he may not. I must ask him to dinner, by the way, soon. But I was talking of Mr. Sylvester, who is a model of punctuality. (Give me a piece of _baba_ for Mefistofele, please!) Mr.

Sylvester was here last Sat.u.r.day, and the Sat.u.r.day before that. I think it is highly probable, Mary, that we shall be honoured with a visit from Mr. Sylvester to-day."

"I hope not!" said the girl with some energy. "I have a couple of songs that I must positively try over before to-night. Surely, it is a little late too, even for Mr. Sylvester."

"It is barely half-past five," said Lady Garnett, lazily feeding her pug, "and he knows that we do not dine till eight. Resign yourself, _cherie_; he will certainly come."

She glanced across at the young girl, pointing, with her keen gaze, words which seemed trivial enough. And Mary, her calm forehead puckered with a certain vague annoyance which she disdained to a.n.a.lyse, understood perfectly all that the elder lady was too discreet to say. She sat for a little while, her hands resting idly in her lap, or smoothing the creases out of her long, soft gloves.

Then she rose and moved quickly across to Lady Garnett's side, knelt suddenly down by her chair.

"Ah, my aunt!" she cried impulsively, "tell me what is to be done?"

Lady Garnett glanced up from the novel into which she had subsided; she laid it on the little tea-table with a sigh of relief at this sudden mood of confidence, coming a little strangely amidst the young girl's habitual reticence.

"We will talk, my dear," she said, "now you are practical. I suppose, by the way, he has not proposed?"

Mary shook her head.

"That is it, Aunt Marcelle! That is exactly what I want to prevent.

Is--is he going to?"

Lady Garnett smiled, and her smile had a very definite quality indeed.

"I would not cherish any false hopes, my dear. Charles Sylvester is a young man--not so very young though, by the way--whose conclusions are very slow, but when they arrive, _mon Dieu_! they are durable. I am sure he is terribly tenacious. It took him a long time to conclude that he was in love with you; at first, you know, he was a little troubled about your fortune, but at last he came to that conclusion--at Lucerne."

"Oh, at Lucerne!" protested the young girl with a nervous laugh.

"Surely not there!"

"It was precisely at Lucerne," continued Lady Garnett, "that he decided you would make him an adorable wife, and, in effect, it was a considerable piece of wisdom. And since then his conclusions have been more rapid. The last has been that he will certainly marry you--with or without a _dot_--before the elections. You are serious, you know, my dear, though not so serious as he believes; you are a girl of intelligence, and he is going to stand for some place or other, and candidates with clever wives often obtain a majority over candidates who are clever but have no wives. Yes, my dear, he is certainly going to propose. You may postpone it by the use of great tact for a month or so; you will hardly do so for longer."

"I don't want to postpone it," said Mary ruefully; "if it be inevitable, I would sooner have it over."

"It will never be over," remarked Lady Garnett decisively. "Did I not say that he was tenacious--_comme on ne l'est plus_? You may refuse him once--twice; it will all be to go over again and again, until you end by accepting him."

"Oh, Aunt Marcelle!" protested the young girl, with little flush of righteous wrath.

"After all," continued the elder lady, ignoring her interruption, "are you so very sure that--that it would not do? There are many worse men in the world than Sylvester. Both _my_ husbands were profligates, in addition to being fools. At any rate, this dear Charles is very correct. And remember, the poor man is really in love with you."

"I know," said Mary plaintively; "that is why I am so sorry. He is a good man, a conscientious man, and a gentleman; and really, sometimes lately, he has been quite simple and nice. Only----"

Lady Garnett completed the sentence for her with an impartial shrug.

"Only he is perfectly ridiculous, and as a lover quite impossible?

My dear, I grant it you with all my heart, and I think he has all the qualities which make an excellent husband."

As the young girl was still silent, unconvinced, she went on after a little while:

"You know, Mary, I have never tried to marry you. Frankly, my dear, I do not believe very much in pushing marriages. My own, and most others that I have known intimately, might have been very reasonably made--let us say--in purgatory. But a girl must marry some time or other, if she be rich. And you will have plenty of money, my poor child! You shall do exactly as you please, but I must admit that Charles is a most un.o.bjectionable _parti_. After all, there is only one other man I would sooner give you to, Mary, and he is impossible."

"Aunt Marcelle! Aunt Marcelle!" pleaded the young girl faintly, her dark head bent very low now over the arm of the chair.

Lady Garnett had been talking so far in a somewhat desultory fashion, interspersing her words with brief caresses to the pug who was curled up in her lap. Now she put down the little dog with a brusqueness which hurt his dignity; he pawed fretfully at Mary's dress, and, attracting no attention, trotted of to his basket on the rug, where he settled himself with a short growl of discontent. And Lady Garnett, with a sudden change of tone and a new tenderness in her voice, just stooped a little and touched the young girl's forehead with her thin lips.

"My poor child!" she said, "my dear little Mary! Did you suppose I didn't know? Did you think I was blind, as well as very old, that I shouldn't see the change in you, and guess why?"

"Ah!" cried the girl with a break in her voice. "What are you saying? What do you make me say?"

"Nothing! nothing!" said the old lady; "you need not tell me anything. It is only I who tell you--like the old immortal in Daudet, _J'ai vu ca moi_!--and it will pa.s.s as everything pa.s.ses. That is not the least sad part, though now you will hardly believe it.

You see, I don't lie to you; I tell you quite plainly that it is no good. Some men are made so--_vois tu, ma cherie_!--to see only one woman, an inaccessible one, when they seem to see many, and _he_ would be like that. Only it is a pity. And yet who would have foreseen it--that he should charm you, Mary? He so tired and old and _use_--for he is old for you, dear, though he might be my son--with his humorous, indolent, mocking talk, and his great, sad eyes. It's wicked of me, Mary, but I love you for it; so few girls would have cared, for he _is_ a wretched match. And I blame myself, too."

"Because I am foolish and utterly ashamed?" cried the girl from her obscurity, in a hard, small voice which the other did not know.

"Foolish!" she exclaimed. "Well, we women are all that, and some men--the best of them. But ashamed? Because you have a wise mother, my darling, who guesses things? I have never had any children but you and him. And no one but I can ever know. No; I was sorry because I had to hurt you. But it was best, my dear, because you are so strong. Yes, you are strong, Mary!"

"Am I?" said the girl wearily. "What is the good of it, I wonder?

Except that it makes one suffer more and longer."

"No," said Lady Garnett. "It makes one show it less, and only that matters. Aren't we going to Lady Dulminster to-night? Ah, my dear, the play must go on; we mustn't spoil the fun with sour faces, masks, and dominos except now and then! Believe me, _cherie_, underneath it all we are much the same--very sad people. Only it wouldn't do to admit it. Life would be too terrible then. So we dance on and make believe we enjoy it, and by-and-by, if we play hard enough, we do believe it for a minute or two. From one point of view, you know, it is rather amusing."

Mary looked up at last; her eyes, shining out of the white face, seemed to have grown suddenly very large and bright.

"Does it go on always, Aunt Marcelle?" she asked with a child's directness.

"Always!" said Lady Garnett promptly. "Only there are interludes, and then sometimes one guest steals away with his bosom friend into a corner, and they look under each other's masks. But it isn't a nice sight, and it mustn't happen very often, else they wouldn't be back in their places when the music began. Ah, my child!" she broke off suddenly, "I am talking nonsense to amuse you, and making you sadder all the time. But you know I think n.o.body was ever consoled by consolations unless it were the consoler."

She drew the girl's blank face towards her, clasped the smooth brown head against her breast with two bird-like hands on which the diamonds glittered.

"Cry, my dear!" she said at last; "that is the best of being young--that gift of tears. When one is old one laughs instead; but ah, _mon Dieu_! it is a queer kind of laughter."

They sat locked together in silence until the room was quite dark, lit only by the vague lamplight which shone in through the fine lace curtains from the street. Then Mary rose and played a little, very softly, in the darkness, morsels of Chopin, until the footman came in with a bright lamp, announcing that dinner was on the table. And Charles Sylvester had not arrived.

He atoned for this breach of his habit, however, on the morrow by making an early call upon the two ladies, whom he found alone, immediately after luncheon. He was very clean shaven, very carefully dressed, and with his closely b.u.t.toned frock-coat and his irreproachable hat, which he held ponderously in his hand during his protracted visit, he had the air of having come immediately from church.

Lady Garnett taxed him with this occupation presently, suppressing her further thought that he looked still more like an aspirant to matrimony, and Charles admitted the impeachment; he had been in the morning with his sister, Mrs. Lightmark, to the Temple Church. His severe gaze was turned inquiringly upon Mary. Lady Garnett responded for her a little flippantly.

"Oh, Mary went nowhere this morning, Mr. Sylvester--not even to the church parade. We were very late last night, at Lady Dulminster's.

London grows later and later; we shall be dining at midnight soon."

"I should like to go to the Temple Church sometimes," said Mary, "because of the singing, only it is so very far."