The Compleat Bachelor

by Oliver Onions

  X

  AN UNDRESS REHEARSAL

  Millicent Dixon had called on me unexpectedly, soaked from neck toankle. I had been watching the vertical downpour from my window--long,heavy slate-pencils of water, that rebounded from the pavement in a mista foot high,--and listening to the hurrying runnels that sluiced thegutters. It was full, uncompromising rain, and it thrashed steadily fromthe invisible cullender that had been a sky an hour ago. Millicent stoodbefore me with her hand on the door, half vexed, but laughing out of hersodden garments.

  "Now don't sit there looking at me, Mr. Butterfield," she exclaimed, asI admired at her plight with eyes half closed; "get me some things."

  I considered weightily.

  "I have in the house at present," I replied, "several morning suits, aNorfolk jacket, evening wear, pink silk----"

  She tapped impatiently with her foot, shaking a sliver of little dropsfrom the hem of her gown.

  "Or perhaps fishing attire would be----?"

  "Don't be ponderous. Where's Caroline?"

  "Caroline, Miss Dixon, is out with Arthur, and will doubtless return inmuch the same state of rainwater as yourself."

  She disappeared towards Carrie's quarters, her dress making a wet slapon the door as she whisked round. I rose to prepare brandy during herabsence.

  It should be mentioned that I was confined to my room with a slightattack of rheumatism, which my considerate friends persisted inregarding as gout. As a matter of fact the affection was purelymuscular, and I indignantly repudiated the fuller flavour of the allegedcomplaint. My portliness must not be confounded with decadence.

  Disconsolately enough, I had been fingering and sorting old letters,turning out drawer after drawer of forgotten trifles, and feeling nonethe younger in consequence. It was borne in upon me that I had ahistory, or some record of trivialities that passed as such; and theselittle drifted relics of the past had curiously discounted the glamourof what was going to happen to-morrow. Except for the unexpected shower,I should probably have been left to this melancholy occupation all day;and Millicent's forced visit was very welcome.

  She reappeared in garments of Caroline's, passable in style, but withmarked qualifications in the fit. She tops Caroline by three inches. Ihad often wondered idly where that three inches was accounted for, andhow it was distributed. I knew now.

  I surveyed her critically.

  "Shoulders not bad," I remarked, walking round her, while she stood at alaughing attention for kit inspection. "Waist--turn round--hm!--an inchand a half at most; all right so long as you don't lean forward.Skirt--ah, the skirt--well, well, I'm past such things. Really, it's notbad for an improvisation."

  "I couldn't find Carrie's slippers," she said, putting forward a smallfoot.

  The skirt had already revealed the silk-clad toes. I got her aparticularly large pair of my own, brought her the brandy, which shedrank like a sensible woman of twenty-eight, placed her an armchair nearthe fire, and resumed my own seat. Then I sought her eyes.

  "It was most thoughtful of you, Miss Dixon, to remember an invalid, andto pay such a welcome call. I appreciate it. In the rain, too."

  Irony was wasted on this shameless woman. She looked at me boldly, andlaughed.

  "I assure you, Mr. Butterfield," she replied, "the last thing I thoughtof when I left home was coming to see you. But oh, the rain! Look at itnow."

  I was conscious of the fresh smell of wet pavement from where I sat--thewindow was open. The wheels of a hansom went past with a watery swish,the horse's hoofs slapping clear in the deserted street, and the stonesshone with a cleanness that they had not known for a month.

  "At any rate," I said magnanimously, "you're here for an hour or two.It's not going to stop yet. You may as well make a virtue ofentertaining me."

  She bowed mockingly.

  "It is I who am entertained," she replied. "You have helped me in awatery dilemma. I am in your home. I wear your----"

  I stopped her. They were not mine. They were Caroline's.

  "Slippers," she continued, crossing them on the fender. "I think I'lltake Caroline's place while she's gadding about with Arthur."

  Again I stopped her. She was not in Caroline's shoes.

  "Besides, Miss Dixon," I added, "are you not a little premature inoffering to be a sister to me?"

  "Never mind," she replied, laughing; "call it housekeeper, if you like."

  "The imputation," I answered, "is monstrous. I am a respectablebachelor, and never had such a thing. And if I had, she would haveappeared before me in a fitting state--not a misfitting one."

  "Then we'd better make it sister after all," she returned, "and my firstduty is to demand what you were doing when I came in."

  I glanced at the half-sorted piles of notes, cards, ancient invitations,mementoes, and the hundred other matters which had doubtless been ofmore or less importance in their day, and shrugged my shoulders.

  "I know," said Miss Dixon, "it is rather dreadful. Seems like readingsome one else's letters. Let me help you."

  She put out her hand for the nearest packet. I placed my own firmly onhers.

  "Miss Dixon," I said slowly, "who are you that you would plunge thusrecklessly into the tied-up part of a now reformed bachelor? Thatparticular bundle is least of all fit for a sister's perusal."

  "If Caroline neglected her duty," she retorted, "that is no reason why Ishould do the same. I want to see them."

  "You had better take these instead," I returned, pushing towards her atray of wedding cards.

  "I insist."

  "You insist?" I replied, in the tone of one speaking to a naughty child."How old are you, Miss Dixon?"

  She laughed.

  "I think I am a good deal older than you, Rollo, in this respect; Idon't keep letters as I did when I was a sentimental schoolgirl. Idestroy _that_ kind." And she nodded towards the bundle.

  "Indeed?" I said. "And why did you not tell me sooner? That would havebeen valuable information to me at one time."

  "And why?"

  "I might have written a good deal more than I did."

  "You never wrote anything unfitted for my sheltered youth," she replied,quietly smiling, and burrowing one foot deeper into the cavernousrecesses of a slipper.

  "I don't post all I write," I corrected, "but I have written things thatwould have amazed a Bassishaw--and thought twice about it."

  "Bassishaw doesn't say much in his letters," she said musingly. She andCaroline were very good friends, and there had doubtless been a gooddeal of inter-feminine confidence between them.

  "But why don't you post them?"

  "Oh," I replied offhand, "they are experiments. It is another way ofkeeping a diary. Perhaps, after all, you may see them if you care to.They are merely studies in moods."

  I untied the packet.

  "Here you are," I continued. "Arthur Bassishaw, Esq., on the occasion ofhis engagement to Caroline. Good advice--but a little too late. Itwouldn't have been taken, anyway, from what I know of His OmnipotentYouthfulness. Never posted."

  "It might have been worth while to post it for the sake of reply,"Millicent returned smiling; "you'd have had something badly written, butvery ardent."

  I shook my head.

  "Bassishaw's sword would be a good deal mightier than his pen," Ireplied. "To see him in the throes of composition is a felicity I havehitherto missed. Now here's another: to Caroline, on the same occasion.That, Millicent, cost me some trouble to write, and I am afraid itshowed it--I have only one sister, you know. Unposted."

  "That was rather nice of you, Rollo," she said.

  "I should only have given myself away," I returned. "Now this, to Mrs.Bassishaw, is one of two--the other one was posted. It was a hardalternative. I sent the usual nice thing; Mrs. Bassishaw wouldunderstand that. This"--I tapped the envelope--"would have appeareddifficult to a widow still young, and still in the running with her ownson."

  Millicent nodded. There were reasons
for Mrs. Bassishaw's conduct whichher relatives approved and her friends condoned.

  "These," I continued, turning over two or three, "are small ebullitionsthat served their end in leaving me in a better temper; and in one atleast of them I evaded a state of mind in which I was feeling very sorryfor myself. It is a good game, don't you think?"

  "Excellent," she returned, "from the point of view of your futurebiographer. I suppose you have one eye on the memoir-writer, Rollo. Isyour statue to be equestrian?"

  I waived reply magnanimously, and went on.

  "Here is one to Mrs. Loring Chatterton; and not unconnected with it, oneto yourself."

  "One to me?" she inquired, looking up. "Why to me? What mood did thatexemplify?"

  "I think, Millicent," I replied, "that I must have felt rather a regardfor you that evening."

  She bowed ironically.

  "It is nice to be thought well of," she replied, "even if the regarddoes stop at the posting point. It was a wet night, I suppose; or theservants had gone to bed?"

  "The fires of the heart, Millicent," I answered, in pompous periods, atwhich she only laughed, "are not quenched by rain. Yon gutters that runso musically could no more----"

  "'Oh, Captain Shaw!'" she sang softly, "'type of true love keptunder----'"

  I leaned back, tapping the letter with the ends of my fingers, andsignified my willingness to wait until her operatic fervour should havespent itself.

  "It must have been ferverish," she said, still laughing. "Did it takeyou long to write?"

  "About eight years, Millicent," I replied.

  "And not to be posted after all? Never mind; I suppose I shall see it inthe biography. I declare I'm almost curious, Rollo. Tell me, is it----?"She paused, and looked fairly and quietly at me, with an odd smile onher lips.

  "It is," I replied, returning her gaze. "Would you care to read it,Millicent?"

  She rose and went to the window. A cold grey light that heralded thepassing of the shower filled the room. The heavens were relenting, andalready a corner of the leaden pall had lifted. Millicent would probablytake the opportunity to leave.

  "Would you care to read it?" I repeated, looking over my shoulder.

  She faced round suddenly.

  "No, Rollo," she said, "I should not."

  "You are probably right," I replied. "Proposal is a venerable formality;but the inevitable scene----"

  She walked back from the window and stood before me, dignified in herheterogeneous attire and perfectly serious.

  "I thought you knew better than that, Rollo," she said. "I don't thinkthere would be any scene, and, anyway, I'm not in my first season, youknow." She smiled the same queer smile. "But if you think that I shouldbe interested in such a matter merely as an--experiment in mood--youwrong me, Rollo; and if, on the other hand, I am to take it in theplainer sense, I should like something less warmed up and out of date.You can hardly call it fervid, can you?"

  I admired Millicent in that moment. I rose and took her hand.

  "Millicent," I said, "I accept your rebuke. There is nothing further tobe said--just now; but soon----"

  She laughed her accustomed laugh, the same old Millicent again.

  "I shall be perfectly willing to consider any representations you mayhave to make on the subject, Rollo, provided they are forwarded in theordinary course. Will you ring for tea?"