Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman
Page 23
Chapter X.
THREE LADIES.
"You may smoke," said Dicky politely, setting down his glass.
"Thank you," answered Mr. Hanmer. "But are you sure? In my experienceof houses there's always some one that objects."
Dicky lifted his chin. "We call this the nursery because it has alwaysbeen the nursery. But I do what I like here."
Mr. Hanmer had accepted the boy's invitation to pay him a visit ashoreand help him to rig a model cutter--a birthday gift from his father; andthe pair had spent an afternoon upon it, seated upon the floor with thetoy between them and a litter of twine everywhere, Dicky deep in themysteries of knots and splices, the lieutenant whittling out miniatureblocks and belaying-pins with a knife that seemed capable of anything.
They had been interrupted by Manasseh, bearing a tray of refreshments--bread and honey and cakes, with a jug of milk for the one; for the othera decanter of brown sherry with a dish of ratafia biscuits. The repastwas finished now, and Dicky, eager to fall to work again, feared thathis friend might make an excuse for departing.
Mr. Hanmer put a hand in his pocket and drew out his pipe.
"Your father would call it setting a bad example, I doubt?"
To this the boy, had he been less loyal, might have answered that hisfather took no great stock in examples, bad or good. He said:"Papa smokes. He says it is cleaner than taking snuff; and so it is, ifyou have ever seen Mr. Silk's waistcoat."
So Mr. Hanmer filled and lit his pipe, doing wonders with a pockettinder-box. Dicky watched the process gravely through every detail,laying up hints for manhood.
"I ought to have asked you before," he said. "Nobody comes here ever,except Mr. Silk and the servants."
Hapless speech and bootless boast! They had scarcely seated themselvesto work again, the lieutenant puffing vigorously, before they heardfootsteps in the corridor, with a rustle of silks, and a hand tapped onthe door.
It opened as Dicky jumped to his feet, calling "Come in!"--and on thethreshold appeared Mrs. Vyell, in walking dress. Dicky liked "Mrs.Harry," as he called her; but he stared in dismay at two magnificentladies in the doorway behind her, and more especially at the elder ofthe twain, who, attired in puce-coloured silk, stiff as a board, walkedin lifting a high patrician nose and exclaiming,--
"Fah! What a detestable odour!"
Mr. Hanmer hurriedly hid his pipe and scrambled up, stammering anapology. Dicky showed more self-possession. He gave a little bow tothe two strangers and turned to Mrs. Harry.
"I am sorry, Aunt Sarah. But I didn't know, of course, that you werecoming and bringing visitors."
"To be sure you did not, child," said Mrs. Harry with a good-naturedsmile. She was a cheerful, commonsensical person, pleasant of facerather than pretty, by no means wanting in wit, and radiant ofhappiness, just now, as a young woman should be who has married the manof her heart. "But let me present you--to Lady Caroline Vyell and MissDiana."
Dicky bowed again. "I am sorry, ma'am," he repeated, addressing LadyCaroline. "Mr. Hanmer has put out his pipe, you see, and the window isopen."
Lady Caroline carried an eyeglass with a long handle of tortoise-shell.Through it she treated Dicky to a deliberate and disconcerting scrutiny,and lowered it to turn and ask Mrs. Harry,--
"You permit him to call you 'Aunt Sarah'?"
Mrs. Harry laughed. "It sounds better, you will admit, than'Aunt Sally,' and don't necessitate my carrying a pipe in my mouth.Oh yes," she added, with a glance at the boy's flushed face, "Dicky andI are great friends. In any one's presence but Mr. Hanmer's I would say'the best of friends.'"
Lady Caroline turned her eyeglass upon Mr. Hanmer. "Is this--er--gentleman his tutor?" she asked.
The question, and the sight of the lieutenant's mental distress, setMrs. Harry laughing again. "In seamanship only. Mr. Hanmer is myhusband's second-in-command and one of the best officers in the Navy."
"I consider smoking a filthy habit," said Lady Caroline.
"Yes, ma'am," murmured Mr. Hanmer.
The odious eyeglass was turned upon Dicky again. He, to avoid it,glanced aside at Miss Diana. He found Miss Diana less unpleasant thanher mother, but attractive only by contrast. She was a tall woman,handsome but somewhat haggard, with a face saved indeed from peevishnessby its air of distinction, but scornful and discontented. She had beenriding, and her long, close habit became her well, as did herwide-brimmed hat, severely trimmed with a bow of black ribbon and asingle ostrich feather.
"Diana," said Lady Caroline, but without removing her stony stare,"the child favours his mother."
"Indeed!" the girl answered indifferently. "I never met her."
"Oliver has her portrait somewhere, I believe. We must get him to showit to us. A toast in her day, and quite notably good-looking--thoughafter a style I abominate." She turned to Mrs. Harry and explained:"One of your helpless clinging women. In my experience that sort doesincomparably the worst mischief."
"Oh, hush, please!" murmured Mrs. Harry.
But Lady Caroline came of a family addicted to speaking its thoughtsaloud. "Going to sea, is he? Well, on the whole Oliver couldn't dobetter. The boy's position here must be undesirable in many ways; andat sea a lad stands on his own feet--eh, Mr.--I did not catch yourname?"
"Hanmer, ma'am."
"Well, and isn't it so?"
"Not altogether, ma'am," stammered Mr. Hanmer. "If ever your ladyshiphad been in the Navy--"
"God bless the man!" Lady Caroline interjected.
"--you'd have found that--that a good deal of kissing goes by favour,ma'am."
"H'mph!" said Lady Caroline when Mrs. Harry had done laughing."The child will not lack protection, of course. Whether 'tis to theircredit or not I won't say, but the Vyells have always shown a consciencefor--er--obligations of this kind."
On her way back to Sabines, where Sir Oliver had installed them,Lady Caroline again commended to her daughter his sound sense in packingthe child off to sea.
"They will take 'em at any age, I understand; and Mrs. Vyell, itappears, has no objection."
"She is not returning to Carolina by sea."
"No; but she can influence her husband. I must have another talk withher . . . a pleasant, unaffected creature, and, for a sailor's wife,more than presentable. One had hardly indeed looked to find suchnatural good manners in this part of the world. Her mother was aQuakeress, she tells me: yet she laughs a good deal, which I hadimagined to be against their principles. She doesn't say 'thee' and'thou' either."
"I heard her _tutoyer_ her husband."
"Indeed? . . . Well," Lady Caroline went on somewhat inconsequently,"Harry is a lucky man. When one thinks of the dreadful connectionsthese sailors are only too apt to form--though one cannot wholly blamethem, their opportunities being what they are . . . But, as I wassaying, Oliver couldn't have done better, for himself or for the child.At home the poor little creature could never be but a question; andsince he has this craze for salt water--curious he should resemble hisuncle in this rather than his father--one may almost call itprovidential. . . . At the same time, my dear, I wish you could haveshown a little more interest."
"In the child? Why?"
"Really, Diana, I wish you would cure yourself of putting these abruptquestions. . . . Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family,remember. He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put himselfout not a little--"
"I can believe _that_," said Diana brusquely.
"And it says much. All men are selfish, and Oliver as a youth was veryfar from being an exception. I find the change in him significant ofmuch. . . . At the same time you have mixed enough in the world, dear,to know that young men will be young men, and this sort of thinghappens, unfortunately."
"If, mamma, you suppose I bear Cousin Oliver any grudge because of thischild--"
"I am heartily glad to hear you say it. There should be, with us women,a Christian nicety in dealing with these--er--situations; in retrospect,at all
events. A certain--disgust, shall we say?--is natural, proper,even due to our sex: I should think the worse--very far the worse--of myDiana did she not feel it. But above all things, charity! . . . And letme tell you, dear, what I could not have told at the time, but I thinkyou are now old enough to know that such an experience is often the bestcure for a man, who thereafter, should he be fortunate in finding theright woman, anchors his affections and proves the most assiduous ofhusbands. This may sound paradoxical to you--"
"Dear mamma"--Diana hid a smile and a little yawn together--"believe meit does not."
"Such a man, then," pursued Lady Caroline, faintly surprised, "is likelyto be the more appreciative of any kindness shown to--er--what I maycall the living consequence of his error."
"Why not say 'Dicky' at once, mamma, and have done with it."
"To Dicky, then, if you will; but I was attempting to lay down thegeneral rule which Dicky illustrates. A little gentle notice taken ofthe child not only appeals to the man as womanly in itself, butdelicately conveys to him that the past is, to some extent, condoned.He has sown his wild oats: he is, so to speak, _range_; but he is nonethe less grateful for some assurance--"
Lady Caroline's discourse had whiled the way back to Sabines, to thedrawing-room; and here Diana wheeled round on her with the question,sudden and straight,--
"Do you suppose that Cousin Oliver is _range_, as you call it?"
"My child, we have every reason to believe so."
"Then what do you make of this?" The girl took up a small volume thatlay on the top of the harpsichord, and thrust it into her mother'shands.
"Eh? What?" Lady Caroline turned the book back uppermost and spelledout the title through her eyeglass. "'Ovid'--he's Latin, is he not?Dear, I had no notion that you kept up your studies in that--er--tongue."
"I do not. I have forgot what little I learned of it, and that was nextto nothing. But open the book, please, at the title-page."
"I see nothing. It has neither book-plate nor owner's signature."(Indeed Ruth never wrote her name in her books. She looked upon them asher lord's, and hers only in trust.)
"The title-page, I said. You are staring at the flyleaf."
"Ah, to be sure--" Lady Caroline turned a leaf. "Is this what youmean?" She held up a loose sheet of paper covered with writing.
"Read it."
The elder lady found the range of her eyeglass and conned--in silenceand without well grasping its purport--the following effusion:--
Other maids make Love a foeman, Lie in ambush to defeat him; I alone will step to meet him Valiant, his accepted woman. Equal, consort in his car, Ride I to his royal war.
Victims of his bow and targe, Yet who toyed with lovers' quarrels, Envy me my braver laurels! Lord! thy shield of shadow large Lift above me, shout the charge!
"Well?"
"I make nothing of it," owned Lady Caroline. "It appears to be poetryof a sort--probably some translation from the Latin author."
"You note, at least, that the handwriting is a woman's?"
"H'm, yes," Lady Caroline agreed.
"Nothing else?"
"Dear, you speak in riddles."
"It _is_ a riddle," said Diana. "Take the first letter of each line,and read them down, in order."
"O, L, I, V, E, R V, Y, E, L, L," spelled Lady Caroline, and loweredher eyeglass. "My dear, as you say, this cannot be a mere coincidence."
"_Did_ I say that?" asked Diana.
"But who can it be, or have been? . . . That Dance woman, perhaps?She was infatuated enough."
"It was not she," said Diana positively.
"_Somebody_ can tell us. . . . That Mr. Silk, for instance."
"Ah, you too think of him?"
"As a clergyman--and to some extent a boon companion of Oliver's--hewould be likely to know--"
"--And to tell? You are quite right, mamma: I have asked him."