Angel: May your wings never moult! I hope you didn't think me extravagant wiring yesterday, instead of writing. I was too busy baking the yeasty dough of my impressions to write a letter worth reading; and when one has practically no money, what's the good of being economical? You know the sole point of sympathy I ever touched with "Sissy" Williams was his famous speech: "If I can't earn five hundred a year, it's not worth while worrying to earn anything"; which excused his settling down as a "remittance man," in the top flat, at forty francs a month.
Dearest, the Dragon hasn't drag-ged once, yet! And, by the way, till he does so, I think I won't call him Dragon again. It's rather gratuitous, as I'm eating his bread--or rather, his perfectly gorgeous à la cartes, and am literally smeared with luxury, from my rising up until my lying down, at his expense.
I know, and you know, because I repeated it word for word, that Ellaline said she thought he must have been well paid for undertaking to "guardian" her, as his hard, selfish type does nothing for nothing; and she has always seemed so very rich (quite the heiress of the school, envied for her dresses and privileges) that there might be temptations for an unscrupulous man to pick up a few plums here and there. But--well, of course Ellaline ought to know, after being his ward ever since she was four, and hearing things on the best authority about the horrid way he treated her mother, as well as suffering from his cruel heartlessness all these years. Never a letter written to herself; never the least little present; never a wish to hear from her, or see her photograph; all business carried on between himself and Madame de Maluet, who is too discreet to prejudice a ward against a guardian. And I--I saw him only day before yesterday for the first time. What can I know about him? I've no experience in reading characters of men. The dear old Abbé and a few masters in the school are the only ones I have a bowing acquaintance with--except "Sissy" Williams, who doesn't count. It's dangerous to trust to one's instincts, no doubt, for it's so difficult to be sure a wish isn't disguising itself as instinct, in rouge and a golden wig.
But then, there's the man's profile, which is of the knight-of-old, Crusader pattern, a regular hook to hang respect upon, though I'd be doing it injustice if I let you imagine it's shaped like a hook. It isn't; it's quite beautiful; and you find yourself furtively, semi-consciously sketching it in air with your forefinger as you look at it. It suggests race, and noblesse oblige, and a long line of soldier ancestors, and that sort of thing, such as you used to say survived visibly among the English aristocracy and English peasantry (not in the mixed-up middle classes) more markedly than anywhere else. That must mean some correspondence in character, mustn't it? Or can it be a mask, handed down by noble ancestry to cover up moral defects in a degenerate descendant?
Am I gabbling school-girl gush, or am I groping toward light? You know what I want to say, anyhow. The impression Sir Lionel Pendragon makes on me would be different if he hadn't been described by Ellaline. I should have supposed him quite easy to read, if he'd happened upon me, unheralded--as a big ship looms over a little bark, on the high sea. I'd have thought him a simple enough, straightforward character in that case. I should have put him in the class with his own Tudor castle--not that I've ever yet seen a Tudor castle, except in photographs or on postcards. But I'd have said to myself: If he'd been born a house instead of a man, he'd have been built centuries and centuries ago, by strong barons who knew exactly what they wanted, and grabbed it. He'd have been a castle, an early Tudor castle, battlemented and surrounded by a moat, fortified, of course, and impregnable to the enemy, unless they treacherously blew him up. He would have had several secret rooms, but they would contain chests of treasure, not nasty skeletons.
Now you understand exactly what I'd be thinking of the alleged Dragon, if it weren't for Ellaline. But as it is, I don't know what to think of him. That's why I describe him as elaborate and complicated, because, I suppose, he must be totally different inside from what he seems outside.
Anyhow, I don't care--it's lovely being at the Ritz. And we're in the newspapers this morning, Emily and I shining by reflected light; mine doubly reflected, like the earth's light shining on to the moon, and from that being passed on to something else--some poor little chipped meteorite strayed out of the Milky Way.
It was Mrs. Norton who discovered the article about Sir Lionel--half a column--in the Morning Post and she sent out for lots of other papers without saying anything to her brother, for--according to her--he "hates that sort of thing."
I didn't have time to tell you in my last that she was sick crossing the Channel (though it was as smooth as if it had been ironed, and only a few wrinkles left in), but apparently she considers it good form for a female to be slightly ill in a ladylike way on boats; so, of course, she is. And as I was decent to her, she decided to like me better than she thought she would at first. For some reason they both seemed prejudiced against me (I mean against Ellaline) to begin with. I can't think why; and slowly, with unconcealable surprise, they are changing their minds. Changing one's mind keeps one's soul nice and clean and fresh; so theirs will be well aired, owing to me.
Emily has become quite resigned to my existence, and doles me out small confidences. She has not a rich nature, to begin with, and it has never been fertilized much, so it's rather sterile; but no noxious weeds, anyhow, as there may be in Sir Lionel's more generous and cultivated soil. I think I shall get on with her pretty well after all, especially motoring, when I can take her with plenty of ozone. She is a little afraid of her brother, though he's five years younger than she (I've now learned), but extremely proud of him; and it was quite pathetic, her cutting out the stuff about him in the papers, this morning, and showing every bit to me, before pasting all in a book she has been keeping for years, entirely concerned with Sir Lionel. She says she will show that to me, too, some day, but I mustn't tell him. As if I would!
But about the newspapers. She didn't order any Radical ones, because she said they were always down on the aristocracy, and unjust as well as stupid; but she got one by mistake, and you've no idea how delighted the poor little woman was when it praised her brother up to the skies. Then she said there were some decent Radicals, after all.
Of course, one knows the difference between "Mirabeau judged by his friends and Mirabeau judged by the people," and can make allowances (if one's digestion's good) for points of view. But there's one thing certain, whether he's angel or devil, or something hybrid between the two, Sir Lionel Pendragon is a man of importance in the Public Eye. I wonder if Ellaline realizes his importance in that way? I can't think she does, or she would have mentioned it, as it needn't have interfered with her opinion of his private character.
It's a little through Emily, but mostly from the newspaper cuttings, that I've got my knowledge of what he's done, and been, and is expected to be.
He's forty. I know that, because the Morning Post gave the date of his birth, and he's rather a swell, although only a baronet, and not even that till a short time ago. It appears that the family on both sides goes back into the mists of antiquity, in the days when legend, handed down by word of mouth (can you hand things out of your mouth? Sounds rude), was the forerunner of history. His father's ancestors are supposed to be descended from King Arthur; hence the "Pendragon"; though, I suppose, if it's true, King Arthur must really have been married several times, as say the vulgar records of which Tennyson very properly takes no notice. There have been dukes and earls in the family, but they have somehow disappeared, perhaps because in those benighted days there were no American heiresses to keep them up.
It seems that Sir Lionel was a soldier to begin with, and was dreadfully wounded in some frontier fight in India when he was very young. He nearly lost the use of his left arm, and gave up the army; but he got the Victoria Cross. Ellaline didn't say a word about that. Maybe she doesn't know. After I'd read his "dossier" in the paper, I couldn't resist asking him at lunch what he had done to deserve the V. C.
"Nothing to deserve it," he answered, looking surprised.
"To get it, then?" I twisted my question round.
"Oh, I don't know--almost forget. Pulled some silly ass out of a hole, I believe," said he.
That's what you get for asking this sort of Englishman questions about his past. I thought it was only widows with auburn hair you mustn't talk to about their pasts.
"A grateful Government" (according to the Morning Post) "sent young Pendragon, at the age of twenty-five, to East Bengal, as private secretary to Sir John Hurley, who was lieutenant-governor at that time"; and it's an ill Governor, so to speak, who blows no one any good. Sir John's liver was so tired of Bengal, that he had to take it away, and Lieutenant Pendragon (as he was then) looked after things till another man could arrive. He looked after them so brilliantly, that when the next lieutenant-governor did something silly, and was asked to resign, our incipient Sir Lionel was invited to take on the job. He was only thirty, and so he has been lieutenant-governor for ten years. Now he's going to see whether he likes being a baronet better, and having castles and motor-cars. All the papers I saw praised him tremendously, and said that in a crisis which might have been disastrous he had averted a catastrophe by his remarkable strength of character and presence of mind. I suppose that was the time when the other papers accused him of abominable cruelties. I wonder which was right? Perhaps I shall be able to judge, sooner or later, if I watch at the loopholes of his character like a cat watching for a mouse to come out for a walk.
As for money, if one can believe newspapers, he has plenty without shaking pennies from the slot of Ellaline Lethbridge's bank, and was fairly well off even before he came in for his title or his castle. However, as a very young man, he may have been poor--about the time he went into guardianship.
By the way, the left arm seems all right now. Anyhow, he uses it as arms are meant to be used, so far as I can see, so evidently it improved with time.
The papers tell about his coming back to England, and his Warwickshire castle, and the fire, and Mrs. Norton giving up her house in--some county or other; I've already forgotten which--to live with her "distinguished brother." Also, they say that he has a ward, whose mother was a relative of the family, and whose father was the Honourable Frederic Lethbridge, so well known and popular in society during the "late eighties." Ellaline was born in 1891. What had become of him, I'd like to know? Perhaps he died before she was born. She has told me that she can't remember him, but that's about all she has ever said of her father.
We are to stay at the Ritz until we start off on the motor trip, which is actually going to happen, though I was afraid it was too good to be true. The new car won't be ready for a week, though. I am sorry, but Mrs. Norton isn't. She is afraid she will be killed, and thinks it will be a messy sort of death to die. Besides, she likes London. She says her brother will be "overwhelmed with invitations"; but he hates society, and loathes being lionized. Imagine the man smothered under stacks of perfumed notes, as Tarpeia was under the shields and bracelets! Emily has not lived in London, because she wanted to be in a place where she particularly valued the vicar and the doctor; but she has given them up for her brother now, and is only going to write her symptoms, spiritual and physical. She enjoys church more than anything else, but thinks it will be her duty to take me about a little while we're in town, as her brother is sure not to, because he spurns women, and is not interested in anything they do.
I suppose she must know; and yet, at lunch yesterday, he asked if we were too tired, or if we should like to "do a few theatres." I said--because I simply had to spare them a shock later--that I was afraid I hadn't anything nice to wear. I felt myself go red--for it was a sort of disgrace to Ellaline--but he didn't seem as much surprised as Mrs. Norton did. Her eyebrows went up; but he only said of course school girls never had smart frocks, and I must buy a few dresses at once.
One evening gown would be enough for a young girl, Mrs. Norton said, but he didn't agree with her. He said he hadn't thought about it, but now that it occurred to him, he was of opinion that women should have plenty of nice things. Then, when she told him, rather hurriedly, that she would choose me something ready made at a good shop in Oxford Street, he remarked that he'd always understood Bond Street was the place.
"Not for school girls," explained dear Emily, who is a canny person.
"She isn't a school girl now. That's finished," said Sir Lionel. And as she thinks him a tin god on wheels, she ceased to argue.
By the by, he has the air of hating to call me by name. He says "Miss Lethbridge," in a curious, stiff kind of way, when he's absolutely obliged to give me a label; otherwise he compromises with "you," to which he confines himself when possible. It's rather odd, and can't be an accident. The only reason I can think of is that he may feel it is really his duty to call me "Ellaline."
I promised to write to Ellaline, as soon as I'd anything to tell worth telling; and I suppose I must do it to-day; yet I dread to, and can't make up my mind to begin. I don't like to praise a person whom she regards as a monster; still, I've nothing to say against him; and I'm sure she'll be cross if I don't run him down. I think I shall state facts baldly. When I get instalments of allowance--intended for Ellaline, of course--I am to send the money to her, except just enough not to be noticeably penniless. I'm to address her as Mademoiselle Leonie de Nesville, and send letters to Poste Restante, because, while I'm known as Miss Lethbridge, it might seem queer if I posted envelopes directed to a person of my own name. It was Ellaline who suggested that, not I. She thought of everything. Though she's such a child in some ways, she's marvellous at scheming.
I really can't think yet what I shall say to her. It's worrying me. I feel guilty, somehow, I don't know why.
Mrs. Norton suggested taking me out shopping and sight-seeing this afternoon. Sir Lionel proposed going with us. His sister was astonished, and so was I, especially after what she had said about his not being interested in women's affairs. "Just to make sure that you take my tip about Bond Street," he remarked. "And Bond Street used to amuse me--when I was twenty. I think it will amuse me now--to see how it and I have changed."
So we are going, all three. Rather awful about the gray serge and sailor hat, isn't it? I felt self-respecting in them at Versailles, and even in Paris, because there I was a singing teacher; in other words, nobody. But in London I'm supposed to be an heiress. And here, at the Ritz, such beautiful beings come to lunch, in dresses which they have evidently been poured into with consummate skill and incredible expense.
I tasted Pêche Melba to-day, for the first time. It made me wish for you. But it didn't seem to go at all with gray serge and a cotton blouse. I ought to have been a Gorgeous Being, with silk linings.
How am I to support the shopping ordeal? Supposing Mrs. Norton chooses me things (oh horror!). They're sure to be hideous, but they may be costly. As it says in an English society paper which Madame de Maluet takes: "What should A. do?"
If only Telepathy were a going concern, you would answer that Hard Case for
Your poor, puzzled
"A.," alias "E."
P. S. Nothing more heard or seen of the White Girl's Burden, Richard of that ilk. I was afraid of his turning up at the Grand Hotel in Paris, or even at the station to "see us off," but he didn't. He has disappeared into space, and is welcome to the whole of it. I should nearly have forgotten him, if I didn't wonder sometimes what his mysterious profession is.
