Set in Silver 6Sir Lionel Pendragon to Colonel P. R. O'Hagan, at Droita, East Bengal
18
Literature · Romance
Set in Silver 6
Sir Lionel Pendragon to Colonel P. R. O'Hagan, at Droita, East Bengal
WilliamsonEnglish
Ritz Hotel, London,
July 8th
My Dear Pat: You were right, I was wrong. It is good to be in England again. Your prophecy has come true. The dead past has pretty well buried its dead. A few dry bones show under the surface here and there. I let them lie. Is thy servant a dog, that he should dig up buried bones!
As you know, I was ass enough to dread arriving in Paris. I dreaded it throughout the whole voyage. When I got to Marseilles, I found a wire from Emily, saying she would meet me in Paris. Ass again! I had an idea she was putting herself to that trouble with the kindly wish to "stand by," and take my thoughts off old days. But I might have known better, knowing that good, practical little soul. She had quite another object. Came to break the news of a fire at Graylees; but it seems not to have done any serious damage, except to have wiped out a few modern frills. They can easily be tacked on again. I'm glad it was no worse, for I love Graylees. I might have turned out a less decent sort of chap than I am if it hadn't been for the prospect of inheriting it sooner or later. One has to live up to certain things, and Graylees was an incentive.
You asked me to tell you if Emily had changed. Well, she has. It's eighteen years since you saw her; fifteen since I did. I must tell you honestly, you'd have no sentimental regrets if you could see her now. You will remember, if you're not too gallant, that she was three years older than you; the three seem to have stretched to a dozen. Luckily, you didn't let Norton's snatching Emily from under your nose prey upon cheek or heart. Nothing is damaged. You are sound and whole, and that is why your friendship has been such a boon to me. You have saved me from tilting against many windmills.
I suppose you'll think I'm "preambling" now, to put off the evil moment of telling you about Ellaline de Nesville's girl. But no. For once you're mistaken in me. After all, it isn't an evil moment. I'm surprised at myself, doubly surprised at the girl; and both surprises are agreeable ones.
I don't ask you if you remember Ellaline; for nobody who ever saw her could forget her; at least, so it seems to me, after all these years, and all the changes in myself. As I am now, hers is the last type with which I should fall in love, provided I were fool enough to lose my head for anyone. Yet I can't wonder at the adoration I gave her. She was exactly the sort of girl to call out a boy's love, and she had all mine, poor foolish wretch that I was. There's nothing more pathetic, I think, at this distance, than a boy's passionate purity in his first love--unless it's his disillusionment; for disillusion does no nature good. It would have done mine great harm if I hadn't had a friend like you to groan and grumble to.
You understand how I've always felt about this child she wished me to care for. I was certain that Ellaline Number 2 would grow up as like Ellaline Number 1 as this summer's rose is like last summer's, which bloomed on the same bush.
At four years old the little thing undoubtedly had a dollish resemblance to her mother. I thought I remembered that she had the first Ellaline's great dark eyes, full of incipient coquetry, and curly black lashes, which the little flirt already knew how to use, by instinct. The same sort of mouth, too, which to look at makes a boy believe in a personal Cupid, and a man in a personal devil. I had a dim recollection of chestnut-brown hair, falling around a tiny face shaped like Ellaline's; "heart-shape" we used to call it, Emily and I, when we were both under our little French cousin's thumb, in the oldest days of all, before even Emily began to find her out.
I wonder if a child sheds its first hair, like its first teeth? I've never given much thought to infantine phenomena of any kind; still, I'm inclined to believe now that there must be such cases. Of course, we know a type of blond, née brunette; for instance, Mrs. Senter, young Burden's fascinating aunt, whom we suspected of having turned blond in a single night (by the way, whom should I run across in Paris but Dicky, grown up more or less since he chaperoned his female belongings in the Far East). But I'm not talking of the Mrs. Senters of the world; I'm talking of Ellaline's unexpected daughter. She has changed almost incredibly between the ages of four and nineteen.
Before I knew Emily intended meeting me in Paris, I wrote the school-ma'am asking that my ward might be sent, well chaperoned, to the Gare de Lyon. It was bad enough to have to face a modern young female, adorned with all the latest improvements and parlour tricks. It would have been worse to face several dozens of these creatures in their lair; therefore, I funked collecting my ward at Versailles. I was to know her by a rose pinned on her frock in case she'd altered past recognition. It was well, as things turned out, that I'd made the suggestion, otherwise the girl would have had to go back to Versailles, like an unclaimed parcel; and that would have been bad, as she had no chaperon. Something had happened to the lady, or to the lady's relatives. I almost forget what, now.
Instead of the dainty little Tanagra figure in smart French frills, which I expected, there was a tall, beautiful young person, with the bearing of an Atalanta, and the clothes of a Quakeress. She tacked my name on to the wrong man, or I should have let her go, in spite of the rose, so different was she from what I expected. And you'll be amused to hear that her idea of Lionel Pendragon was embodied by old "Hannibal" Jones, who got into my train at Marseilles. He's taken to parting his name in the middle now, and is General Wellington-Jones. She ought to have known my age approximately, or could have learned it if she cared to bother; but I suppose to nineteen, forty might as well be sixty. That's a thing to remember, if one feels the sap pulsing in one's branches, just to remind one that after all it's not spring, but autumn. And at the present moment, by the way, I'm not sure that I shan't need this kind of taking down a peg, for I am feeling so young that I think I must be growing old. I have begun to value what's left me of youth; to take it out and look at it in all lights, like a fruit which must be gloated over before it decays--and that's a fatal sign, eh? I have the most extraordinary interest in life, which I attribute to the new motor-car which will be finished and ready to use in a few days; also to the thought that Graylees is my own.
But I'm wandering away from the girl.
She is as unlike Ellaline de Nesville as one beautifully bound first volume of a human document can be from another equally attractive. "First volume of a human document" isn't inexpressive of a young girl, is it? Heaven knows what this one may be by the time the second and third volumes are ready for publication; but at present one turns over the leaves with pleased surprise. There's something original and charming in each new page.
Her first hair must have been shed, for the present lot--and there is a lot!--is of a bright, yellowy brown; looks like a child's hair, somehow. There are little rings and kinks about it which I take to have been put there by the curling-tongs of nature, though I may be mistaken. And I suppose I must have deceived myself about the child's eyes, for they are not black, but of a grayish hazel, which can look brown or violet at night. She is a tall young thing, slim and straight as a sapling, with frank, honest manners, which are singularly engaging. I look at her in amazement and interest, and find her looking at me with an expression which I am not able to make out. I hardly dare let myself go in liking her, for fear of disappointment. She seems too good to be true, too good to last. I keep wondering what ancestress of Ellaline de Nesville's, or Fred Lethbridge's, is gazing out of those azure windows which are this girl's eyes. If Fred's soul, or Ellaline's, peeps from behind the clear, bright panes, it contrives to keep itself well hidden--so far. But I expect anything.
I had no notion until now that a young woman could be a delightful "pal" for a man, especially a man of my age. Perhaps this is my ignorance of the sex (for I admit I locked up the book of Woman, and never opened it again, since the chapter of Ellaline), or it may be that girls have changed since the "brave days when we were twenty-one." At that remote epoch, as far as I can discover by blowing off the dust from faded souvenirs, one either made love to girls, or one didn't. They were there to dance with and flirt with, and go on the river with, not to talk politics to, or exchange opinions of the universe. They--the prettiest ones--would have thought that valuable time was being wasted in such discussions. Yet here is this girl, not twenty, a child fresh from school--a French school, at that--radiant with the power of her youth, her beauty, her femininity; yet she seems actually interested in problems of life unconnected with love affairs. She appears to like talking sense, and she has humour, far more subtle than the mere, kittenish sense of fun which belongs to her years--or lack of them. I dreaded the responsibility of her, but I dreaded much more being bored by her, flirted with by her. I'm hanged if I could have stood that from the kind of girl I was prepared to see; but as I said, I've found a "pal"--if I dared believe in her. Instead of avoiding my ward's society, and shoving it on to Emily, as I intended, I excuse myself to myself for contriving pretexts to bask in it.
To-day, for instance, what do you think I did? A shopping expedition was in question. Emily, who never had much taste in dress, and now clothes herself as if in punishment for sin, seems to know when other women are badly turned out. She thinks it right that young girls should be simply dressed, but considers that in the case of Ellaline simplicity has been carried too far. You see, she doesn't know what you and I know about that wretched fellow Lethbridge's end, and she believes his daughter has plenty of money, or will have, on coming of age. Naturally, I don't undeceive her. Emily is a good soul, but over-conscientious in questions of money, and if she knew the truth she might be inclined to hold the purse-strings tight. She might even be tempted to hint something distressing to this poor girl, if the child vexed her by any thoughtless little extravagance; whereas I wouldn't for a good deal have Ellaline's daughter guess she owes anything to me.
Emily offered to choose frocks for Miss Lethbridge; whereupon that young lady cast such a comical glance of despair at me--a glance which I think was involuntary--that it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. I saw so well what was in her mind! And if you will believe me, O'Hagan, I volunteered to go with them.
Having committed myself, I had all the sensations of a fly caught on a sheet of "Tanglefoot," or a prisoner of war chained to a Roman chariot; but in the end I enjoyed myself hugely. Nothing better has happened to me since I used to be taken to look at the toyshops the day before Christmas. No, not even my first pantomime could beat this as an experience!
Emily's economical soul clamoured for Oxford Street. I stood out for Bond, and got my way. (You will grin here. You say I always do get my way.) My idea was to make of myself a kind of Last Resort, or Court of Appeal. I meant to let Emily advise, but to sweep her aside if she perpetrated atrocities. The first shop, however, went to my head. It was one of those where you walk into a kind of drawing-room with figurines, or whatever you call them--slender, headless ladies in model dresses--grouped about, and other equally slender, but long-headed ladies in black satin trains, showing off their dummy sisters.
It was the figurines that intoxicated me. I saw Ellaline's head--in imagination--coming out at the top of all the prettiest dresses. They were wonderfully simple, too, the most attractive ones; seemed just the thing for a young girl. Emily walked past them as if they were vulgar acquaintances trying to catch her eye at a duchess's ball, but they trapped me. There was a white thing for the street, that looked as if it had been made for Ellaline, and a blue fluff, cut low in the neck, exactly the right colour to show up her hair. Then there was a film of pink, with wreaths of little rosebuds dotted about--made me think of spring. (I told you I'd lost my head, didn't I?)
I stopped my ward, pointed out these things to her, and asked her if she liked them. She said she did, but they would be horribly expensive. She wouldn't think of buying such dreams. With that, up swam one of the satin ladies (whose back view was precisely like that of a wet, black codfish with a long tail; I believe she was "Directoire"); and hovering near on a sea of pale-green carpet she volunteered the information that these "little frocks" were "poems," singularly suited to the style of--I expected her to say my "daughter." Instead of which, however, she finished her sentence with a "madam" that brought a blush to my weather-beaten face. I was the only one concerned who did blush, however, I assure you! The girl smiled into my eyes, with a mischievous twinkle, and minded not at all. A former generation would have simpered, but this young person hasn't a simper in her.
I said "Nonsense," she could well afford the dresses. She argued, and Emily returned to help her form up a hollow square. They were both against me, but I insisted, and the codfish was a powerful ally.
"Would they fit you?" I asked the girl.
"Yes, they would fit me, I dare say. But----"
That settled it.
"We'll take them," said I. And after that, being beside myself, I reconnoitred the place, pointing my stick at other things which took my fancy. The codfish backed me up at every step, and other codfishes swam the green sea, with hats doubtless brought from unseen coral caves. Most of them were enormous hats, but remarkably attractive, in one way or another, with large drooping brims that dripped roses or frothed with ostrich plumes. I made Ellaline take off a small, round butter plate she had on, which was ugly in itself, though somehow it looked like a saint's halo on her; and murmuring compliments on "madam's" hair, the siren codfishes tried on one hat after another. I bought all, without asking the prices, because each one was more becoming to the girl than its predecessor, and not to have all, would have been like deliberately destroying so many original Gainsboroughs or Sir Joshuas.
The child's hair, by the way, is extraordinarily vital. It spouts up in two thick, bright billows over her white forehead, like the beginning of a strong fountain--a very agreeable foundation for a hat.
"Have you already got all you want of them, or could you make use of more?" I inquired of my ward.
"I shouldn't know myself in such miracles," said she, with a kind of gasp, her eyes very bright, and her cheeks pinker than they had been when she was suspected of bridehood. She was still suspected of it; indeed, I think that in the minds of the black satin codfishes circumstantial evidence had tinkered suspicion into certainty. But Ellaline was deaf to the "madam." They might have turned her from wife into widow without her noticing. She was burning with the desire to possess those embroidered cobwebs and those frilled petticoats. I don't know why she should have been more excited about garments which few, if any, save herself, would see after she'd put them on, than she was about those on which cats and kings might gaze; but so it was. I should like to ask an expert if this is the case with all females, or if it is exceptional.
"Send the lot with the hats and dresses," said I. And when she widened her eyes and gasped, I assured her that I knew her income better than she did. Anything she cared to have in the way of pretty clothes she could afford.
Strange to say, even then she didn't seem comfortable. She opened her lips as if to speak; shut them hastily at the first word, swallowed it with difficulty, sighed, and looked anxious. I should rather have liked to know what was in her mind.
We ended up by the purchase of costumes suitable to the automobile, both for Emily and Ellaline. I think women ought to be as "well found" for motoring, as for yachting, don't you? And I am looking forward to the trip I intend to take. It will be interesting to study the impressions made upon this young girl by England, land of history and beauty----
... this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea--
... this England.
You will laugh at me, perhaps, for my long "harping" on my ward; but anyhow, don't misunderstand. It's not because she is pretty and engaging (one would say that of a kitten), but because of the startling contrast between the real girl and the girl of my imagination. I can't help thinking about her a good deal for this reason, and what I think of I have generally talked of or written of fully to you, my best and oldest friend. It's a habit nearly a quarter of a century old, and I don't mean to break it now, particularly as you have made rather a point of my continuing it on my return "home" after all these years.
London has got hold of me. I am fascinated by it. Either it has improved as it has grown, or I am in a mood to be pleased with anything English. Do you remember dear old Ennis's Rooms, which you and I used to think the height of luxury and gaiety? I've promised myself to go there again, and I mean to take Ellaline and Emily to supper after the theatre to-night. I think I shall keep this letter open to tell you how the old place impresses me.
Midnight and a half.
I've had a shock. Ennis's is dead as a doornail. We entered, after the theatre, and galvanized the Rooms into a kind of dreadful life. They "don't serve many suppers now, sir," it seems. "It's mostly luncheons and dinners."
The waiters resented us as intruders. We were the only ones, too, which made it worse, as all their rancour was visited on us; but we hadn't been for many minutes at our old favourite table (the one thing unchanged), trying to keep up a spurious gaiety, when another party of two ventured in.
They were young Dick Burden and his aunt, Mrs. Senter.
Now, you mayn't see it, but this was rather odd. It wouldn't have been odd in the past, to meet your most intimate friend from round the corner, and the Shah of Persia, at Ennis's. But evidently the "people who amuse themselves" don't come now. It's not "the thing." Why, therefore, should this couple choose Ennis's for supper? They haven't been out of England for fifteen years, like me. If Mrs. Senter occasionally spends Saturday to Monday in India, or visits the Sphinx when the Sphinx is in season, she always returns to London when "everybody is in town," and there does as everybody does.
I immediately suspected that Burden had brought her with an object: that object, to gain an introduction to Ellaline. The suspicion may seem far-fetched; but you wouldn't pronounce it so if you could have seen the young man's face, in the railway station at Paris, the other day. I had that privilege; and I observed at the time his wish to know my ward, without feeling a responsive one to gratify it. I don't know why I didn't feel it, but I didn't, though the desire was both pardonable and natural in the young fellow. He has a determined jaw; therefore perhaps it's equally natural that, when disappointed, he should persist--even follow, and adopt strong measures (in other words, an aunt) to obtain his object. You see, Ellaline is an extremely pretty girl, and I'm not alone in thinking so.
My idea is that, having found us in the newspapers, staying at the Ritz, the boy must have somehow informed himself as to our movements, awaiting his opportunity--or his aunt. I bought my theatre tickets in the hotel. He may have got his information from there; and the rest was easy--as far as Ennis's. I'm afraid the rest was, too, because Mrs. Senter selected the table nearest ours, and after we had exchanged greetings proposed that we join parties. The tables were placed together, and introductions all round were a matter of course. Young England expects that every aunt will do her duty!
They still give you very good food at Ennis's, but it's rather like eating "funeral baked meats."
Mrs. Senter is exactly what she was some years ago. Perhaps it would be ungallant to recall to your memory just how many years ago. She is, if anything, younger. I believe there's a maxim, "Once a duchess, always a duchess." I think women of to-day have another: "Once thirty, always thirty"; or, "Once thirty, always twenty-nine." But, joking apart, she is a very agreeable and rather witty woman, sympathetic too, apparently, though I believe you used to think, when she was out smiting hearts at our Back o' Beyond, that in nature she somewhat resembled a certain animal worshipped by the Egyptians and feared by mice. She seems very fond of her nephew Dick, with whom she says she goes about a good deal. "We chaperon each other," she expressed it. She pities me for my fire at Graylees, but envies me my motoring trip.
We shall be off in a few days, now, I hope, as soon as Ellaline has been shown a few "features" of London. I went to see the car to-day, and she is a beauty. I shall try her for the first time to-morrow.
