Lady Kimbuck gave tongue. She was Lord Evenwood"s sister. She spent a very happy widowhood interfering in the affairs of the various branches of her family.
"We"re not asking you to be happy. You have such odd ideas of happiness.
Your idea of happiness is to be married to your cousin Gerry, whose only visible means of support, so far as I can gather, is the four hundred a year which he draws as a member for a const.i.tuency which has every intention of throwing him out at the next election."
Lady Eva blushed. Lady Kimbuck"s faculty for nosing out the secrets of her family had made her justly disliked from the Hebrides to Southern Cornwall.
"Young O"Rion is not to be thought of," said Lord Evenwood firmly. "Not for an instant. Apart from anything else, his politics are all wrong. Moreover, you are engaged to this Mr. Bleke. It is a sacred responsibility not lightly to be evaded. You can not pledge your word one day to enter upon the most solemn contract known to--ah--the civilized world, and break it the next. It is not fair to the man. It is not fair to me. You know that all I live for is to see you comfortably settled. If I could myself do anything for you, the matter would be different. But these abominable land-taxes and Blowick--especially Blowick--no, no, it"s out of the question. You will be very sorry if you do anything foolish. I can a.s.sure you that Roland Blekes are not to be found--ah--on every bush. Men are extremely shy of marrying nowadays."
"Especially," said Lady Kimbuck, "into a family like ours. What with Blowick"s scandal, and that shocking business of your grandfather and the circus-woman, to say nothing of your poor father"s trouble in "85----"
"Thank you, Sophia," interrupted Lord Evenwood, hurriedly. "It is unnecessary to go into all that now. Suffice it that there are adequate reasons, apart from all moral obligations, why Eva should not break her word to Mr. Bleke."
Lady Kimbuck"s encyclopedic grip of the family annals was a source of the utmost discomfort to her relatives. It was known that more than one firm of publishers had made her tempting offers for her reminiscences, and the family looked on like nervous spectators at a battle while Cupidity fought its ceaseless fight with Laziness; for the Evenwood family had at various times and in various ways stimulated the circulation of the evening papers. Most of them were living down something, and it was Lady Kimbuck"s habit, when thwarted in her lightest whim, to retire to her boudoir and announce that she was not to be disturbed as she was at last making a start on her book. Abject surrender followed on the instant.
At this point in the discussion she folded up her crochet-work, and rose.
"It is absolutely necessary for you, my dear, to make a good match, or you will all be ruined. I, of course, can always support my declining years with literary work, but----"
Lady Eva groaned. Against this last argument there was no appeal.
Lady Kimbuck patted her affectionately on the shoulder.
"There, run along now," she said. "I daresay you"ve got a headache or something that made you say a lot of foolish things you didn"t mean.
Go down to the drawing-room. I expect Mr. Bleke is waiting there to say goodnight to you. I am sure he must be getting quite impatient."
Down in the drawing-room, Roland Bleke was hoping against hope that Lady Eva"s prolonged absence might be due to the fact that she had gone to bed with a headache, and that he might escape the nightly interview which he so dreaded.
Reviewing his career, as he sat there, Roland came to the conclusion that women had the knack of affecting him with a form of temporary insanity. They temporarily changed his whole nature. They made him feel for a brief while that he was a dashing young man capable of the highest flights of love. It was only later that the reaction came and he realized that he was nothing of the sort.
At heart he was afraid of women, and in the entire list of the women of whom he had been afraid, he could not find one who had terrified him so much as Lady Eva Blyton.
Other women--notably Maraquita, now happily helping to direct the destinies of Paranoya--had frightened him by their individuality. Lady Eva frightened him both by her individuality and the atmosphere of aristocratic exclusiveness which she conveyed. He had no idea whatever of what was the proper procedure for a man engaged to the daughter of an earl. Daughters of earls had been to him till now mere names in the society columns of the morning paper. The very rules of the game were beyond him. He felt like a confirmed a.s.sociation footballer suddenly called upon to play in an International Rugby match.
All along, from the very moment when--to his unbounded astonishment--she had accepted him, he had known that he was making a mistake; but he never realized it with such painful clearness as he did this evening.
He was filled with a sort of blind terror. He cursed the fate which had taken him to the Charity-Bazaar at which he had first come under the notice of Lady Kimbuck. The fatuous sn.o.bbishness which had made him leap at her invitation to spend a few days at Evenwood Towers he regretted; but for that he blamed himself less. Further acquaintance with Lady Kimbuck had convinced him that if she had wanted him, she would have got him somehow, whether he had accepted or refused.
What he really blamed himself for was his mad proposal. There had been no need for it. True, Lady Eva had created a riot of burning emotions in his breast from the moment they met; but he should have had the sense to realize that she was not the right mate for him, even tho he might have a quarter of a million tucked away in gilt-edged securities. Their lives could not possibly mix. He was a commonplace young man with a fondness for the pleasures of the people. He liked cheap papers, picture-palaces, and a.s.sociation football. Merely to think of a.s.sociation football in connection with her was enough to make the folly of his conduct clear. He ought to have been content to worship her from afar as some inaccessible G.o.ddess.
A light step outside the door made his heart stop beating.
"I"ve just looked in to say good night, Mr.--er--Roland," she said, holding out her hand. "Do excuse me. I"ve got such a headache."
"Oh, yes, rather; I"m awfully sorry."
If there was one person in the world Roland despised and hated at that moment, it was himself.
"Are you going out with the guns to-morrow?" asked Lady Eva languidly.
"Oh, yes, rather! I mean, no. I"m afraid I don"t shoot."
The back of his neck began to glow. He had no illusions about himself.
He was the biggest a.s.s in Christendom.
"Perhaps you"d like to play a round of golf, then?"
"Oh, yes, rather! I mean, no." There it was again, that awful phrase. He was certain he had not intended to utter it. She must be thinking him a perfect lunatic. "I don"t play golf."
They stood looking at each other for a moment. It seemed to Roland that her gaze was partly contemptuous, partly pitying. He longed to tell her that, tho she had happened to pick on his weak points in the realm of sport, there were things he could do. An insane desire came upon him to babble about his school football team. Should he ask her to feel his quite respectable biceps? No.
"Never mind," she said, kindly. "I daresay we shall think of something to amuse you."
She held out her hand again. He took it in his for the briefest possible instant, painfully conscious the while that his own hand was clammy from the emotion through which he had been pa.s.sing.
"Good night."
"Good night."
Thank Heaven, she was gone. That let him out for another twelve hours at least.
A quarter of an hour later found Roland still sitting, where she had left him, his head in his hands. The groan of an overwrought soul escaped him.
"I can"t do it!"
He sprang to his feet.
"I won"t do it."
A smooth voice from behind him spoke.
"I think you are quite right, sir--if I may make the remark."
Roland had hardly ever been so startled in his life. In the first place, he was not aware of having uttered his thoughts aloud; in the second, he had imagined that he was alone in the room. And so, a moment before, he had been.
But the owner of the voice possessed, among other qualities, the cat-like faculty of entering a room perfectly noiselessly--a fact which had won for him, in the course of a long career in the service of the best families, the flattering position of star witness in a number of England"s raciest divorce-cases.
Mr. Teal, the butler--for it was no less a celebrity who had broken in on Roland"s reverie--was a long, thin man of a somewhat priestly cast of countenance. He lacked that air of reproving hauteur which many butlers possess, and it was for this reason that Roland had felt drawn to him during the black days of his stay at Evenwood Towers. Teal had been uncommonly nice to him on the whole. He had seemed to Roland, stricken by interviews with his host and Lady Kimbuck, the only human thing in the place.
He liked Teal. On the other hand, Teal was certainly taking a liberty.
He could, if he so pleased, tell Teal to go to the deuce. Technically, he had the right to freeze Teal with a look.
He did neither of these things. He was feeling very lonely and very forlorn in a strange and depressing world, and Teal"s voice and manner were soothing.
"Hearing you speak, and seeing n.o.body else in the room," went on the butler, "I thought for a moment that you were addressing me."
This was not true, and Roland knew it was not true. Instinct told him that Teal knew that he knew it was not true; but he did not press the point.
"What do you mean--you think I am quite right?" he said. "You don"t know what I was thinking about."
Teal smiled indulgently.